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editor
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 Posted: Mon Sep 06, 2004 10:24 am Post subject: Roués resplendissants |
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Roués resplendissants:
*The Three Musketeers
By Alexandre Dumas
| Quote: | | See photo of the Puffin Classics cover here, the only good feature, in our view, of an abridged edition. Go instead to this unabridged version from Audiobooks.com here, in which an occasionally shrill Michael Page recounts the great Dumas tale of the infamous French guards, who drink, loiter and gamble their way through France and England, occasionally doing battle to thwart rotten Richelieu and the frosty Countess de Winter in their dastardly plots to overthrow the monarchy. What follows is the somewhat long-winded explanation Athos gives D'Artagnan regarding their horses, which are mysteriously absent from the stables one morning. From Book I: |
| Quote: | The fact is, this morning I got up at six. You were sleeping like a deaf man and I did not know what to do, being still quite stupefied by last night's debauch. I therefore went down to the common room and saw one of the Englishmen, who was buying the horse of a cooper, his own having died the day before. I approached him and, as I saw he was offering a hundred pistoles from a sorral horse, "Egad, sir!," said I, "I have also a horse to sell."
"A very handsome one, too," said he, "I saw him yesterday. Your friend's servant was holding him."
"Do you think he is worth a hundred pistoles?"
"Yes, will you sell him to me at that price?"
"No, but I will play you for him."
"At what?"
"At dice."
"No sooner said than done," and I lost the horse. "Ah, but after all," continued Athos, "I won back his comparison." |
| Quote: | | Note: Anyone with information about the existence of a CD Audio version of the book UNABRIDGED en français please write to legal@pokerpulse.com and claim your reward. |
Here, too, is a movie version:
| Quote: | The Three Musketeers
DVD
Not too, too bad, but we wish the French would make one along the lines of another Dumas classic, the subject of a superior, truly satisfying 1999 miniseries: |
| Quote: | The Count of Monte Cristo
DVD
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| Quote: | The Man in the Iron Mask
DVD
...Ah, that's more like it. This one features Jeremy Irons, John Malkovich, Gabriel Byrne and, of course, Depardieu as the nicely aged and thus improved musketeers. |
Link to this entry
http://pokerpulse.com/news/viewtopic.php?p=1258#1258
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editor
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| Posted: Mon Oct 04, 2004 5:11 pm Post subject: |
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| Quote: | The Paris that Fryderyk Chopin entered in the fall of 1831 (shortly after composing his Second Piano Concerto) was an incredible city. Recognized as a cultural capital that made even London pale in comparison, Paris was alive with activity. Yet it was also an inhospitable place. To journey to Paris was a feat. Train travel had just begun but was dangerous as embers from locomotives frequently lit the locked carriages behind them. Once in Paris, its 12,000 streets were dark and running with sewage. Not unlike Weimer Germany during the 1920s, Paris was also a city of vice. Prostitution and gambling ruled at the Palais Royale and the elite were as involved in this underworld as the poor. (Excerpt from the unexecpectedly colorful Program Notes accompanying the concert Oct. 3/04 at the Chan Centre for the Performing Arts in Vanc-Hooverville, B.C., a dreary and rather provincial logging town, now largley a tent community, whose inhabitants showed uncharacteristic interest in this, another magnificent performance of the CBC Radio Orchestra led by maestro Mario Bernardi, who put Canada's National Arts Centre Orchestra on the cultural map when that eastern spectacle first opened and whose subsequent artistic direction at the San Francisco Opera inspired sell-out seasons every year of his tenure. Deservedly so, in our view.
