Paul A. Myers Blog - Books and Fine Arts

Free ebook "Paris 1935" for 60 days

2012-02-21T15:25:00.000-08:00

You can download a free copy of "Paris 1935" from the Smashwords website using coupon code JB45P through April 30. Smashwords offers Kindle, ePub, PDF, HTML, and every other format known to ereaders. Just download to your computer and then UBS the copy to your ereader. Or read it on your computer. Kindle, Sony, Kobo etc all have free PC versions of their ereader software for download. And there are generic ePub readers via Google. You are welcome to share the code or republish it on your blogs, etc.

Book Review of "Paris 1935"

2012-01-31T19:26:00.000-08:00

PARIS 1935: DESTINY’S CROSSROADS
Paul A. Myers, Paul A. Myers Books, 2011, $10.99 pb/$2.99, e-book, 261 pp, 9780982596074

“. . . Art illuminates politics . . .” says Marcelle Lambert, one of the lead characters in Paris 1935. This summarizes Paul Myers’ approach: writing used as a vehicle to understanding period politics. As Marcelle and Dexter Jones meet and fall in love, a world that desperately wants to avoid another world war makes the missteps that will make one inevitable. Upper-level civil servant Marcelle is detailed to the office of the premier and foreign minister of France, Pierre Laval. Dexter, a savvy young diplomat, stands on the sidelines watching senior diplomats from France and England (Laval and his British counterpart, Sir Samuel Hoare) jockey to save Ethiopia from Italy, protect their national interests, and oh, yes, fulfill their League of Nations commitments as well. The result is the Hoare-Laval Agreement, which then (and now) can be alternately viewed as an act of base appeasement or, as Churchill put it, had it been invoked, “a shrewd, farseeing agreement which could have saved . . . Abyssinia (Ethiopia).” Meanwhile, Adolf Hitler watches intently—and re-militarizes the Rhineland. Marcelle and Dexter plan their wedding. But will they marry, for Marcelle vows she will never desert France?

Paris 1935 is a complex book that takes us into the back rooms of high-level officials, writers, and media stars in order to understand why events happened as they did. The book's presentation, both cover and printing, is professional, with the artwork consisting of period reproductions. Involved and intriguing, Myers' work definitely is worth reading. --B.N. Peacock Historical Novel Society Online Review Feb. 2012.

French Sketches: Cap Ferrat and Somerset Maugham

2011-12-16T17:21:00.000-08:00

My second French Sketch featuring a profile of English novelist Somerset Maugham and his gilded existence living on the French Rivera at Cap Ferrat is not available at Kobo for $.99. Here's the link.

French Sketches: Cap Ferrat and Somerset Maugham

Scripps Fine Arts Foundation Lecture

2011-12-15T17:49:00.000-08:00

The Fine Arts Foundation of Scripps College listened to Williamson Gallery director Mary McNaughton give an erudite and interesting (a lecture can be both, as rare as that sounds) on "Clay's Tectonic Shift." Professor McNaughton, an art history professor at Scripps, described how ceramics went from a craft to a major art form during the 1950s and 60s under the guidance of Southern California artists John Mason, Ken Price, and Peter Voulkos. Scripps College, an acknowledged leader in promoting ceramics since the 1930s under the dynamic direction of Millard Sheets, was part of this revolution. The lecture was given on Wednesday, December 14, 2011 in the Hampton Room of Malott Commons on the Scripps Campus. The exhibition opens at Williamson Gallery on January 21, 2012 with an Opening on Saturday evening at 7 PM. The exhibition is part of the Pacific Standard Time initiative sponsored by the Getty Trust.

In short, ceramics evolved from pottery towards sculpture, from the beautifully designed utility of practical ceramic pottery to large and increasingly abstract sculptures comprised of fired pieces of clay fitted into large objects.

First Sale Amazon Germany

2011-11-29T18:08:00.000-08:00

My first sale at Amazon Germany is a French Sketch! All the novels and French Sketches have been selling at Amazon UK and Amazon France in one's and two's. But every little bit helps. This Sketch is about life on Cap Ferrat and the life of Somerset Maugham in the 1920s and 1930s, a beautiful gilded age if you had the gold.

Cap Ferrat up at Diesel

2011-11-22T16:37:00.000-08:00

Here's a link to ebook store Diesel with my $.99 short now up. French Sketches: Cap Ferrat and Somerset Maugham. I used Maugham as a model for a more lightened-up character named Shelley Moncton in my historical novel "Vienna 1934: Betrayal at the Ballplatz." Maugham lived a very fascinating and colorful life.

There's One in Every Marriage

2011-11-10T14:06:00.000-08:00

Theater. On Wednesday night, November 9, students from the Claremont Colleges previewed three scenes from their upcoming theater production of "There's One in Every Marriage," a farce by French playwright Feydeau, that debuts Thursday night November 17 at Seaver Theater on the Pomona College campus.

The presentation was made at a dinner meeting of the Scripps College Fine Arts Foundation in the Hampton Room of Malott Commons. My wife and I had the delight of sitting next to the young lady playing the cocotte in the play for dinner, and I must say she was in delightful form.

