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Happy Bastille Day, neither a Canadian nor United States holiday — not sure where the Quebeçois stand, but I’m sure someone will fill me in — however, still something to think about. While an extensive trolling of the internet hasn’t revealed a whole lot of commemorative Bastille Day literary news, there is a strong emphasis on the dangers of not learning from and thus repeating history, which I am fairly sick of by this point.
In terms of Bastille Day reading, the Afterword’s list is all in French and therefore doesn’t help me much, although it looks smart; Reading Copy’s is a bit more égalitarian. My own shortlist involves my lovingly dilapidated bedside copy of Simon Schama’s Citizens — I fell off my chapter-a-month horse a few months back. It’s an accessible and entertaining read, and my Bastille Day Resolution is to start over again from the beginning and stick with it to the finish, because it’s a very good book and I imagine it’s better to know this stuff than not.
I did find a two-week-old article by Cass Sunstein in the Spectator about the dynamics of group extremism, which was long but germane — even if he does wait until the last page to admit that extremism can be useful, which we of course know because it’s Bastille Day.
On the other hand, all we really need to know is right here, and it’s short.
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July 15th, 2009 at 12:15 am
Bastille Day is lightly noted in Quebec by general citizens. The officials don’t celebrate throwing jailers and rulers off roofs much though. There’s still a lot of October memories.
July 15th, 2009 at 7:11 am
Perfect.
July 15th, 2009 at 8:14 am
I really enjoyed this. I need to learn more about Bastille Day (and hell, all of France) one of these days.
And, I choose…cake, please.
July 15th, 2009 at 10:44 am
Sarah, if you have the patience for it, Citizens is really good and thorough. I bought it specifically because I didn’t know anything about the French Revolution — I guess I slept through that unit in History class — and felt the need to be better informed. If I do finish the book, I will indeed be very smart, though never in a million years as smart as Simon Schama.
July 15th, 2009 at 4:45 pm
I’d add to the list The Flaneur by Edmund White and The Discovery of France by Graham Robb.
July 15th, 2009 at 6:42 pm
I highly recommend Hilary Mantels [sorry about the missing apostrophe, it keeps sending me to Quick Search] novel A Place of Greater Safety for a wonderful fictional take on the French Revolution and its major figures.
July 15th, 2009 at 10:05 pm
This is excellent! Simone De Beauvoir is a long standing favourite – I also have Le Sang des Autres on my reading list. I would add L’Etranger (sorry for the accent) and La Chute by Albert Camus. Le Mur by Sartre would not be forgotten either. One recent intense good read – Marc Levy “Les enfants de la liberte”. BTW, there is a Francophone club on Goodreads :) I recently re-discovered reading in French and totally enthusiastic about it.