Author Article by Thad Carhart

Imagining the Past in Paris

By Thad Carhart,
Author of Across the Endless River

To walk in Paris is to walk through multiple layers of the past, more than 900 years of built history that awaits any stroller. Having lived here for twenty years, I've seen the city change with new roads and bridges, new museums, new rows of apartments. And yet the deep respect that Parisians have developed for what they call their patrimoine, their inheritance, ensures that old buildings are regularly restored and preserved, integrated into the flux of daily life. The look of the city changes subtly, as it has throughout history.

The biggest transformation in modern times was simply the cleaning of the stone edifices of central Paris, initiated in the 1960's by de Gaulle's Minister of Culture, André Malraux. No change could have been more surprising, or more deeply satisfying. When I was a very young boy living in Paris, I was convinced that all of the buildings were made from the same stone, black as night and so softened by centuries of wood and coal dust that the surface was a felt-like matte whose edges looked as if they would soon crumble. This was the "atmospheric" Paris of all those voluptuous black-and-white photos (what blacks and grays there were on every side), the ponderous Paris of Buffet prints and countless tourist posters.

Then the government started to clean the major monuments one by one -- Notre-Dame, the Arc de Triomphe, the Louvre -- and the transformation was shocking, almost troubling in its strange newness. The buildings of Paris weren't black after all, but very nearly . . . white! It took almost two decades of careful cleaning and restoration, but Paris emerged from the process the albino twin of its former self. To appreciate the contrast, buy a vintage postcard aerial view, dating from 1970 or earlier, at one of the bouquiniste stalls along the banks of the Seine, then compare it with the present-day aerial shot: the era of dirt and grime looks like a photographic negative of the light and airy Paris that current tourists will recognize as the "real" Paris.

Walking, however, reveals just one facet of the landscape. Recently, in researching a historical novel, I needed to imagine Paris as it would have appeared in the 1820s. The first stop for any such endeavor is the splendid Musée Carnavalet, the Museum of the City of Paris, whose collection documents in elaborate and fascinating detail every step of the city's past. As I consulted paintings, prints, and manuscripts, many of the differences were obvious: in 1825 the Champs-Elysées was already a broad, fashionable avenue, but the Arc de Triomphe did not yet grace its rise; the Eiffel Tower wouldn't appear until 1889; and, of course, Beaubourg, the Pyramid of the Louvre, and the Grande Arche, all sturdy Paris fixtures today, would only appear within the last four decades.

Another clear difference was the absence of cars, though factoring them out mentally also involved imagining the presence of horses . . . lots of horses. As I examined the numberless paintings at Carnavalet, I thought a lot about the look, the sound, and the smell of tens of thousands of horses plying the streets of Paris close to 200 years ago. Merely disposing of their manure -- and Paris was very well organized in this department -- was a Herculean task daily. And, just as in our day, when playboys often drive Porsches and tradesmen more likely use vans, the paintings reveal fancy thoroughbreds ridden solo by dandies, sturdy draft horses pulling huge wagons, and bony nags hitched to battered carts.

Perhaps the biggest surprise that comes with seeking the past in the Paris landscape, especially after examining the documentary record, it to realize how little the scale of buildings has changed over the centuries. With two exceptions on the Left Bank (the Tour Montparnasse and the university's Tour Jussieu), no high-rises spoil the illusion in the center of Paris that the modern age has yet arrived. Individual facades, a modern infrastructure, and hordes of cars all tell a different story, but the look and feel of many quartiers -- the Marais and the Latin Quarter are simply the best known examples -- would feel appropriate to a Parisian of the early nineteenth century. This tenuous, heady relationship to the past is often seductive, and yet it can also feel weighty, old-fashioned, and artificial. How long it can prevail in the face of change is anybody's guess.

©2009 Thad Carhart, author of Across the Endless River

Author Bio

Thad Carhart, author of Across the Endless River, is a dual citizen of of the United States and Ireland. He lives in Paris with his wife, the photographer Simo Neri, and their two children.

For more information please visit http://www.thadcarhart.com/

Article from author Laura Dave

I have a review that will be posting for The Divorce Party early next week and had already posted an excerpt from the book here, but I received this article from the publisher and thought I would share it. I think it's nice to get an inside look into the author, to see where their research takes them.

5 Reasons to Celebrate a Break-Up

By Laura Dave

Author of The Divorce Party: A Novel

This weekend, I am going to my favorite place on earth: Big Sur, California (pop: 1,049) -- a beautiful town on the Monterey Peninsula. In anticipation, I pulled out my books by Henry Miller, a writer closely associated with the area. As I flipped through the pages, I came across a saying from Miller's lover, the author Anais Nin, that I had handwritten into the margin. Nin wrote: Love never dies a natural death. It dies because we don't know how to replenish its source. It dies of blindness and errors and betrayals. It dies of illness and wounds; it dies of weariness, of withering, of tarnishing.