One of the best features of our concert was the commentary between selections provided by Tom Allen, host of Music and Company, one of our all-time favorite CBC Radio 2 shows. Trombonist Allen, who once filled in for an absent member of the Canadian Brass, regaled us with off-color accounts of the sordid love affairs and occasional bouts of madness endured by celebrated 19th century artists, such as George what's-her-name, the cross-dresser, the infamous Hector Berlioz, Franz Liszt with his bizarre-looking piano and the truly weirdest of the bunch, composer Charles-Valentin Alkan, who for the last 18 years of his life rarely emerged from his flat, though he continued to compose with apparent vigor. We've asked Tom for a link to his commentary if such a beast exists). |
Our e-mail to CBC Radio II host Tom Allen:
| Quote: | From: legal@pokerpulse.com
To: musicandco@toronto.cbc.ca
Cc: legal@pokerpulse.com
Sent: Monday, October 04, 2004 6:04 PM
Subject: Notes on the 19th Century Paris concert commentary
Hello Tom,
We will now say something that is rarely said in radio: You are much taller and much better looking than you sound through the airwaves. You really needs must get a better photo for the CBC site. Then again, maybe not, unless you seek the tempestuous sort of life you described in a most amusing and edifying commentary at the concert Sunday. Had we known you were coming... well, you know the song.
Listen, did you or will you publish your comments from the concert online? We mention them and you and the concert at our Great Poker Quotes link because of the reference to gambling in the Program Notes. You can see what we've posted under 19th Century Paris here.
We've also directed our more discerning visitors to the two upcoming broadcasts of the concert, which was truly magnificent. Everyone did a great job. Perhaps you will play a little of Martha Argerich's Concerto No. 2 for us some morning as we count a little wistfully the rapidly increasing wealth of others.
Many thanks,
http://www.Pokerpulse.com
Tracking Internet poker worldwide.
P.S. Happy 75th Birthday to Stuart Hamilton - Stuart?! - who had us roaring Saturday afternoon with his reflections of early life as a boy soprano singing Queen of the Faeries in the Saskatchewan wilderness. Did they put laughing gas in the TTC last week, we wonder? |
Please check back soon for Tom's reply in the happy event that one is received.
Re-create the concert:
Chopin Piano Concerto No. 1 and 2
Audio CD
Featuring Argentine prodigy Martha Agerich and her
ex-husband, Charles Dutoit, conducting the Montreal
Symphony Orchestra
More about Chopin and his cross-dressing lover, George what's-her-name:
Intimate: Chopin and George Sand
Letters and Music
Audio CD
Indiana
Hardcover
By George Sand
The first of George's many books
| Quote: | | Editor's Note: We never did hear back from Tom. Since then, CBC Radio 2 has been slashed repeatedly, this time beyond repair, in our view. Cuts were followed radical program changes that seem to us, frankly, suicidal. PokerPulse recently re-tuned the office radio from the Frostback icon, the one-time broadcast leader worldwide, to Sirius Satellite Radio, which currently boasts musical celebrity DJs, including Bob Dylan, Tom Petty and our new Saturday morning favorite, Larry Kerwan of the Black 47 Celtic band with his show, Celtic Crush. How many other longtime listeners have made the same change, we wonder? |
Link to this entry
http://pokerpulse.com/news/viewtopic.php?p=1367#1367
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editor
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| Posted: Mon Oct 04, 2004 7:36 pm Post subject: |
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The Cat & The King
Hardcover
By Louis Auchincloss
| Quote: | Gabrielle seemed pensive. "I should like to ask you something," she said at last. "Something personal."
"Isn't that a wife's right?"
"You must be the judge of that. And please tell me if I'm overstepping myself. I have been noting the principal activities of the men at court. They hunt. They gamble. The seek positions. And then..." She hesitated.
"They make love?" I finished for her, with a wink. "All except me. I have no need to go beyond my own blissful nest for that."
Gabrielle smiled, perhaps the least bit perfunctorily. "But the other things -- you don't go in for them, either. You never gamble. When you go riding, it's by yourself or with Savonne. And there doesn't seem to be any office you're after."
"There isn't. I have everything I want."
"Well, that's just it. It occurs to me that as a courtier...you're..."
"Unique?"
