Villers-Pol

The day before my Sorbonne presentation (because of course I was well prepared and not writing the entire last part the day before...um...right), I went to Villers-Pol with Mélanie to celebrate her birthday and her sister's birthday with her family in the north! Mélanie is from a tiny town next to the Belgian border. The French impression of people from the north is generally that they are their "rednecks." There's even a popular movie about how dumb northerners are. But, I had a lovely day with Mélanie's family. Her sister's name is Nathalie, so it got a bit confusing at times. Lunch consisted of raclette (my favorite!) and a raspberry cake for dessert. And best of all, I got to see a part of France that no one ever sees! In fact, I was the first person from another continent that Mélanie's father has ever met! Here are some pictures of the north of France:

My champagne and fancy French cake

The old church in the town

Very, very old

A farm! 

The lake at sunset 

My French phone takes such good pictures, doesn't it? 

The Moulin (mill). So cute!

The Paris Sewers (28 January)

I went into the sewers with my adviser! He is writing a book on Les Misérables and asked me if I wanted to do a "miserable" tour of Paris with him. I caught him on his last European stop, after Guernsey and Jersey (where Hugo lived while in exile) and before his return to Princeton. Here are some great pictures that fortunately do not convey the smell of the experience. In the end, the sewers smell just slightly worse than Louise's bedroom.

The entrance. Looks creepy, huh? 

This is a clever giant ball they use to "filter" the contents of the water. It is just slightly smaller than the sewer pipes themselves, which create enough pressure to separate the water from the waste. What an incredible feat of engineering!

Street signs, like in the city. But for the passages in the tour. 

This is Jean Valjean from Les Misérables carrying Marius through the sewers on his back. Could the tour get any cornier? 

This is what the sewer looked like. Bellos was disappointed that we weren't actually in a boat going through the sewage. We were assured by one of the guides that while that used to be allowed, most tourists would contract horrible diseases that way and die. 

My Dissertation Completion Plan

Here is my AMAZING dissertation completion plan. I'm not adhering to it perfectly, but it seems to be going well for the moment. I have designed it so that I should be able to finish a (very) rough draft of all five chapters of my dissertation by 31 December, which would give me an entire semester to edit and do any more research that might be necessary, allowing me the possibility of finishing in five years like you're supposed to. I'm hoping to get a sixth year as I would like more teaching experience before being on the job market, but either way, this plan sounds crazy but actually seems like it will work.

16 February:

This was the date of my presentation at La Sorbonne. I was invited to give a lecture for a class on the Oulipo, taught by Christelle Reggiani (a Perec expert whose new book I just reviewed a few months ago). I will write more about this in a different post, but the point is, I treated this talk as a "deadline" to finish a draft of my first chapter of my dissertation. The talk was on set theory as it pertains to the Oulipo, namely my first chapter. So, rather than spending months working on a presentation, I spent the time working on the chapter and then translated my work into a French presentation for the class. I then scheduled a vacation in Madrid to reward myself.

I didn't quite finish the chapter draft before leaving for Spain, but the presentation was a success and I don't have much left to write. It is a very rough draft, as I said, but at least I know that my ideas are there. What's more, forcing yourself to write makes you acutely aware of where your research is lacking. After having written these 50 pages, I now know exactly where I need to expand and what new books to read.

1 April:

This is an arbitrary deadline. I picked this date because I'd like to have my fourth chapter on algorithms drafted, and a reduced version in article form sent out to a journal that was interested in it. The article is half written as is, so the chapter writing should be quick and painless. The second half of the article will also be the topic I will discuss at the Séminaire Perec on 30 May. Reggiani invited me to present at that, and I figured it would, like the other presentations, force me to get a substantial part of my dissertation written.

28 May:

This is the date of my presentation on geometry, literature, and the table of contents at the Séminaire ALGORITM. I will be speaking about my fifth chapter, specifically Italo Calvino and Michèle Audin. To add to the pressure, Audin will be there and speaking as well. So, I'll get to see if she agrees with my interpretations of her work! This should allow me to have a draft of my fifth chapter and a productive conversation at this conference all at the same time.

1 August:

Arbitrary deadline by which I'd like to have my second chapter written.

31 December:

As I'll be teaching the first semester and since the third chapter is central to my dissertation (both in position and importance), I will want to give myself much more time with it. I think it should be doable.

So, the plan might seem crazy. But, I'm confident it will work! It's working so far!

George Orrimbe

I believe I already wrote a post about my random (or was it? The OuLiPo is against randomness...) encounter with George Orrimbe at Versailles. He is a member of the OuPeinPo (the OuXPo group dedicated to Painting, or Peinture, rather than Littérature like the OuLiPo). Well, he invited me to his exposition twice: the first time to give me a private tour; the second to help him show the new member of the OuLiPo the exposition, a Spanish author named Pablo Martín Sanchez). Let me show you his portraits of the OuLiPo members so you have a better idea of what he does.

