We'll Never Have Paris

by Andrew Gallix

  But I at least hope those Tumbleweeds carried some of their youthful dreams with them. Dreams built on the dream of George Whitman who founded the shop as a socialist utopia, and recreation of Sylvia Beach’s original shop and original dream…

  I hope for those dreams especially because it feels now more than ever that personal legends matter. They change things. Lawrence Durrell, one of the earliest regulars at Whitman’s shop, once said: “Every man carries a little myth-making machine inside him which operates often without him knowing it. Thus you might say that we live by a very exacting kind of poetic logic — since we get exactly what we ask for, no more and no less”.

  Lovely. Except, of course, it depends what people ask for. And at the moment, those in power seem to be asking to live in an Ayn Rand novel. The people who run the UK and the USA treat her ideas about “enlightened self interest” and destroying the state as serious propositions instead of weak excuses for being abysmally selfish. Boris Johnson, Donald Trump, Rand Paul (obviously), Daniel Hannan, Douglas Carswell, Paul Ryan, Alan Greenspan: name a wanker and they’ll name Ayn Rand as a major influence. Sajid Javid, the UK Home Secretary at the time of writing (but probably not for much longer, the way things are going) once said that he read scenes from The Fountainhead aloud to his wife while wooing her. Yes, he did.

  Which is part of the reason the world’s such a mess. I also attribute our collective failure of imagination to Milton Friedman. Friedman, friend of Reagan and Thatcher and the most influential economist of the 1980s and 1990s. Blame him for the financial weirdness that has done so much to undermine our reality. Blame him for every politician you’ve heard shitting on about “the discipline of the markets” or injecting “consumer choice” into places it really oughtn’t to go. You’ve also come under his spell if you’ve suffered Britain’s appalling privatised train service, or if you’ve worked for a state institution that’s been destroyed because an overpaid CEO from the “business community” has come in and made everything run on “market principles”. Also, if you’ve been pushed from a plane or murdered in the streets in Pinochet’s Chile. But that’s another story. Closer to home, Friedman is one of the major proponents of the ideas that privatisation is a panacea, that the state can’t run anything, that end users of services are actually consumers and that things work best if they are given the illusion of choice about how they use those services…

  I go on. But Friedman matters. Partly because you should know who has screwed you. But also because he was so instrumental in helping reality slip from its moorings. We’re living in his dream. He ushered us into a world “governed” by markets — which turned out to be a world that wasn’t properly governed at all. His ideas gave us the baffling paradoxical recession of 2007 and 2008, when everything simultaneously went to shit and remained just the same. There were no shortages of resources or food or innovation. Everything you could touch was still basically working. But somewhere in our collective consciousness, it all stopped functioning. A series of fantastical deals on unrealisable mortgages wrapped us all up into an economic death spiral that we couldn’t understand, because it had no relation to anything that was happening on the ground, but which still made us all materially poorer…

  …it’s been strange. And that just about brings us to Donald Trump, who has taken advantage of the anger and uncertainty generated by the Great Recession. And he’s also amped up the evil dreams. One of the many weird things about Trump is that he believes (as much as he believes in anything) in the Power of Positive Thinking. He was a close associate1 of Norman Vincent Peale who told his followers to “prayerise, visualise, actualise”. Imagine the world different, in other words. Attitudes matter more than “facts”, said Peale. And so it came to pass that if Trump said it didn’t rain at his inauguration, that was the new reality. Even though there were water drops bouncing off his nose. If Trump said he was going to “Make America Great Again”, he was. Even though he wasn’t.

  Meanwhile, in Britain, we have Boris Johnson’s self-described “Brexit dream”. Nostalgic visions of a stronger, happier, whiter Britain that never existed. “Experts” derided in favour of “faith” and the Dunkirk Spirit. “We need to take one decision now before all others — and that is to believe in this country and what it can do,” said Boris when he resigned as Foreign Secretary, as if Britain were a tooth fairy and Brexit would leave 20p under all our pillows, if only we wished hard enough. It was utter bollocks. But also just the kind of nonsense that has so successfully consumed the world, and helped destroy the better dreams. Martin Luther King, the post-war rebuilding of a peaceful Europe, Gandhi and give peace a chance. They all seem old-fashioned now, don’t they? So what do we have? Well, not much. But maybe Paris?