"Well, let us say highly individual. I cannot help wondering why you would not prefer to be at La Ferte." (-- p. 19) |
Elegant syntax, tireless, detailed research of the period and its idiom - this time, the court of Louis XIV - flawless understanding of flawed human nature. Auchincloss is a contemporary American writer contemporary of no one. Think of this:
| Quote: | Louis Stanton Auchincloss was born in Lawrence, New York, in 1917 and was brought up in New York City. He has had, as I have remarked, a very long and complicated career. His family was wealthy and large—full of cousins, uncles, aunts, and in-laws. As a boy he spent his summers at Bar Harbor and on Long Island. Later he went to Groton and Yale, where he was Phi Beta Kappa and editor of the Yale Literary Magazine.
After three years in New Haven, he left Yale and entered the University of Virginia at Charlottesville, where he took a law degree in 1941. During World War II, he spent four years at sea, where he had ample time to read the great novelists of manners and to serve his own apprenticeship as a writer. After the war, he returned to New York City and practiced estate law until he retired from the Wall Street firm of Hawkins, Delafield, and Wood in 1986. Despite his devotion to his now-deceased wife, Adèle, and their children and grandchildren—and despite the years devoted to client trusts and wills, as well as to city commissions, charities, and municipal offices (he was for some time president of the Museum of the City of New York)—Auchincloss has nevertheless published more than fifty volumes of fiction, literary criticism, history, biography, autobiography, and social history... (From Louis Auchincloss at 80 by James W. Tuttleton in The New Criterion online ) |
Link to this entry
http://pokerpulse.com/news/viewtopic.php?p=1371#1371
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editor
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| Posted: Thu Nov 04, 2004 2:13 pm Post subject: |
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Bob le Flambeur
By Jean-Pierre Melville
DVD
In this scene, our favorite French gambler offers sanctuary to a lackadaisical prostitute in danger of falling prey to the infamous pimps of Montmartre:
| Quote: | Slag: Your family must be rich.
Berb (The name, Bob, in the movie, is pronounced charmingly, Berb): Can't complain.
Slag: What're you in?
Berb: Ministry of Agriculture.
Slag: What?
Berb: Equine preservation. Kidding aside, I love horses. I've given them everything - my time, my money, my life.
Slag: Does it pay well?
Berb: Yeah, enough to end up at a soup kitchen.
Slag: Not likely.
Berb: Never say die. (Bob then opens his closet, empty except for a casino-size slot machine, a one-arm bandit, which he pulls).
Slag: You that fixed on gambling?
Berb: What makes you say that? This is just for fun.
Slag: Did you win? (The pull yields a bell, an orange and an olive).
Berb: Jamais! (Never!) |
Link to this entry
http://pokerpulse.com/news/viewtopic.php?p=1555#1555
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editor
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| Posted: Mon Nov 29, 2004 5:51 pm Post subject: |
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Athenais
The Real Queen of France
Hardcover
By Lisa Hilton
| Quote: | Between three and six, everyone was seated at the gaming tables, although Louis (XIV) popped out from time to time to receive his correspondence. Marie-Therese was mad on gambling, and a popular opponent, since she never got the hang of cards and always lost a fortune. The stakes were very high, with anything from 500 to 1,200 louis risked on the turn of a card. So possessed was the Queen by the gaming frenzy that she once missed Mass in order to play, one of the few sins she ever committed...
