France Memoir

Softcover. NY, Archipelago Books, 3rd pr., 2019, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover in pictorial wrappers, 354 pages, b&w photos. Autonauts of the Cosmoroute is a travelogue, a love story, an irreverent collection of visual and verbal snapshots. In May 1982, Julio Cortazar and Carol Dunlop climbed aboard Fafner, their VW camper van, and embarked on an exploration of the uncharted territory of the Paris-Marseilles freeway. It was a route they had covered before, usually in about ten hours, but his time they loaded up with supplies and prepared for an ardous voyage of thirty-three days without leaving the autoroute. Along the way they would uncover the hidden side of the freeway and record The trip's vital minutiae with light-hearted abandon. At roadside rest areas, armed with typewriters, cameras, and mutual affection, the authors composed this book. Clean copy.

Hardcover. New York, Crown, 1st, 1999, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover, 132 pages, illustrated throughout in b&w. INSCRIBED BY AUTHOR on title page. Previous owner's bookplate on front end paper, light shelf-wear and rubbing to dust jacket. Clean, tight copy. As a serviceman in Paris after World War II, Peter Miller served as a US Army Signal Corps photographer. By day, he would snap one-star generals greeting four-star generals, and the innumerable grip and grins of Congressmen visiting soldiers. By night, Miller traversed the city of light, capturing the resilient spirit of Parisians in the wake of the devastating war. Miller's photographs reflect the vision of a sparkling city while his recollections document the wonder and enchantment felt by a young man from Vermont. From pictures of the Latin Quarter brimming with American jazz and blues to alluring models on the runways of Christian Dior; from romantic courtships in the streets to hobos along the River Seine, Miller captures these sights and impressions in dynamic compositions and sensitive recollections that are striking, compassionate, and a joy to all lovers of the city of light.

Softcover. Paris, Bernard Grasset, 1st, 1985, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 165 pages, French text.

Hardcover. Paris, Huillery, reprint, 1868, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, bound in half red calf over marbled boards. Frontispiece portrait, b&w engraved illustrations. Eugene Vidocq (1775-1857) was a French police officer and adventurer who rose in rank to become chief of a small, specialized detective force in Paris (the Police de Surete). He later organized a daring robbery which he was ironically put in charge of investigating. Eventually found out, he was dismissed from the police force and died in poverty and obscurity. First published 1n 1828. FRENCH TEXT.

Hardcover. NY, D. Appleton & Company, 1st US, 1894, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcovers, Three volumes complete, blue cloth hardcovers with gilt titles and oval decorations on the front covers. Gilt titles and decorations on the spines. Top edges gilt. Volume I: 421 pages, [4] pages advertisements, Volume II: 484 pages, [8] pages advertisements, Volume III: 541 pages, [2] pages advertisements. Illustrated with frontispieces in the three volumes. Illustrations and folding facsimile autographs and manuscripts. Previous owner's inscriptions written on inside front cover of Vol. 1, Otherwise a bright, clean set. PLEASE NOTE: DUE TO WEIGHT, DOMESTIC SHIPPING ONLY.

Softcover. NY, Seven Stories Press, reprint, 2012, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 431 pages. A fascinating document of an extraordinary life, Memoirs of A Breton Peasant reads with the liveliness of a novel and bristles with the vigor of an opinionated autodidact from the very lowest level of peasant society. Brittany during the nineteenth century was a place seemingly frozen in the Middle Ages, backwards by most French standards; formal education among rural society was either unavailable or dismissed as unnecessary, while the church and local myth defined most people's reasoning and motivation. Jean-Marie Deguignet is unique not only as a literate Breton peasant, but in his skepticism for the church, his interest in science, astronomy and languages, and for his keen--often caustic--observations of the world and people around him. Born into rural poverty in 1834, Deguignet escapes Brittany by joining the French Army in 1854, and over the next fourteen years he fights in the Crimean war, attends Napoleon III's coronation ceremonies, supports Italy's liberation struggle, and defends the hapless French puppet emperor Maximilian in Mexico. He teaches himself Latin, French, Italian and Spanish and reads extensively on history, philosophy, politics, and literature. He returns home to live as a farmer and tobacco-seller, eventually falling back into dire poverty. Throughout the tale, Deguignet's freethinking, almost anarchic views put him ahead of his time and often (sadly, for him) out of step with his contemporaries. Deguignet's voluminous journals (nearly 4,000 pages in total) were discovered in a farmhouse in Brittany a century after they were written. This narrative was drawn from them and became a surprise bestseller when published in France in 1998. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Pittsburgh, Luke Loomis, 1st American, 1832, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, leather bound, 246 pages, marbled endpapers. The chronicles of a pastor in a small French village in the mid-to late 1700s. Leather with minor scarring, overall clean and tight copy. Red leather label with gilt title on spine.

Hardcover. London, Longman, Brown, Green, Longmans & Roberts, 1st, 1857, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: None, 286 pages. Hardcover with marbled covers and page block decoration, gilt lettering on spine. Previous owner's bookplate on front end paper. Previous owner's name on title page. Ex-Library with usual stamping and embossed seal on preliminary pages.

Hardcover. NY, Doubleday, 1st, 2019, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 347 pages. In 1971 Deirdre Bair was a journalist and recently minted Ph.D. who managed to secure access to Nobel Prize-winning author Samuel Beckett. He agreed that she could be his biographer despite her never having written--or even read--a biography before. The next seven years comprised of intimate conversations, intercontinental research, and peculiar cat-and-mouse games. Battling an elusive Beckett and a string of jealous, misogynistic male writers, Bair persevered. She wrote Samuel Beckett: A Biography, which went on to win the National Book Award and propel Deirdre to her next subject: Simone de Beauvoir. The catch? De Beauvoir and Beckett despised each other--and lived essentially on the same street. Bair learned that what works in terms of process for one biography rarely applies to the next. Her seven-year relationship with the domineering and difficult de Beauvoir required a radical change in approach, yielding another groundbreaking literary profile and influencing Bair's own feminist beliefs.Parisian Lives draws on Bair's extensive notes from the period, including never-before-told anecdotes. This gripping memoir is full of personality and warmth and gives us an entirely new window on the all-too-human side of these legendary thinkers.

Hardcover. University AL, University of Alabama Press, 1st, 1981, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, red cloth covers in a lightly worn dust jacket. Here are the passionate memoirs of the French Communard leader, a hero, saint and martyr to the socialists and anarchists battling the injustices of the Third Republic. 202 pages with a bibliography. Clean copy.