  Okay. I know Paris isn’t immune. The nightmares of the twenty-first century have attacked even my unreal version of the city. The flowers outside the Bataclan testify to the penetrating power of bad dreams. Yet still, for me, it provides a kind of refuge. When I leave Daily Mail island on the Eurostar and walk down to Shakespeare and Company I can feel for a short time that I’m stepping into a better dream. A better collection of dreams. Maybe, in the power of words and collective creative endeavour a way to start to fight back. And certainly, a better, kinder version of reality. A bulwark against all the other madness.

  At least allow me that.

  1 I was going to write “friend” but he doesn't have friends, does he? Anyway, Peale officiated at Trump's first wedding. Later on, the prayers at Trump's inauguration were led by a preacher who believed in “prosperity gospel”, a direct descendant of Peale's visualisation nonsense.

  The House of George1

  Paul Ewen

  Paris remains on high terrorist alert, and there’s a notable presence of heavily armed police. Hemingway didn’t write about counter-terrorism during his time in Paris, nor does it come up in the numerous campus novels that mention the city, such as The Marriage Plot, The Rules of Attraction, Old School or Paul Auster’s Innocent. Paris is supposed to be a city of love and romance, not ultra-violence. Of course, Victor Hugo, France’s most famous writing son, didn’t skimp on the bloodshed. Even The Hunchback of Notre-Dame has its share of wanton death and demise. Today, however, I find it easier and more comforting to equate the heightened security and sub-machine guns with my own visit, as an international author of repute.

  Shakespeare and Company is directly across the Seine from Notre-Dame cathedral, where Hugo crushed many people with falling beams, or had them perish from melting metal. The bookshop, made from rickety old wood, is not on fire. Portable shelves are arranged outside, and the public idly browse these, without fear of death. I rub my hands with excitement, and also for warmth. Although a cloudless day, it is most bitterly cold. Inside is cluttered, rustic and warm. Books are piled, almost to ceiling height, on wonky weathered boards. My own novel is displayed just inside the door, and I murmur my approval, catching the eyes of customers, nodding a good deal and pointing. The cashier’s desk is like something you might have purchased castor sugar from in yester times. Awkwardly, I ask the young, English-speaking grocer for Adam, who is chairing my evening talk. In this role, Adam has interviewed John Berger, Naomi Klein and Ethan Hawke, and in two days’ time will be taking Don DeLillo’s measure. But when he arrives, he doesn’t strike me as some foreboding David Frost figure. Instead, he is a young, quietly spoken Englishman, tall and bespectacled, without pretensions or uplifted fighting fists. He escorts me out of the shop, back in through a secret adjacent door, and up a spiralling, concrete-strewn staircase.

  Adam: Sorry about the mess. We’re getting a lift put in.

  A third-floor door is marked with a hand-written sign announcing: THE HOUSE OF GEORGE. This, Adam explains, is where George Whitman, the original proprietor, lived until his death, aged ninety-eight. Now, for my three nights in Paris, it will house me. I feel like I’m stepping into some massive shoes, possibly suede, hand-sewn overnight by little French elves. At the back of an entr
anceway piled haphazardly with books, is a round wooden table offering magnificent window-side views of Notre-Dame. Wow. It’s literally right there. An old typewriter sits silently on a side desk, and a passageway leads past a small kitchen to the rear. Adam directs me through to George’s former bedroom, with its oak beam ceiling, writing desk, and more books shelved from floor to ceiling. There are towels, toothpaste, and even an in-house cat. Agatha, a stray, was discovered down in the shop’s Crime section, before being named after its most famous practitioner.

  Adam: Are you okay with cats?

  Francis Plug: For dogs we kings should have lions, and for cats, tigers.

  Adam: Sorry?

  FP: Just messing. I’m not Louis XI. A little cat is fine.

  My inaugural French event takes place in less than two hours. Adam leaves me to settle in and get my head together. In English, this translates as downing some fast ones. Sitting at the round table, I watch the lowering sun turn Notre-Dame the same colour as my whisky. The old cathedral was bombed and bullet-holed during the Second World War, and until the 1990s, was apparently black, covered in old soot. But tonight it gleams wonderfully golden. Agatha’s purr sounds like the rotating blades of a hovering helicopter. She is sprawled across my midriff, literally hosing my black jumper with tortoiseshell fur. What will my fashionable Parisian audience have to say about this?