The gambling that was such a feature of Appartement had a crucial role in the court system Louis was in the process of establishing at Versailles. In fact, it increased so much during his reign that Boudaloue devoted a sermon, 'Sur les Divertissements du Monde' to its evils, although his predictable disapproval placed him in a minority, for clergymen from Cardinal Mazzarin onwards had gambled and cheated with as much enthusiasm as everybody else. Versailles was nicknamed Ce Tripot, this gambling den, and the furious gamesters "howled, blasphemed, made dreadful faces, pulled out their hair and wept" with the zeal of the most miserable addicts on the Rue St. Denis. Cheating was all part of the fun. Louis himself was not particularly devoted to gambling, being too energetic to sit still for long periods, but he enjoyed it enough to permit Hocca, a form of roulette considered so dissolute that it was banned by two Popes and the chief of police in Paris, to be played. From pgs. 151-152. |
Link to this entry
http://pokerpulse.com/news/viewtopic.php?p=1703#1703
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editor
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| Posted: Fri Jan 07, 2005 5:34 pm Post subject: |
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Place Vendome
DVD
She frowns more than she used to, but even as Marianne, the juicer wife of a diamond dealer, a role she played quite late in mid-life, la belle Deneuve maintains an excellent head of hair and that aloof appeal that made Chanel No. 5 a top selling perfume. Hope she got a whiff of the profits.
| Quote: | In this scene in the movie, Marianne, who seems to be sobering up with surprising ease, meets with her dead husband's assistant in an effort to determine if she knew why he apparently committed suicide.
| Quote: | Marianne: So you have no idea.
Diamond dealer's attractive female assistant, Nathalie: No.
Marianne: Go on. (Shoos her away). We'll meet again.
Nathalie: (Walks to the bar, stands next to her boyfriend). Can I have some matches?
Boyfriend: Who's she?
Nathalie: Butt out.
Boyfriend: You look upset. Lose a client?
Nathalie: Lose at the races?
Boyfriend: By a head.
Nathalie: Why are you always here? (She gets up to leave).
Boyfriend: I'll drive you home.
Nathalie: No.
Boyfriend: Nathalie!
Nathalie: I said NO! I'm sick of your hanging around. |
Later in the film, Marianne celebrates an unexpected snog aboard a train with Nathalie's boyfriend with a few drinks and a relaxing poker game in the bar car. |
How civilized.
Link to this entry
http://pokerpulse.com/news/viewtopic.php?p=1906#1906
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editor
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| Posted: Mon Mar 28, 2005 5:20 pm Post subject: |
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Manon
Mirella Freni
Volume 2
CD Audio
| Quote: | | Selections from a 1969 live performance of this sublime opera by the great Jules Massenet, featuring the famous duo of Mirella Freni and the Big Bambino as they approach their respective peaks. |
From Act IV:
| Quote: | | A gaming salon at the Hôtel de Transylvanie. Lescaut and Guillot are among the gamblers, and the three young actresses are prepared to attach themselves to any winner. Manon arrives with des Grieux; no longer with any illusions as to her character (Manon! Manon! Sphinx étonnant) he admits his helpless thralldom, and allows himself to be persuaded to gamble, in hopes of gaining the wealth she craves. He plays at cards with Guillot and wins, winning each time when Guillot doubles and redoubls the wager. As Manon exults, Guillot accuses des Grieux of cheating. Des Grieux hotly denies the charge; Guillot leaves, but shortly returns with the police, to whom he denounces des Grieux as a cheat and Manon as dissolute. (From OperaGlass Synopses). |
Not to be confused with:
Manon Lescaut - the Puccini Opera
Featuring Italian diva Mirella Freni
VHS
Trust the kudos!
Or:
Manon - The Ballet
Natalia Makarova: In a Class of Her Own
VHS
This is a tough one to find, and all you get is a short excerpt, but Makarova's Manon is legendary.
Of course, it might be this one, too:
Natasha
A Dance Entertainment Starring Natalia Makarova
Directed by Derek Bailey
VHS
For reasons known only to la diva, it is difficult to get more than a cursory two lines about these films of 1985 and '86 respectively even though they document the peak of a stellar career. Strange, huh?