Running my fingers over these words, I started thinking of my most recent novel, The Divorce Party, in which two women find themselves fighting not to let love die. And I recalled all of the people I spoke with over the course of working on The Divorce Party who found themselves fighting that same fight -- and sometimes deciding it was better to let it go. These are five reasons that they shared with me, and to which I return when someone close to me is struggling with a break-up.

1. Some Relationships Are Meant To Be Seasonal

Ty, a man I spoke with in Cleveland, was devastated when his first relationship after his divorce ended badly. He wanted to marry his new partner. But after closer inspection of their relationship -- she was only recently separated herself, they had conflicting ideas about marriage and family, they had different values -- he acknowledged that what he liked best about their relationship was that it provided distraction and comfort during a mutually difficult time. "We have passion, but, when I'm honest with myself, I don't know what we have in common on the other side of all of our drama," Ty said.

In Ty's candor, he has hit on something that is important to remember: some relationships are meant to be seasonal. They get us through a tricky period, they make us feel alive again. But that doesn't necessarily translate into two people being compatible for longer commitment. A psychologist, who I spoke with after Ty, said it eloquently: "Feeling love or passion is not enough to sustain a long-term relationship. Liking your partner is just as important. Ask yourself: do you enjoy spending time together? If you do, find a way through the inevitable problems. If you don't, ask yourself if your relationship has served its purpose."

2. The Wrong Person Can Make Us Feel Wrong

A couple in New Mexico, Cassie and Jason, met and married in three months. It was a whirlwind. Sadly, after the dust settled, Cassie realized that her husband liked the whirlwind more than being married. "As much as I bend myself into a pretzel to make him happy," Cassie said. "He criticizes me and makes me feel like I'm failing him."

It is human to feel that it's your fault when a relationship goes awry, especially if you have a partner who is more interested in finger-pointing than getting to the crux of what is ailing the two of you. But there is a difference between working hard on a relationship and working too hard. If someone is constantly meeting your efforts with endless negativity, it may be time to consider changing the conversation.

3. The Rope Gets Awfully Heavy . . .

When I spoke with a book club in New Jersey last year, we ended up discussing what makes relationships work. We came to an image of two people on either side of a long rope, holding their ends up. The key is that both people don't drop the rope at the same time -- that if the rope stays raised, even on one side, the relationship stays safe. I like this image because it suggests the mutual caretaking inherent to a good relationship. Which led to one of the book club members confessing the flipside: "My first marriage was over when I realized I was the only one holding up that rope. I never got a chance to rest, to reboot. It became too much."

No one can be the only one to hold the rope, not all of the time. We all -- at the end of the day -- need someone to help. If we find ourselves moving on from someone who wasn't, that -- in the end of a new day -- can be a big relief.

4. The Universe Sometimes Has More Interesting Plans For Us Than We Have For Ourselves

A woman I spoke with in Oregon took me on a tour of her home. It was her dream home, and she proudly explained that she wakes up there with the feeling that she's exactly where she's supposed to be. But she only found this peacefulness on the other side of a devastating heartbreak. "I fought like cats and dogs to stay with someone who was wrong for me," she said. "Thankfully, I lost that fight and ended up in the right life."

This reminds me of something crucial: we're not always wise witnesses to our own lives. Sometimes, in spite of tightly clinging to an idea of how we want our life to be, the universe has a plan for us that is braver and better than the one we had for ourselves. The good news is, when we stay open to it, the universe often finds a way to deliver us there.

5. You Get To Bring You Wherever You Go Next

I was surprised when a male book club member in California announced proudly that Sleepless In Seattle was his favorite movie. He loved the sentiment expressed by the radio host who brings the Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan characters together. She said: people who truly loved once are far more likely to love again.

I stand by this sentiment, and believe in its truth. The kindness and goodness and joy -- the ability to love -- that you give to a partner lives inside you. If the person sitting across the table from you can't accept those gifts, be excited. As hard as it may feel, be excited to give the best pieces of yourself to someone who is able to accept them. As the man in California wisely said: "happy endings don't always come in the form that we hope for. But, for those of us who believe in them, and work for them, they do come."

©2009 Laura Dave, author of The Divorce Party: A Novel

Author Bio

Laura Dave is the author of the acclaimed novels The Divorce Party and London Is the Best City in America. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, Glamour, Self, Redbook, ESPN the Magazine, and The New York Observer. Dave graduated from the University of Pennsylvania. In August, Cosmopolitan magazine named her as one of the eight "Fun and Fearless Phenoms" of 2008. She lives in California. For more information, please visit http://lauradave.com/