  FP: Bad cat!

  Prior to show time, Adam, and Octavia, a fellow worker in Shakespeare and Company, join me at the table for red wine and a chat. Their demeanours are relaxed and friendly, but I suspect, like the BBC team, they’re ascertaining my suitability for public display; in this case, within their famous shop. When Adam mentions that the audio of my event will be piped around every floor, later appearing as a podcast on their website and related social media, I begin a quiet chant.

  FP: Non timebo millia populi circumdantis me: exsurge, Domine; salvum me fac, Deus!

  Adam: Sorry, what’s that you’re saying?

  FP: It’s from The Hunchback of Notre-Dame. It means, “I will not fear the thousands of the people gathered together about me: arise, O Lord; save me O my God!” Something along those lines.

  We descend the pocked and dust-strewn staircase, stopping at a side door.

  Adam: You go first because you’re sitting on the far side. On the other side of the door, unbelievably, is a stage. A small modest stage, granted, but a stage nonetheless. In front of it is a packed house of people, seated, standing and staring. It’s like we’ve just emerged through some kind of portal. It’s also like that dream where you’re standing before your entire school in the nuddy.

  FP: Shit a brick!

  When Charles Bukowski visited Paris, he drank openly from wine bottles on live French TV. This was beamed out to sixty million viewers. He didn’t talk at Shakespeare and Company, but his European escapades were collected in a book entitled Shakespeare Never Did This. I didn’t bring my whisky bottle downstairs because I’m not Charles Bukowski, although, like him, I do enjoy frequenting pubs. In truth, I forgot it because I’d been offered the red wine, which I finished. Now, instead of whisky, there are many French faces, staring, staring. Cat hairs! In The Hunchback of Notre-Dame, Quasimodo is honoured in the annual Festival of Fools. Tonight, I too have been given a platform and a stage. Just as a hunchback, hidden away in his bell tower, can produce the most exquisite sounds, so too may a writer, from their solitary room, produce a work that stirs the soul. Yet when the hunchback, or the writer, appears before the public, they are nothing short of grotesque.

  Adam gets the interview underway by introducing me and suggesting I stand before a plastic lectern to read from my book. With my jumper temporarily obscured, I take the opportunity to give it a vigorous rub-down. The light and cheerful section I’ve chosen to read is therefore delivered in a manner befitting my physical exertions, which could be misconstrued as abject fury, or an uncontrollable form of mental illness. Bloody cat! Returning to my seat, I continue to pick at the hairs, pretending they are logs, and my thumb and forefinger are steel claws, connected to a shore-based crane. It gives my fingers something to do, in lieu of a drink.

  Adam: Thanks, Francis. In your book you allude to writers being woefully unprepared for their new public realities. You were determined not to be one of these writers yourself. How successful have you been in this regard, do you think?

  FP: Not terribly. I wasn’t prepared for that door over there, straight onto the stage. And I forgot to bring a drink with me, which doesn’t show much foresight either. Actually, I probably should have read my book again, to get up to speed. It’s supposed to be very good. A chirpy siren belonging to a French emergency vehicle can be heard passing outside. This causes me to sit forward on my seat, in case I need to make a run for it.

  Adam: It’s not just stage pressure, is it? There’s also the pressure of maintaining a social media presence.

  FP: No, I stay well clear of that carry-on. Otherwise, you know, I’ll just end up writing stuff like, “Mick down the pub is a flaming dickhead”. Or: “Graham down the pub is”,

  I don’t know, “a big-eared knob”. Or: “Bill down the pub is a stupid arse…”

  Adam: Right.

  I feel like James in his giant peach, except my peach is much, much smaller, and the pecking seagulls are really, really hungry. Another siren can be heard, and this time I get up and move towards the stage door.

  Adam: Oh… Francis?

  FP: It’s all right, Adam. I’m just going to get a drink.

  Adam: I’m sure we can ask someone…

  FP: No, no, no.

  As well as my whisky, I return with a glass, so I’m not openly drinking from the bottle.