The play's producer and director, Professor Leonard Pronko, got off the table's best line: "my fuel is dark chocolate and red wine." Fun evening. Later he gave another of his fascinating little introductory lectures on French farce--they're always about sex in some form. An eternal dramatic interest.Link to Pronko interview

Attached is an interview with Professor Pronko.

French Sketches: Cap Ferrat and Somerset Maugham up at Kindle

2011-08-05T10:57:00.000-07:00

Up at Kindle today. Price $.99. This is the second of the French Sketches published. These are short five to ten thousand word travel and cultural portraits of interesting places and people in France. It is also available in all formats at Smashwords.

Link to Amazon

Paris 1935: Destiny's Crossroads

2011-08-03T16:20:00.000-07:00

Finally! "Paris 1935" is up at Kobo ! I use Kobo for books to read on my HTC android telephone. The ePub format works really well. Price $3.99.

Color classified ad New York Review of Books

2011-08-02T15:37:00.000-07:00

A classified ad for historical novels by Paul A. Myers.Classifieds New York Review of Books

Paris 1935: Destiny's Crossroads ePub at Goodreads

2011-07-11T12:56:00.000-07:00

An ePub edition is up for purchase at Goodreads and I believe the entire book can probably be read on your browser. Don't know whether that is such a hot idea. I hate to call the crazy quilt of ebook sales distribution anything so organized as a "distribution channel!" Goodreads sales page

Up at Apple iStore - everything!

2011-07-10T15:49:00.000-07:00

Apple iStore has all five of my ebooks. The three novels and the two shorts.

Fine Arts - Scripps Luncheon on Sam Maloof

2011-05-11T18:03:00.000-07:00

Hal Nelson of the Huntington Library gave a powerpoint preview of the exhibition "The House That Sam Built: Sam Maloof and Art in the Pomona Valley, 1945-1985" to the Scripps College Fine Arts Foundation in the Hampton Room of Malott Commons on a beautiful spring day on the Scripps Campus (Wednesday, May 11, 2011). The late Sam Maloof is the world renowned furniture maker who lived nearby in Alta Loma with his artist wife Frieda. Both were students under Millard Sheets at Claremont Graduate University and Scripps College in the years after the Second World War when Sheets guided several dozen of that generation's finest young artists into a Golden Age of Art in Southern California. Several of the artists or their family members attended the luncheon, which at 72 persons for lunch was a season-high success.

Nelson's talk was well informed and quite interesting. The Huntington exhibition, which opens September 24, features Maloof's furniture and some of his art plus selected works from 35 other noted artists across several artistic modes, such as ceramics, sculpture, painting, crafts, pottery, weaving. The exhibition provides a stunning mosaic of the art produced in this notable era.

The Fine Arts Foundation will be heading off to view the exhibition by bus on Wednesday October 5 (call Paul Myers 9090-908-2877 for additional info).

Fine Arts - Scripps Senior Art Exhibition

2011-05-06T13:47:00.000-07:00

My wife Minche and I attended the Scripps College Senior Art Exhibition Opening last Friday night (April 29) at Ruth Chandler Williamson Gallery on the Scripps campus. In February, we had toured the student art studios with the Fine Arts Foundation and got previews of the students' ideas for their projects. The quality of the art last Friday was impressive, and, possibly even more so, was the striking originality of many of the young women's artistic vision. You can see imaginations at play! And the wine and cheese were excellent and the band playing on the terrace was superb: a modern rendition of a sound seemingly coming from the classic 1960s. Fun!

"Paris 1935" print edition up for sale on Amazon

2011-05-03T16:54:00.000-07:00

Paris 1935 Amazon Print Copy

The print edition of "Paris 1935" is up and available for purchase at $10.99 at Amazon. Ebook editions are available at Kindle, Smashwords, and other ebook etailers for $3.99. My production rollout was to do Smashwords first (iPad, Kobo, BN, Diesel, Sony etc thru Smashwords--some of these are still "shipping"), Kindle second, and CreateSpace for print last. (The above cover is the ebook cover; the print cover has a little blurb at the top and a smaller main title). I produced the entire book myself through pdf interior on Word and pdf cover using a Book Cover software program. It took me two iterations to get the print proof correct. The process went surprisingly smoothly. And Kindle is much easier than it was 2 years ago. Smashwords is a dream!

Fine Arts - Scripps Scholarship Luncheon

2011-05-02T11:13:00.000-07:00

Minche and I attended the annual Scripps College Scholarship Luncheon Friday April 29. The event is always fun as we are usually seated with the young ladies who are recipients of the Fine Arts Foundation's scholarships. This year we met students in studio art (sculpture), art history (getting ready to go to Barcelona and Florence next year!), and a freshman biology major. The student presentations included a discussion of Alzheimer's Research by an aspiring physician/medical researcher, the Mock Trial program for aspiring lawyers, and a beautiful cello duet by two music students. The Alzheimer's research was undertaken while an exchange student at Aix-en-Provence in France; Minche and I spent several days in that beautiful city several years ago.