Link to this entry
http://pokerpulse.com/news/viewtopic.php?p=2148#2148
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editor
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| Posted: Fri May 20, 2005 12:19 pm Post subject: |
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The Smithsonian
Magazine Subscription
All the News That's Fit to Sing
Two hundred fifty years before the information age, Bourbon
Paris buzzed - and trilled - with rumors and gossip
By Robert Darnton
October, 2004
| Quote: | | The Cafe de Foy in the Palais-Royal is a good place to begin the tour. The talkers there favor political topics: the impending disgrace of the controller general of finances; intrigues behind the appointment of the new minister of war; the agitation over Jansenism (a popular variety of religious devotion condemned as a heresy by the pope in 1713); the attempts of the British to hold on to Gibraltar. Walk a block down to the Cafe de la Regence, and you will hear declamations against fortunes made by speculations on the stock of the East India Company. Turn right on the rue Saint Honore, and the regulars of the Cafe Dupuy are clucking their tongues about the flashy wealth displayed by those who surrounded the queen at her recent appearance at the opera: "a great many diamonds." Farther down the street, at the Cafe d'Elie, there is more indignation about the directors of the East India Company: "a band of robbers." Nearby, at the Cafe La Perelle, the talk turns to brawls that have broken out during illicit games of roulette at the Hotel de Picardie. (-- pgs. 116-117) |
Link to this entry
http://pokerpulse.com/news/viewtopic.php?p=2205#2205
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editor
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| Posted: Tue Jul 12, 2005 11:12 am Post subject: |
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French Leave
Paperback
By P.G. Wodehouse
| Quote: | "We're going to the Mazarin. Best place in town. I'm a shareholder. Come on, come on, come on! Are you planning to keep me hanging around here all day? That's what's wrong with women. They dally. They loiter. Mrs. Clutterbuck's the same. And that reminds me. Can you think of a good story that'll cover my being out all night tomorrow? I mean something that'll get by with Mrs. Clutterbuck."
"Sorry, no."
"I'll have to consult Jeff. Where is he in Boston? At the Ritz? I'll call him up during lunch. There's a big poker game on tomorrow night, and I ought to be there, and there's no sense in sitting in on a poker game unless you're able to carry on till breakfast-time next morning. Jeff will think up something. I have every confidence in Jeff. How that boy ever came to be a Frenchman beats me."
"What's wrong with Frenchmen?"
"They talk French. And they wear beards."
"Jeff doesn't."
"No," said Mr. Clutterbuck, for he was a fairminded, "he doesn't, that's right. Never know when he may not start, though."
(From Chapter Twelve at pgs. 197-198) |
Link to this entry
http://pokerpulse.com/news/viewtopic.php?p=2251#2251
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| Posted: Fri Jul 29, 2005 10:01 am Post subject: |
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Mordecai Richler On Snooker
The Game and the Characters Who Play It
Hardcover
By Mordecai Richler
| Quote: | | Footloose in Paris in 1950, I suffered fits of deprivation, unable to find a snooker table anywhere on the Rive Gauche, but I did manage to work in the odd game of billiards in the back room of a Boulevard Saint-Germain cafe, with Sinbad Vail, the editor of Points. Sinbad paid me ten dollars for my first published short story, which led me to abandon poolroom hustling for a more profitable life in the world of letters. (p. 10) |
Link to this entry
http://pokerpulse.com/news/viewtopic.php?p=2268#2268
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editor
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| Posted: Mon Sep 05, 2005 2:28 pm Post subject: |
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Vile France
Fear, Duplicity, Cowardice and Cheese
Hardcover
By Denis Boyles
| Quote: | We were invited in to "see the roosters" - and I readily agreed because, as a gentleman from rural Pennsylvania, I thought a display of the varieties of local poultry would be an interesting addition ot my three young daughters' agricultural experiences.
Inside, genial men offered wine for a euro a cup and a ticket seller charged a pittance for admission. But the parallel 4-H universe dropped away once we got into the hall, where a miniature boxing ring had been erected in the center of the smoky room. Roosters from every nearby village and town were being brought in, some arriving in impressively decorated crates. Folding chairs were crammed into a circle surrounding the ring. An apparently feeble man in a wheelchair was guided in, seats were moved, and an aisle materialized until he was pushed to ringside. He nodded softly, a cigarette dangling from his lips, and appeared to doze. The first pair of roosters was brought into the ring and released, their spurs augmented by silver blades, a practice frowned on in more civilized countries -- like Iraq, for example. (I looked it up later online. When a Reuters reporter asked Faris al Qaisey, owner of The Ancient Casino of Baghdad (search 'casino'), the capital's most popular cockfighting venue, what he thought of giving weapons to roosters, he said, "This is an Islamic state. We would not do that." France is merely 15 per cent Islamic, so restraint will have to wait.)