Here are some of the portraits. Rather than painting an author based on his looks, he designs these portraits based entirely on the author's published works.

The process is called "vococoloriste" and what it means is that Orrimbe has a system. He chooses a shape based on the number of vowels (voco) in a word and the color based on the first vowel. The color scheme comes from Rimbaud's famous poem "Voyelles" (A noir E blanc I rouge, etc.) Instead of E blanc or white E, he does yellow, so it looks more interesting. 

He picks ten titles of their works to fill in the facial features (eyes, nose, mouth, ears, hair, eyebrows, etc.)

For the entire face, he uses the author's name. 

It's fun to stand in front of a portrait and guess which Oulipian it is, a process that isn't too difficult once one has learned the system and assuming a good knowledge of the Oulipian authors and their works. 

Orrimbe, by the way, is a name he takes from Rimbaud (it is Rimbaud backwards, in the tradition of the French slang called the Verlan). George comes from George Orwell, one of his favorite authors. 

Ultimately, it was a small, but bold exposition. I feel very honored to have been given a private tour by the artist. 

My first full day back in Paris

My first full day back in Paris was the perfect conglomeration of everything I love about this city (well, that city. I'm writing from Madrid at the moment). I had:

1) Magret de canard, at one of Mélanie's and my favorite restaurants right by the Place Monge.

2) A delightful lunch and conversation with Mélanie, followed by a café gourmand for dessert (a coffee with a whole bunch of sweets and fruit on the side)

3) Berthillon ice cream (because one dessert wasn't enough, obviously!)

4) A private exposition of artwork by a member of the OuPeinPo (George Orrimbe) by the artist himself!

5) An OuLiPo jeudi.

Congrats Paris, it was an excellent day. It really made me excited to be back! This was January 15th, by the way. Sorry I'm more than a month behind on updates!!

Charlie Hebdo

I wanted to write a series of short blog posts about the sort of things I've been doing, but I should probably begin with the biggest event that happened while I was gone. First off, many apologies for taking so long to get to this. I have a new "plan" to increase my productivity, which has been working rather well. But I will get to that in another post.

This is painted onto the Institut du Monde Arabe (the Institute of the Arab World), which I'm sure has feared backlash attacks due to these terrorists. 

This is right near the Centre Georges Pompidou

For those of you reading this blog, I should begin by saying that I was on the other side of the planet when Charlie Hebdo was attacked by terrorists who killed several of their prominent cartoonists. I was in San Francisco with friends, and that trip was interesting, but for drastically different reasons. In any case, echoes of the Paris attacks could be felt even all the way in California, and when I returned to Paris a week later, the city was covered in "Je suis Charlie" banners (two of which are pictured above). 

First off, I am not Charlie. And since that statement needs qualification, I will explain. I don't like Charlie Hebdo. It had crossed my path a few times before the attack, but all I knew was that people considered it a French "South Park" (different medium, of course). From what I understood, it was a weekly magazine that aimed to insult everyone. It pictured Mohammed, sure, but also poked fun at the Pope, politicians, and everyone. When I read it, I found a few of the cartoons funny, but it was mostly fart jokes and other vulgar images. I never really "got" that "typical" French humor I suppose. 

As someone who barely read and didn't like Charlie Hebdo, I'm not going to say that I am Charlie. That would be silly! Do I agree with what these terrorists did? Of course not. I don't believe that anyone should be murdered for doing their job; I believe that people have the right to write whatever they want without fearing for their lives; I believe that if you aren't happy with something that has been published, there are other ways to make your concerns known, rather than murdering the people responsible. 

So, I'm for freedom of the press, or liberté d'expression as everyone defends here. But, I also find that the problem is deeply seeded in the way the French government treats its immigrant population—especially in Paris. The French system, no matter how much they claim it is a meritocracy, democratic, and secular, is still essentially an aristocracy. That's why there is no "diversity" at the ENS; it's why the majority of the people in government jobs are there because they went to the same school, passed the same tests, and are generally from the same socioeconomic background. It's also the reason why most of the Arab population seems to be confined to the suburbs. And while I wasn't thrilled when I was stuck in Aulnay-sous-Bois and someone stole my phone out of my hand, I realize that his situation was the result of a highly archaic and racist French system. Perhaps there was no way out. 

The French reaction to the attacks have been exactly wrong. I won't go into it, but here is one example. Apparently a child in an elementary school in the south, when discussing it in class, said that the terrorists were right to kill the cartoonists. They apparently let the police deal with it. How can a country be so hypocritical, proclaiming their right to free speech in Paris but stifling it from anyone who doesn't share the same beliefs as them? In the end, the attack raised a lot of questions that will probably not disappear anytime soon. If nothing else, it made the world largely aware of these political and racial issues that are very prevalent in France, and perhaps now people will be able to recognize it. Perhaps they will even take down the "Au nègre joyeux" sign from the Rue Mouffetard (since it is quite clearly racist). Or perhaps nothing will change and this will be forgotten. The modern day attention span is eerily short, after all. Only time will tell.