Fine Arts - Trip to Getty Villa

2011-04-27T11:34:00.000-07:00

Minche Myers at Getty Villa

Paul Myers at Garden of Getty Villa

On Wednesday April 20, Minche and I went with the Rembrandt Club of Pomona College on their bus trip to Getty Villa at Malibu. We saw the exhibition of "In Search of Biblical Lands" featuring 19th century photographs of the Holy Land, particularly Jerusalem, curated by Kathleen Stewart Howe of Pomona College. The Holy Land became the first big international tourist destination in the 19th century, partially as a result of extensive photography of the region. The British in particular explored and mapped the region prior to World War I, and this work served as a basis for drawing borders up after the war and laid the basis for the way the Middle East is today. The museum itself is always a treat. Minche and I spent several hours exploring the exhibitions of Greek and Roman art. Then we had a delightful lunch on the upstairs veranda overlooking the museum and the valley it is nestled in with its vistas of the Pacific ocean in the distance. The bus ride back through rush-hour Los Angeles to Claremont was made pleasurable by the Rembrandt ladies pouring generous libations of red or white wine and passing out snacks. Nice museum trip.

Fine Arts - Ceramics Center at Scripps College

2011-04-25T17:49:00.000-07:00

It was my pleasure to attend a beautiful luncheon on Tuesday April 12 held on the patio of the Scripps Art Department as part of the dedication of the new Joan and David Lincoln Ceramics Center facing the Art Department quadrangle. I and several board members of the Fine Arts Foundation ate lunch with several of the art faculty. After the dedication speeches--Joan Lincoln's was especially charming--we all took a tour of the new ceramics facility. I was fascinated by the kilns because they are very serious looking industrial-strength machines. Inside, there is an extensive work area featuring potters wheels for shaping the "mud" and other work areas for finishing and sculpting the pieces. The facility will be used by both Scripps and Claremont Graduate University, which are two of the leading academic ceramics programs in the nation.

Fine Arts - Scripps Dance Concert 2

2011-04-21T16:55:00.000-07:00

Minche Myers at Garrison Theater

Reception at Garrison Theater

My wife Minche standing in front of one of the beautiful tapestries in the lobby of Garrison Theater at Scripps College after she had completing some of her work on the refreshments for the Wednesday April 13 Preview Performance by Scripps Dance of its Spring 2011 Dance Concert. Connie Layne and Corinne Gallman had earlier assisted. The second picture is after the Preview when Fine Arts Foundation members, several of the dance students, and others gathered for refreshments and talk. A very fine afternoon.

Paris 1935: Destiny's Crossroads

2011-04-21T13:38:00.000-07:00

My interview at Kindle Book Authors on historical novel "Paris 1935: Destiny's Crossroads." Kindle Author Interview

Fine Arts - Scripps Dance Concert

2011-04-17T13:32:00.000-07:00

Wednesday April 13. Scripps College Fine Arts Foundation sponsored a one-hour preview of the Scripps Spring Dance Concert at Garrison Theater Wednesday afternoon. Dance Professor Ronnie Brosterman introduced each student dance piece starting off with several solos and then moving on to group ensembles. After the last dance, the students sat on the stage and took questions from the audience on dance, life at Scripps, and their future plans. Professor Brosterman explained that dance was the use of the body moving through space to give expression to emotions and feelings. Costume and lighting often significantly enhance the visuals. She also explained that it is a physically demanding art form. Another key point she made was that in a professional dance troupe your body belongs to someone else while at Scripps Dance your body belongs to you--a very nice distinction.

Fine Arts - Pacific Standard Time cocktail party in Claremont - Fun!

2011-04-15T16:41:00.000-07:00

Peggy Carlson Vice President of Rembrandt Club

Ellen Litney President of Rembrandt Club

The Rembrandt Club of Pomona College hosted a cocktail reception at a beautiful home in north Claremont last Saturday afternoon where over two hundred art supporters gathered. The subject was the Getty Foundation's project "Pacific Standard Time: Art in L.A. 1945-1980." Getty is supporting over 60 cultural institutions across Southern California with $10 million in grants to put on exhibitions starting next September and running through mid-2012. Joan Weinstein, the Getty director, provided an overview while Kathleen Stewrt Howe of Pomona College Museum of Art, Mary MacNaughton of Scripps College Ruth Chandler Williamson Gallery, and Rebecca McGrew, Pomona Museum curator spoke on exhibitions being hosted by the local college museums.

Our own Scripps College Fine Arts Foundation (where I am co-president) is hosting a luncheon May 11 where representatives of the Huntington Library will discuss their PST exhibition opening in September entitled "Sam Maloof and Art in the Pomona Valley." Scripps College was of course right in the thick of things in that Golden Age.

The overall goal of the Pacific Standard Time initiative is the truly laudable one that shows that Los Angeles and not New York was really the Big Fish in art after the Second World War. New York was, sniff, sniff, somewhat derivative of Picasso and Matisse and the Paris School while Los Angeles was more vibrant, truly original, and much more diverse. Hear, Hear!