When the roosters were let loose, the old man in the wheelchair immediately came to life and began crowing, shouting the names of the village associated with each rooster, giving odds and calling out for bets. The men - and a few women - in the crowd called back, even as the roosters fought. He kept it all in his head, nodding, pointing, shouting, while a stove timer ticked away. Even before the regulation five minutes, it was all over - one rooster sat on another, both motionless and apparently unharmed. Nevertheless, my wife and the girls were out the door before the first feather flew, warned by a well-dressed young woman who had come home from Paris for Easter that it might be good to scoot the chairs back a little to avoid blood stains. I stayed on through three more nearly bloodless matches. It was like watching beetles argue. [i](From the chapter entitled, The War, at pgs. 67-68) |
Vile France from a guy who flies his family all the way to France to watch not just one but fully four illegal cockfights. Only in America.
Link to this entry
http://pokerpulse.com/news/viewtopic.php?p=2290#2290
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editor
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| Posted: Wed Jan 04, 2006 4:31 pm Post subject: |
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Joan of Arc
Hardcover
By Mary Gordon
| Quote: | The content of Joan and Charles's private conversation has been the subject of an enormous amount of speculation. What did Joan say that had such a galvanizing effect? Most accounts agree that, at minimum, Joan relieved Charles's anxieties about his illegitimacy. Some accounts say that she informed him of the exact words of a prayer he had made in private and in silence, words that were known to no other living soul. Later, under great psychic pressure during her trial, she would claim that an angel had brought Charles a crown from Rheims, but before her death she admitted that she had invented the angel.
The effect that Joan had on the weak and vacillating Charles is a kind of metaphor for her effect on the whole kingdom of France. Like its leader, the realm was demoralized, depressed, and divided against itself. No one had any ideas about how to make anything better; a stagnating and diminishing warfare had sapped people's resolve, their hope and faith. Suddenly, a young, brash creature appeared from the countryside. Her way had been prepared by a prophecy: She might well be the virgin whose saving of them had been multiply foretold. She had no doubts, no hesitations. They couldn't find anything to do; therefore, they had nothing to lose. Why not take a chance on her? At least she had an appetite for action.
We can imagine her entering the court like an arrow shot from a doorway, focusing the attention of the bored, dispirited, and purposeless courtiers. All eyes are on the arrow's landing point, waiting for the second when the steel tip pierces the stone surface of the ancient wall, the final moment when the feathered end quivers; then the stillness, unti the crowd feels that it can again draw breath. (-- pgs. 41-42) |
Another excellent instalment, perhaps the best, in the Penguin Lives series, this time featuring France's patron saint. Ours is but to puzzle once again over the truly ornate thanks France chose as a reward for young Joan's Promethean efforts. Fascinating to read Joan's testimony at her trial.
Link to this entry
http://pokerpulse.com/news/viewtopic.php?p=2363#2363
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editor
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| Posted: Wed Jan 25, 2006 12:26 pm Post subject: |
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The Arrogance of the French
Why the French Can't Stand Us and Why the Feeling is Mutual
Hardcover
By Richard Z. Chesnoff
| Quote: | The young waiter who served us was delightful. We never saw the maitre d'hotel again. Although he was omnipresent on the dining terrace, he never once bothered to stop at our table to ask whether we were enjoying our meal, or even to say good night and thank you after we'd dropped some $750 for our just-okay meals and the rather good wines and began to head for the door.
It was one of those moments when I became furious enough with this classic type of French impoliteness that I decided to confront it head-on. But I was so ticked, I was afraid my French would fail me.
