Joanna Biggar's Blog

When in the company of veteran travel and food writer David Downie, I find myself smiling. Whether in Paris, where our group of writers spent a day with him and his charming, photographer wife Alison Harris in the Marais, or at book readings, (he’s now on tour with his latest book, Paris to the Pyrenees; a Skeptic Pilgrim Walks the Way of St. James), I find great pleasure in this skeptic’s company. To be with him is to find oneself in conversation with an erudite, witty, knowledgeable doubter, a Francophile in spite of himself, a raconteur, a connoisseur and a sometimes curmudgeon. To dive into his writing is to discover the same irrepressible curiosity and irresistible spirit.
In this new book, for example, the “pilgrim” sets out on a distinctly non-religious quest: to lose weight after too many years of food writing, to travel a wide swath of France by foot instead of by car, and to come to terms with what has been dubbed the dread “mid-life crisis.” He was, after all, turning fifty. To travel with him, of course, is a delight. What better company than Druids, Caesar, and his arch-enemy Vercingétorix, or the modern pilgrims, characters and rogues he and Alison met along the road?
And what better testimony to pilgrimage, in the truest sense? Although, from the get-go, Downie makes clear his aversion to the blind faith of the faithful and the follies of some of his fellow-travelers who comically decked themselves out in the scallop shells, the symbol of St. James, he also is open about his own searching. Although he eschews religious, or even “spiritual” vocabulary, an added pleasure is that he shares his inward journey, too. In the beginning of his book he defines a pilgrim as “a wanderer, a traveler in foreign parts, a foreigner…” To that I might add a seeker, one who, despite stumbles (or literally falling) or the temptations of staying comfortable, follows ‘the way’ to its endpoint, understanding that his true destination is in the journey itself.

The Next Big Thing

What is the title/working title of the book?
The title is That Paris Year.

Where did the idea for the book come from?
The genesis for the book, which centers on the experience of five young women who go from Southern California to attend the Sorbonne in 1962-63, came from my own experience doing just that. It was such a multi-faceted awakening that when I came to write about it, the most natural way seemed to express the multiple experiences through the lives of many characters—although one narrator tells the story.
In addition to the remarkable education that comes from “voyaging abroad” (one of the expressions that runs through the book), and from experiencing the world through communicating in a new language, other significant changes generally come to people at the age of 20. There are the great questions of love, finding meaning, discovering a life path, separating from one’s parents (in this case mothers) and of finding one’s identity. For these young women, who lived in such close proximity emotionally to each other at this time, I was interested in exploring how their shifting identities influenced each other’s.
Also, for me, landscape is very important, and I wanted to see how the duel landscapes—the left-behind California and the newly discovered France—influenced them, and how their views of those places changed with their own changes. I wanted to express the ways in which the exterior landscape reflected the interior one.

What genre does your book fall under?
It is literary fiction, though I have noticed that sometimes it’s classified as a memoir. This confusion has led to some amusing moments when I get asked about “true” events in the book that actually took place only in my imagination.

What actors would you choose to play the part of your characters in a movie rendition?
This is a fun question to think about. In truth, since there are many characters in this novel, I have at this point gone only far enough in my mind to cast the five young women, and I chose these actors with the caveat that you imagine them at 20. For J.J., the narrator, I imagine Elizabeth McGovern; for the blond, cool beauty of Jocelyn, Cate Blanchett; for the wild redhead Evelyn, Nicole Kidman; for the deep and mysterious Melanie, Lost star Elizabeth Mitchell; and for the brilliant, plain, complex Grace, René Zellweger.

What is the one sentence synopsis of your book?
When five young co-eds set sail on a rusty boat in the summer of 1962 determined to enroll in the Sorbonne, what they lost was more than their virginity, their bad American accents, and their beloved clichés about “meaning”; what they gained, as they traded notes, clothes, dreams, loves and identities was the gift of geography — the tectonic shift that occurs upon discovering that place, native or adopted, is an integral part of who we are.

How long did it take you to write the first draft of this book?
Would you believe about 30 years? That included years in graduate school, marriage, children, working, and decades of putting it aside altogether. The first draft finished at last, with some dedicated time finally set aside to work on it, and excellent editing, the second, much revised draft took about two years.

Who or what inspired you to write the book?
Besides my experience and discovery of Paris, writers whose language and ability to weave complex stories that move easily through time zones and varied landscapes—in particular Proust and Lawrence Durrell in The Alexandria Quartet–influenced me a lot. I was also inspired by other writers on Paris, such as the poet Apollinaire and Durrell’s contemporaries in Paris, Anais Nin and Henry Miller.