Paris 1935: Destiny's Crossroads

2011-04-03T14:36:00.000-07:00

KINDLE edition now up on Amazon for $3.99. The next and final trick will be the print edition up on Amazon in May.http://www.amazon.com/Paris-1935-Destinys-Crossroads-ebook/dp/B004UW2TYO/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1301866027&sr=8-1

NOOK edition of Paris 1935

2011-03-30T18:28:00.000-07:00

NOOK edition of "Paris 1935: Destiny's Crossroads" is up on the BN ebook site today.http://search.barnesandnoble.com/Paris-1935/Paul-A-Myers/e/2940011234149/?itm=1&USRI=paris+1935

Fine Arts - A Walking Tour of Downtown Los Angeles

2011-03-20T15:23:00.000-07:00

Wife Minche with Claremont tour group Bradbury House.

Walking Tour of Downtown Los Angeles by Claremont Foundation. Bob Herman, a retired Pomona College professor, led a group of about a dozen of us on a train ride on Metrolink down to Union Station on Saturday March 19. We visited the square in front of Olvera Street and then went up and went through the new Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels. The exterior edifice lacks elegance in my view but its contemporary art boxiness makes a strikingly beautiful interior possible, which makes a nice trade. We did admire the statue above the entrance of Our Lady, which is simple, elegant, and quite beautiful. The interior of the cathedral is beautiful to behold, quite original, and I simply loved the tapesties on the wall. The had an exceptional refinement and were made possible using modern computer-driven tapestry techniques in Belgium. The people portrayed in the tapesties were "everyman" and "everywomen" selected from across the Southern California multicultural landscape.

The pictures are from the inside lobby of the Bradbury House on South Broadway. The building was constructed in 1893 and has been completely renovated. The lobby is simply beautiful to behold and to stand in. Very interesting and it has a fascinating story.

We had lunch in the Grand Central Market, virtually all Hispanic. We had delicious Persian food made by a very talented Hispanic family!

Other stops on the tour were the Biltmore Hotel, the Los Angeles Central Library, and the lobby of the Fine Arts Building, another artistic masterpiece of architecture. Then we took the subway back to Union Station and the Metrolink back to Claremont. We are going to do this trip some more. There is a lot to downtown Los Angeles.

Lobby Bradbury House 1893 Downtown LA

Fine Arts - Rembrandt Club Arts Lecture

2011-03-04T16:39:00.000-08:00

Seaver House - Pomona College

On Thursday March 3, 2011, members of Scripps College Fine Arts Foundation were guests of the Rembrandt Club at beautiful Seaver House at Pomona College for tea and refreshments. The tea followed an informative lecture on a new exhibition just opening at Getty Villa in Malibu entitled "In Search of Biblical Lands: from Jerusalem to Jordan in Nineteenth Century Photography." The lecture was given by Pomona Art History Professor Kathleen Howe who was the guest curator of the exhibit for the Getty. Professor Howe had a fascinating collection of photographs and discussed the irony between intense worldwide interest in the Holy Land in the nineteenth century with the stony, arid landscape of Palestine and the primitive and impoverished city of Jerusalem. Nevertheless, the photographs of the time stirred intense interest and tourists from around the world flooded into the Holy Land in one of the first occurrences of mass tourism.

More information is at the Getty Villa website.
http://www.getty.edu/art/exhibitions/biblical_lands/index.html

Fine Arts - Visit to Scripps College Senior Art Studios

2011-02-14T21:19:00.000-08:00

The Scripps College Fine Arts Foundation had more than 30 members visit the Senior Art Studios at the Art Department on the afternoon of Feb 14, 2011. Treasurer Mike Layne handed out checks for seven expense grants to those students participating. Professors Susan Rankeitas (the blond lady in the center of the following picture) and Ken Gonzales-Day guided the members through the galleries while Professor Nancy Macko was in the studios explaining and greeting. We saw a preview of an animation project by student Isabel Anderson in the animation studio (she is kneeling in front of Professor Rankeitas). Other students were Candace Kita, Shayna Friedman, Sarah Dick, Jordan Mopstein, Suzanne Calkins, Bailey Busch.

The tour consisted of a lot of ladies speaking with and having the various projects explained to them by the students. So it was a very nice afternoon of pleasant interaction and seeing these vivid young imaginations at the work of play, or the play of work.

Also shown below are simply some snapshots of some of the art hanging on the studio walls picked out of my photos of the day for their colorfulness and aesthetics. At the bottom is a very interesting use of cutouts placed in a vacant studio space. Two of our members are standing inside.

After the studio tour, we all met out on the balcony of the Art Department and had delicious cupcakes, cookies, and coffee and bottled water prepared by our Refreshment Committee of Minche Myers and Joyce Lamphere and ably assisted by Jeri of the Art Department office. The students and professors joined us for a pleasant interlude of talk. Professor Day got the Williamson Gallery to open up and many of our members went and saw the Ceramics Annual, the national recognized show currently "up" at the Gallery.

We look forward to visiting the exhibition of Senior Art projects in May at the end of the school year. My personal observation is this has been our most successful interaction with the Senior Art students over the past half dozen years.

Book Review - A Political Education: Coming of Age in Paris and New York by Andre Schiffrin

2011-02-13T14:32:00.000-08:00

This is a charming memoir by Andre Schiffrin, long-time publisher at Pantheon Books and later The New Press, published in 2007. For me, the memoir breaks down into two parts: the childhood story of leaving France in 1940 and coming to New York and growing up. The second part is Schriffin's intellectual development in America into a strong social democratic and Leftist political intellectual. I will take up the second part in a later blog.