"Est-ce que vous parlez Anglais, Monsieur," I asked.
"I trrryyyy," he replied in his best Charles Boyer accent.
Well, I said, "I think you are extremely impolite and unprofessional. You had eight new clients here tonight and you made no effort to see how they were faring or even to say thank you and good-bye. You are very disagreeable."
He stared at me as though I were a cockroach he'd discovered in his cuisine, said nothing, and turned on what I'm ready to bet were his slightly elevated heels. (From the chapter, C'est Logique!, at pgs. 54-55) |
Well, that'll learn 'im! Who do those French think they are, anyway, with all that wine, perfume, painting, philosophy, cuisine and haute couture while America has, well, what it has?
Link to this entry
http://pokerpulse.com/news/viewtopic.php?p=2382#2382
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editor
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| Posted: Tue Feb 28, 2006 9:28 am Post subject: |
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Casino - Nice
Poster at Printfinders.com
By our favorite Fauviste, Raoul Dufy,
who celebrated the finer things of life.
To wit:
| Quote: | Raoul Dufy was a painter of joy: his style, his subject matter, and his light, bright colors reflect a joy in life and in creating works which impart to the viewer a sensuous delight. Deeply rooted in the French decorative tradition that includes Watteau, Fragonard, and Boucher, he was an amused observer and recorder of the fashionable world around him - of horse races and yachting scenes, sparkling views of the Riviera, chic parties and musical events. The wit and elegance of Dufy's calligraphic draftsmanship, combined with a magnificent control of intense color harmonies, give his work its characteristic style.
Dufy's work encompassed such an enormous variety of media. Although he was best known as a society painter, Dufy's paintings were just one part of his tremendous breadth of creative energy. Dufy brought equal enthusiasm and joie-de-vivre to all his work. He changed the face of fashion and fabric design with his work for Paul Poiret and Biachini-Férier; he was one of the finest book illustrators of his time, producing numerous exquisite engravings for Apollinaire's Bestiaire; his stage and costume designs for Cocteau's Le Beuf sur le toit were inspired, amusing and rapturously received; in 1937 he painted his huge and immensely popular epic to electricity, the fresco La Fée Electicité, for the Exposition Internationale. (From Leslie Sacks Fine Art in Los Angeles, CA) |
More on the Horses.
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Last edited by editor on Mon Dec 22, 2008 3:28 pm; edited 2 times in total |
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editor
Site Admin
Joined: 09 Nov 2003
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| Posted: Thu Mar 23, 2006 10:36 am Post subject: |
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Down and Out in Paris and London
Hardcover
By George Orwell
| Quote: | | Life in the quarter. Our bistro, for instance, at the foot of the Hotel des Trois Moineaux. A tiny brick-floored room, half underground, with wine-sodden tables, and a photograph of a funeral inscribed "Credit est mort"; and red-sashed workmen carving sausage with big jack-knives; and Madame F., a splendid Auvergnat peasant woman with the face of a strong-minded cow, drinking Malaga all "for her stomach"; and games of dice for aperitifs; and songs about "Les Fraises et Les Framboises," and about Madelon, who said, "Comment epouser un soldat, moi qui aime tout le regiment?"; and extraordinarily public love-making. Half the hotel used to meet in the bistro in the evenings. I wish one could find a pub in London a quarter as cheery. (From II at pgs. 9-10) |
Essential tonic by the master essayist for anyone still clinging to the sick notion that abject poverty is somehow romantic - pah!
The Bistros, Brasseries, and Wine Bars of Paris
Everyday Recipes from the Real Paris
Hardcover
By Daniel Young
If this one is as good the New York restaurant critic's Made in Marseille, the pizza lover's bible, the recipes will be fairly simple and uniformly delightful.
Made in Marseille
Hardcover
By Daniel Young
Link to this entry
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Last edited by editor on Mon Dec 22, 2008 3:45 pm; edited 6 times in total |
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