What else about your book might pique the reader’s interest?
In an era of e-books and cheap paperbacks, this book is a visual and tactile treat for old-fashioned book lovers. With an original painting of two young women in Paris by Gregory Robinson on the cover, quality paper, French folds and reader-friendly layout and print, it is a pleasure to hold. More than one bookseller has told me, “A book like this is so rare these days.”
Was your book self-published or represented by an agency?

No. It was published by a small literary press in Bethesda, Maryland, near Washington, D.C. It was acquired by publisher James J. Patterson, whom I knew personally, and edited by Rose Solari, whom I also knew, and her team of editors at Alan Squire Publishing. They have collaborative arrangements with other literary presses and organizations both in the U.S. and the U.K. So, the best of both worlds—wonderful editing and attention to detail, but with a broad scope of connections and networks.

In 1721, the letters of two imaginary Persian travelers, Usbek and Rica, caused a sensation in France. Creatures of the fertile mind and pen of the great philosophe, Montesquieu, they came to epitomize the hazards of being a naïf in the great capital of Paris. Not only were they subjects of curiosity and scorn because of their foreign ways, but their innocent questions about French customs, manners and politics amounted to a scathing, satirical social critique. Attempting to minimize the blowback he knew was coming, Montesquieu wisely published The Persian Letters, his first best-seller, in Holland. Continue Reading »

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For me, real virgin territory would be that place I had never visited before–in books. While maps, museums, art, theater and films all aid me in imagining that spot I am heading for, nothing brings me there like the written word. So, as I prepare once more to go to Paris, where over decades I have visited, lived, studied and written, I return to beloved tomes—my personal primer—to remember where I’ve been, and new ones to help me find where I am going.
It is easy for me, as a lapsed medievalist, to still see the Paris of Heloise and Abelard in the twisting streets of the Latin Quarter where he was her tutor. Or to sympathize with Eleanor of Aquitaine, the fifteen-year-old bride of the hapless Louis VII, who, missing her sunny Provence, complained of the primitive, smelly court at the Cité Palace and the dreadful cold of Paris. I have learned French manners from the acid wit of Moliere and Voltaire, and of revolutionary times from the wise letters of Mme. de Stael and the historical prose of Victor Hugo.
For me, poetry was reinvented with the great Symbolists—Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Verlaine, Mallarme—who haunted the bohemian districts of Paris in the late 19th century. The 20th century brought the Seine that runs eternally under Le Pont Mirabeau, as Apollinaire described in his poem of the same name, and a city eternally divided by the Left (Bourgeois) and Right (Aristocratic) Banks as Proust defined them.
As for the ‘20s and ‘30s, it’s hard to walk anywhere without running into the ghosts, and words, of the writers–James Joyce, Gertrude Stein, F.Scott Fitzgerald, Anais Nin, Henry Miller—to name a few, who have created modern Paris in my mind. Hemingway seems to have left his mark in every second bar in town, and the Left Bank streets I love are haunted by the post-war existentialists. I’m pretty sure I even had coffee once with Simone de Beauvoir at Deux-Magots.
This incomplete list reveals only some of the literature so important to my understanding of Paris and its eternal transformations. While it spans centuries, I have another collection of books–travel guides–that span the decades of my own experience. They, too, are dog-eared and highlight a Paris,and a personal past, that is transformed. The teen-age student who first arrived there is now a grandmother, and the days of living well on $5 seem a distant dream. Sites I once loved, such as the Jeu de Paume Museum, which housed many Impressionist masterpieces, and Les Halles, the vast central market with its all-night delivery of fresh produce and hot onion soup, are no more. Meanwhile, new structures have risen: the Pompidou Center, the opera house at the Bastille, the huge complex of La Défense.
So as I get out my passport to revisit the City of Light and share its wonders with the Wanderland Writers Workshop, I’ll look over the old maps, books and guides again. But much as I love those dog-eared pages, and memories, I also know that to fully experience Paris is to carry its past, and mine, into the present. I’m looking for new works, new corners of the city, new encounters to write my next chapter. The most important book I’m bringing is one of blank pages.

See also Left Coast Writers, http://www.leftcoastwriters.com

In that Getting Ready for Paris mode, where I will be in September with my merry band of writers, the best part is to revisit my old best friends, books. Since the works on, of, and about the City of Light are vast, the prudent course is to pick a few favorites. Continue Reading »

“Books are living things. They need to be respected, to be loved. We are giving them new lives.” So declared Andrée Le Fauo, a retiree dedicated to giving away used books near the Montmartre district of Paris, according to a recent article in the New York Times. ( “The French Still Flock to Bookstores,” by Elaine Sciolino, June 21, 2012). Continue Reading »