Schiffrin was born in Paris in 1935 to a Russian emigre father and French mother. The father's family had been wealthy oilmen in Baku but the family fortune was swept away in the Russian Revolution of 1917. The father came to Paris and became a successful publisher and then editor at the prestigious Gallimard publishing house, apparently on the recommendation of Andre Gide. The father escorted Andre Gide, the preeminent man of French letters in the 1930s, on his famous trip to Russia in 1936. This was the trip that led to Gide's break with Communism, a much commented upon literary event. Gide did go on to work heart and soul to support the Spanish Republicans in the Spanish Civil War of 1936-39.

With the Nazi occupation of France in 1940, the elder Schiffrin was dismissed because of his Jewish background in August 1940. This began a one-year odyssey for the Schiffrin family to the south of France where they came under sponsorship of Varian Fry, the famous American who was organizing the flight of Jewish and other endangered European artists and intellectuals out of France. The sponsorship was prompted by Gide's intervention, who sort of hovered over the Schiffrin family as a guardian angel for a large number of years. The family followed the refugee trail to Marseilles, Casablance, Lisbon and finally New York, arriving in August 1941. At critical junctures, Gide had provided support and money.

In 1948, and age 13, young Andre was sent back to France for a long stay. He stayed in Paris and later spent a lot of time in the south of France living in the Gide household. Schiffrin here reflects on the effects of the German occupation and the poverty of post-war France. His father never was able to return to his beloved Paris, mostly due to declining health. But also the exiles were not really wanted back. Jean Paul Sartre, who visited the Schiffrin family in New York in 1945, observed that most had been "forgotten." Andre visited the Gallimard publishing operations and Gaston Gallimard's grand apartment in the Palais Royale, but there is a lingering distaste that his father had not been invited back after the war. Schiffrin observes that the history of publishing during the Occupation was a "complicated one."

Schiffrin returned from France, continued on to Yale and then two delightful years at Cambridge University in England. He returned to a career in progressive politics and publishing.

Third Republic Lives - French ministers accept free travel

2011-02-09T17:53:00.000-08:00

I thought I had great material for kicking off a new thread - The Third Republic Lives! Prime Minister Francois Fillon and Foreign Minister Michele Alliot-Marie have admitted taking some "free" travel and lodging to visit Tunisia and Egypt. This would have been keeping in the rich tradition of canoodling of the great Third Republic politicos as they careened towards total defeat in the 1930s.

Alas! I read the article in today's New York Times and all the "free" travel turned out to be sensible precautions and measures that a visiting minister should employ when visiting a foreign country. There are security concerns and these were pretty standard practices. Supposedly these were "embarassments." Looked sort of sensible to me.

Saved! Rather than not having a story here, President Sarkozy entered the fray and said henceforth ministers would stay in France for vacations. This is genuinely stupid. Ministers should be encouraged to go visit the world, particularly around the Mediterranean where two great cultures meet. I couldn't help thinking what Charles de Gaulle's response might have been, such as sticking the grand nose high up into the air and saying, "The state travels where it will." So, Sarko has once again come across as a pogo stick!

Fine Arts Foundation - Visit to John Svenson some photos

2011-01-30T13:36:00.000-08:00

Photos from our visit to artist John Svenson's home and studio yesterday. At the top, my wife Minche stands next to "Deep Sea Madonna." In the next photo, Paul stands next to "Sea Sprite," another of John's impressive sculptures in wood. At the bottom, Paul and Minche are with John Svenson in front of a relief carved into redwood of an octopus.

Fine Arts - A visit to John Svenson' house by Scripps Fine Arts Foundation

2011-01-29T18:02:00.000-08:00

Scripps College Fine Arts Foundation. We had 35 members and guests for a tour of artist John Svenson's home and studio today Saturday Jan 29, 2011. We raised more than $1,000 for our Senior Art Grants program, which will be awarded to the students on Monday, February 14 during our visit to the Lang Arts Studios at the Scripps College Art Building. Seven senior art students are slated for grants. The tour was followed by a buffet lunch served on John's beautiful patio in brilliant California sunshine in San Antonio Heights overlooking Upland. Minche Myers, Connie Layne, and Marci Stewart put on a beautiful spread of salads, sandwichs, chips and salsas, desserts, coffee, fruit salads and a beauitful cheese plate. The artist's son David and his wife, sculptor Reese Williams, and the mother-daughter team of Norma and Cindy provided docent talks on John's magnificent collection of art that he and his late wife collected from around the world plus his many own original works. The singular striking thing about John's work is its originality: it is rare in my experience for so many pieces of art to just get inside your head and heart and imagination the way John's work does.

Book Review - "Lords of Finance" by Liaquat Ahamed

2011-01-14T14:06:00.000-08:00

This is a fascinating look at the personalities and beliefs of the top central bankers of the US, Britain, France, and Germany from before World War I through the Great Crash and the Great Depression beyond. The personalities shaped the beliefs upon which these bankers acted and more importantly the huge blind spots in their thinking that caused these men to be unable to master the complexities and fundamentals of the Great Depression. Many of their erroneous beliefs have re-surfaced in the modern Republican party's rants against the stimulus and its primitive need to go back to "the ol' time religion" of budget balancing in the face of depressed demand. So the morality tale is hugely relevant to today's economic debate.