  FP: There. Next question?

  At some point, the questions and answers begin blurring into each other and I find myself asking questions, having run out of answers. Or, I simply make statements, hoping these may suffice as answers to other people’s questions. God knows what I’m spurting out, on stage, in the world’s most famous bookshop. God knows, and also the billions of people around the world who’ll have access to the podcast.

  Afterwards, I sign a few books, although the state of my signature probably won’t be of use to those wishing to engage in identity fraud, for instance. Adam and friends whisk me off to a nearby bistro where I use hand gestures, unsuccessfully, to depict the very large drink I desire. We progress to some outer Paris pubs, and after more drinks, I tell Adam I’m ready to be interviewed on live French television. Nothing has been pre-arranged in this regard, and even with Adam’s phone calls, and my background interjections, citing the BBC and David Attenborough, there are no available slots. More drinks are consumed, and I find myself outside, in a large square. Here victims of terrorism are remembered with candles, peace banners, and graffiti. The cold no longer affects me, but seeing this is all rather sobering.

  The Hunchback of Notre-Dame opens with Parisians being awakened by the noisy peal of bells. Although bedding down directly opposite those peals, I sleep like a log. A real log, not an imaginary cat hair log, at the dockyards. Quasimodo was deaf too. When I finally awake, Agatha is sound asleep on my legs. If there have been any murders in the night, she has no interest in solving them. The windows must be triple-glazed. Despite the busy traffic out on Quai de Montebello, very little filters in. French sirens, I’ve noticed, are chirpier than English ones. They’re more up for a laugh. The bells are more cheerful too. Compared to Big Ben, the toll of Notre-Dame is proper fun times. Big Ben’s peal, when you actually listen to it, closely, is basically saying, “Kill yourself.”

  Insects have bored holes in the ceiling beams. Unlike George Orwell’s Parisian room, however, no ants are visible, marching in formation. As rooms go, in this most famous of cities, George Whitman’s must rate as the very finest. This isn’t an exclusive, opulent, exorbitant hotel. The richest billionaire in the world can’t stay here. This room, with its much-loved predecessor, its unique, personalised book collection, and it
s very special fur-hosing cat, is by invitation only, for bookish types. For once, the struggling, lowly writer wins. Any greedy, billionaire shits staying over in Paris, you totally lose.

  There’s a knock at the door. A woman, in her mid-fifties perhaps, stands in the stairwell outside. She looks like she’s just stolen 101 Dalmatians. Still unbathed, I am showered with words of the French language.

  FP: Lordy! Brakes on, madame!

  Woman: Sylvia?

  FP: Non, non! Back, back! Moi? Lion tamer! Siegfried and Roy? Oui? Oui, moi!

  Woman: [In perfect English.] Ah, yes, I see. You are Roy. Yes, definitely Roy.

  FP: Whoah, madame. Roy? Non, non…

  Woman: You think I’m a beast you can tame, Roy?

  FP: Non, non. I cannot even tame your little French cats, with all the hairs.

  Woman: Pardon?

  FP: Look, I have to shower. I have the sweaty pong, oui?

  Woman: Cheap whisky, that is what I smell. Listen Roy, you must pass this message to Sylvia… [A veritable stream of unintelligible French.]

  FP: Ha, ha! You bet!

  It’s nearly lunchtime when I’m finally in a state to face France. The stairwell is crowded with strong French workmen excavating the lift shaft. I nod politely, keen to hide my ignorance of their language and construction matters. In spite of this, the void between us is all too apparent. While they are covered in plaster and general building debris, I remain blanketed in friendly cat fur. For eight hundred years, until the Eiffel Tower’s construction, Notre-Dame was the tallest building in France. By the early nineteenth century, it was in total disrepair. Hugo’s novel is widely credited with attracting positive attention for the cathedral, which ultimately helped save it. My novel, I fear, may send the Old Naval College the other way. It’s possible to ascend the massive towers, although if you’re terribly hungover, I wouldn’t recommend it. You have to queue outside, for one thing, and if you stand in the freezing cold for well over an hour, you end up resembling the gargoyles protruding from the exterior walls and edifices. Still, if you’re lucky, you may see French policemen race past, on rollerblades!