Etel Adnan's novel "PARIS, WHEN IT'S NAKED amazes our retinas, ears, lips, fingertips, and noses with sensing, talking, and envisioning the city of Baudelaire and Delacroix, Mallarme and Picasso, Sartre and Djuna Barnes, Miller and Nin, Vietnamese and African refugees, revolutions and Bohemia. This tale of the Creative Now is told through the fine-tuned sensibility of Etel Adnan, the expatriate poet-painter who knows the French Capital as wholly as she does Beirut and San Francisco, her other homes. She is also the author of SITT MARIE-ROSE, an underground novel of the Lebanese Civil War, and many books of poetry. Her new work is a philosophically charged lyric in prose. The elan vital of every word evokes the eternal present of this wise woman. A highly personal, life-enhancing masterpiece in a deathly age of impersonality. An indespensable book by an indispensable writer" -Morgan Gibson.
Excellent condition and prompt delivery. Thank you. I loved this book and hope you will too. I bought a second copy to give as a Christmas gift to a friend who also visits Paris often. She's half French. I am not French but I have lived in Paris. Reading this book was a re-living of Paris.
Read it for more then it seems.
Published by Thriftbooks.com User , 16 years ago
This is a book that is thin (115 pages Post-Apollo Press edition) and relatively easy to read. On the flip side if you read it as just a novel you miss out on what this text really is. The text is more of a commentary then a novel. The author uses the narrative to let us know about Paris and in some ways all cities. "Paris is a circle, infinite and circumscribed, a Mandela." p. 85. "In big cities such as this one can look for personal salvation." p. 110. The author shows us her personal view and why the city has meaning to him in such a way. The author talks about how things make us and we don't make things. The author also goes into descriptions about how the mundane tires him and has lost its relevance. Overall this is a relatively morose affair that isn't quite enjoyable to read but is worthwhile to read if that makes sense. In closing I will let the author tell us in her own words what I think best sums the text. "There are times when one feels that some things are more dreadful then death; it has to be life. It could be." p. 54.
Read it for more then it seems.
Published by Thriftbooks.com User , 16 years ago
This is a book that is thin (115 pages Post-Apollo Press edition) and relatively easy to read. On the flip side if you read it as just a novel you miss out on what this text really is. The text is more of a commentary then a novel. The author uses the narrative to let us know about Paris and in some ways all cities. "Paris is a circle, infinite and circumscribed, a Mandela." p. 85. "In big cities such as this one can look for personal salvation." p. 110. The author shows us his personal view and why the city has meaning to him in such a way. The author talks about how things make us and we don't make things. The author also goes into descriptions about how the mundane tires him and has lost its relevance. Overall this is a relatively morose affair that isn't quite enjoyable to read but is worthwhile to read if that makes sense. In closing I will let the author tell us in his own words what I think best sums the text. "There are times when one feels that some things are more dreadful then death; it has to be life. It could be." p. 54.
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