The voice of reason out in the wilderness to this tale is that of John Maynard Keynes, who by the end of the book has risen to worldwide preeminence and is a major architect of the worldwide prosperity that followed World War II, the prosperity from which we have all enormously benefitted.

A profile of Keynes early in the book describes his position as one of the most influential figures in the British Treasury during and after World War I. There is a fascinating summary of his thinking: "As the war dragged on, he himself became increasingly disillusioned with its terrible waste, the relentless loss of lives, the refusal of the politicians to contemplate a negotiated settlement, and the steady erosion of Britain's financial standing."

I am utterly fascinated by the wisdom of the Western leaders throwing away the opportunity to negotiate a settlement with Germany in 1916 or 1917 or even early 1918. Keynes made a hugely wise observation about one of history's great missed opportunities. A negotiated peace would have meant that a new equilibrium could have been established. Kaiser's Germany was not Hitler's Germany. A lot of lost lives could have been saved. The Second World War could have been avoided because its underlying driving forces would simply have not been present. That is because World War II did not become some inevitability at Munich in 1938 but rather it became an inevitability in 1919 at the Paris Peace Conference with its Treaty of Versailles. Keynes miraculously prophesied the coming of the Second World War in his book "The Economic Consequences of the Peace," which came out in November 1919.

This will be a book I will blog about again in the future, particularly the rise of French central banker Emile Moreau. And we will come back to Keynes acidic portraits of the Allied leaders meeing in Paris in 1919.

Fine Arts - A visit to John Svenson's house

2011-01-06T15:00:00.000-08:00

Yesterday, I and several other board members of the Scripps College Fine Arts Foundation went up to sculptor John Svenson's house in beautiful San Antonio Heights overlooking Upland. Above is a view from his patio towards Cucamonga Peak. We are planning an open studio tour and buffet lunch for the last Saturday of January. Details to be announced later.

It is always nice to see John, one of the colorful characters from the Claremont Golden Age of Art after the Second World War and that runs up to the present. He and his wife built the house and it is simply loaded with charm. Besides many examples of his own art, he has a fascinating collection of artifacts from ancient Peru, the Far East, Alaska, and Europe. He and his wife travelled the world.

What makes visiting the house so unique is that the tremendous originality and uniqueness of his art sort of bowls you over. To sit and take tea in that magnificent living room is to sit in the middle of a visual feast. This "ain't visiting the museum."

I also got a copy of John's new book, a beautiful story of his life and his art spanning the eight decades or so of his life. This is also one of the best art books by one of the art greats of Claremont.

Attached link to a recent exhibition of John's gives a good view of some of John's distinctive works over the years.

John Svenson exhibition at Oceanside Museum of Art

Book Review - "Fireworks at Dusk: Paris in the Thirties" by Olivier Bernier

2011-01-04T13:53:00.000-08:00

This book, published in 1993, by art critic and French historian Olivier Bernier is a superb mix of the cultural and political history of France and life in Paris during the 1930s. This was when Parisian culture was burning at its brightest just before its extinguishment in the crushing German defeat of June 1940. For someone like me writing novels set in Paris in the 1930s, the book is gold dust. The entire cavalcade of artists, writers, dress designers, and aristocratic celebrities is portrayed in their comedy of manners with the doomed politicians of the Third Republic, an entire glittering society is sleepwalking to its rendezvous with defeat.

Bernier has a great command of the material and is not afraid to express judgements. President Lebrun is a hopeless mediocrity; Edouard Herriott, the great Radical Socialist politician, is hopelessly inept at the central economic questions facing France during the Depression, Edouard Daladier is fatally indecisive in the face of the big questions facing France at the end of the 1930s. The profiles are highlighted with colorful anecdotes involving women that are not these politicians' wives! Paris was one of the first capitals where political and cultural celebrity intersected.

Sharp profiles of the cultural personalities are also made with Bernier's great self-assurance as a critic. Jean Cocteau's limitations are described as "the curse was an irradicable frivolity" and that he "led a life of relentless chic." He comes across as an earlier version of Truman Capote. Interestingly, Bernier takes dead-eye aim at Andre Malraux, describing him as "a living paradox" and attributing his cultural presence "to his extraordinary eloquence. In a city of talkers, Malraux was famous for the brilliance and uninterruptible abundance of his conversation." He sums him up, "Malraux knew how to dazzle; but behind the torrent of glittering words, the thought was often simplistic or plain silly--his later books on art offer abundant proof of that." Ouch! Bernier gives Malraux credit for his novels of political involvement that went far to define the cultural melieu of the 1930s.

The book is an excellent companion to Alan Riding's book about Paris under the German Occupation "And The Show Went On." Both books will be subject to further blog essays because the relevance of the themes they deal with are so germane to understanding the 1930s and today. Superbly executed, fascinating to read.

Review - Cultural Event Django Reinhardt

2010-12-22T12:49:00.000-08:00

My wife Minche and I watched on TVMONDE5 (the French TV channel) "Concert des 100 Ans de Django Reinhardt" (100 years of Django Reinhard) which had about ten tribute acts play pieces from the great French Gypsy jazz guitarist of the 1930s thru 50s. The show was an impressive reminder of Django's greatness and that his music plays well over a range of contemporary music styles while providing a showcase for truly talented guitarists since the basis of Django's wonderful melodies is truly fast and virtuoso hand work.

Book Review - "Murder in the Rue de Paradis" by Cara Black

2010-12-21T14:21:00.000-08:00

Cara Black’s “Murder in the Rue de Paradis” is the eigth in a mystery series featuring Aimée Leduc, a computer security expert with a private investigator’s license working in Paris. Each novel in the series is set in a different arrondisement, or district, of Paris. Thus, each story is informed by the charm and mysteries of a particular neighborhood. If you like Paris, you will like traipsing through the neighborhoods with Aimée Leduc.

Thirtysomething Aimée also wanders through the romances available to a single woman living in contemporary Paris, love stories that are intertwined with the intrigues surrounding the dark crimes disrupting her computer security business.

Rue Paradis is a fast-paced murder mystery involving a Kurdish assassination plot to kill a member of the Turkish parliament. The action and characters are described within the context of themes that give the story several layers of deeper significance. The novel conveys the yearning for distant homelands in the immigrants’ hearts as they struggle with living in the modern, but alienating, metropolis of Paris. The past shapes the topography of the emotional present where the characters act out their lives. The novel illustrates that the current emotional terrain of ethnic conflict is always a product of the past because past grievance constantly drives present circumstance.

East meets West and the international politics of this clash are made vivid and given personality by the colorful characters driving forward the intrigues which provide narrative force to the novel. Moslems are coming from the closed societies of the East to the freedom of free-speaking Paris, one of the capitals of the West. But the freedom of the West also makes it easier for agents from the East to settle scores from the long-simmering blood feuds of the East.

In this novel, Kurds are being ethnically cleansed by the Turks in a tradition of ethnic violence reaching back to the First World War. Kurdish characters have beautifully memories of green valleys and beautiful fruit orchards in their ethnic lands—this region was the home of the Garden of Eden—and these Eden-like images are then obliterated by other memories of destroyed villages and dead women and children. The images of grievance are dramatically painted in the reader’s mind; the bleakness of modern progress etched by the irreversible loss of a beautiful past.

Another layer of conflict comes from a religiously motivated young woman on jihad to assassinate a Muslin woman member of Turkey’s parliament. This conflict results in a vivid showdown between a woman trapped by ancient religious fundamentalism moving by stealth to assassinate a woman representing the hope of a more tolerant future.

But as the story unfolds, religious and ethnic antagonisms provide only a partial explanation to the crimes occurring. An element is missing. The final missing piece is provided by greed, the universal motivator to low crimes. Western businesses are seeking to capture rich contracts with the aid of Eastern facilitators who cash in by selling out local interests. Greed uses religious fundamentalism to facilitate its agenda, while the opportunists profit on the tragic disruption going on in the Middle East. So people die—there and here.

Cara Black has a detailed eye for the physical changes of progress transforming the appearance of Paris, an old city. Just as building façades change, she sees the lives of new immigrants changing the ambience of Parisian neighborhoods while bringing the cultural diversity to Paris that has been its centuries-long hallmark. For a long time, Paris has been a place of outsiders who came from somewhere else. So it is here.

Contemporary France comes to the reader through the Paris police, energetically battling terrorism with SWAT teams while it’s jaded “je ne sais quoi” eye watches the currents of life flowing down the great channel of time in the ancient city.

For Aimée Leduc, one romance left for dead at the beginning of the tale ends with the promise of a second romance, apparently from an earlier novel, landing at the airport an hour after the end of the book. Love and romance circle through the life of a smart young woman trying to figure it all out.

The author lays out the twists and turns and builds the mystery of the plot in the first two-thirds of the book. She then goes uptempo in the last third. I read the novel on my Kindle and as I went past 80 percent I was hitting the page forward keys bang bang bang—a compelling read!

Book Review - "Vienna 1934: Betrayal at the Ballplatz"

2010-12-19T18:05:00.000-08:00

A review of my historical novel from the Historical Novel Society - May 2009 Online Review

VIENNA 1934: Betrayal at the Ballplatz
Paul A. Myers, BookSurge, 2008, $16.99, pb, 210pp, 9781439202036

    It is Vienna, 1934. The Austrian government is starting to become a Fascist state as German-supported Nazis decide to overthrow Chancellor Dollfuss’s government. Once Dollfuss’s government is dismantled, then Austria will belong to Hitler. In Myers’ story, Geoffrey Ashbrook is a British journalist who has come to Vienna to write news dispatches for the London papers and to write secret reports for the British cabinet. While in Austria he falls in love with Anna Marie Linden, daughter of an Austrian land owner. The plot thickens as Anna’s stepbrother falls in with the Nazis and both Geoffrey and Anna’s lives are in danger.
    This book will appeal to readers who are interested in Austrian politics in the early 1930s. The story takes place in the early days of World War II—before Mussolini joined Hitler as a member of the Axis. In 1934, the Austrians were counting on Mussolini to keep them safe from Germany. Unfortunately, as Myers relates, there were many people within the higher ranks of police and government officialdom who were pro-Nazi.
    Myers’ characters feel true to the era. He loosely based several characters on real people of the era—such as writers and journalists, socialites and politicians. For example, Ashley’s uncle is based on W. Somerset Maugham. These fabricated characters are woven into the storyline along with real people such as Empress Zita of Austria, Crown Prince Otto von Habsburg, G.E.R. Geyde, Edda Ciano (daughter of Mussolini), and many more. Myers did an excellent job of making the story real due to his good research and fine storytelling. The interweaving of fact, fiction, real, and fictional people makes this book exciting and romantic. -- Naomi Theye

Book Review - "Paris 1934: Victory in Retreat"

2010-12-19T18:01:00.000-08:00

A review of my historical novel from the Historical Novel Society Online Review.

PARIS 1934: Victory in Retreat

Paul A. Myers, Paul A. Myers Books, 2009, $10.99, pb, 249pp, 9780982596005
    Sandrine Durand is a budding young journalist and student covering a series of political uprisings in Paris in 1934. Fresh and flirtatious, Sandrine’s presence adds a sense of brightness to any scene during this otherwise troubled period. Serving as a part-time reporter for French and American papers, Sandrine is ready to prove her mettle and takes no nonsense from fellow reporters. Forming an unexpected and advantageous alliance, Sandrine claims her independence and allows her sensuality to reign free, setting her stakes high for the future.
    Richly detailed description brings Sandrine’s Paris to life and illustrates the mounting tension in France as the German threat grows. As Sandrine becomes more involved in journalism, new friendships and a sweet romance take shape and add charm to the story. Though the political atmosphere provides Sandrine and her fellow reporters with plenty of action, the serious business of reporting is counterbalanced by playful banter and jokes at the Oasis, the Americans’ favorite bistro. Myers highlights the easy passions and unselfconscious enjoyment of French society in these lively bistro scenes. These slice-of-life moments add depth to the plot and help the reader traverse the complexities of the political setting and history of the region.
    Readers who are interested in pre-World War II French society will find much to enjoy in Paris 1934. Myers’ descriptive and thoroughly researched narrative feels true to the era; the “City of Light” shines through the page.
--Gricel Dominguez

Book Review - "And the Show Went On" by Alan Riding

2010-12-16T13:35:00.000-08:00

I posted this review of Alan Riding's excellent new book "And the Show Went On" about cultural life in Paris during the German Occupation of the early 1940s. This book will be discussed in more detail since there are several interesting themes and threads covered by the book. And of course, some of these themes echo to the present day. And most of the characters had their roots in the cultural landscape of Paris of the 1930s.

France was the major cultural space of the western world in the 1920s and 30s. But it was increasingly wracked by intense cultural conflict in the 1930s between a reactionary and anti-Semitic Right and a socialist and often Communist Left. Intellectuals in the two camps engaged in literary warfare against a wider cultural backdrop of world-class art, music, ballet, and theater.

Then came 1940 and total political defeat. The German Occupation became a petri dish in which to gauge how different individuals and groups reacted under an often deathly stress. Many French gave a grudging acquiescence to the Vichy government under old Marshal Petain since when you lose, you lose. Many turned against this government "by stooge." After Germany invaded Russia in 1941, the French Communists organized and executed a highly effective and very brave resistance. Many non-Communist resistants also joined the overall movement. So there was a small, vibrant underground cultural resistance.

More interesting is the journey of the Right Wing writers. From being hate-filled polemicists in the 1930s, this group now had the power through their magazines to denounce other Frenchmen and cause their arrest by the Germans, possible deportation to concentration camps, or simple execution in France. Somewhere in here you find the Seventh Circle of Cultural Hell. The irony was that many were brilliant writers and thinkers who took a wrong turn in their personal development, the lure of the romance of extreme ideology with its promise of total commitment so beloved by intellectuals. This is one of the most fascinating sections of Riding's book.

Another interesting section is the account of American Florence Gould, who hosted a very popular salon in Paris during the Occupation. She was also involved in shady financial shenanigans with high-ranking Nazis in a Monaco bank. She said she did this to protect her husband, who was suspected of being Jewish. After the war, she survived investigations into possible collaboration and went on to become a prestigious supporter of the arts and recipient of the French Legion d'Honneur. Riding concludes, "Over the years, Florence's wartime salon and her questionable choice of friends have been quietly forgotten." Money buys prestige buys "understanding" from the right people for the right people.

The last section deals with the "epuration," or period of revenge starting with the Liberation and lasting into the peacetime years. This became the mirror-image of the denunciations by the Right Wing writers--a period of false denunciation, settling scores, and for many the safety of silence.

What is not emphasized, but does come out, is that many average French people and workers behaved well under difficult circumstances while many of the elite and privileged behaved rather badly. This book is a beautiful exposition of how a good people behaved in an awful war.

First Post

2010-12-13T17:48:00.000-08:00

This is a trial post for the new blog Paris Books, to discuss books and things related to the my writing of historical fiction set in 1930s Paris.