Post 13: Experimental Publishing Options

    I was talking about this project to my writer friend Carolyn last week, and she told me how interested she was getting in books for young adults, and felt that a lot of good work was being done in that niche market. That brought to my mind the question of the way these particular books were presented, whether it was in traditional paper book form, or whether anybody had experimented with pushing electronic publishing further with the addition to the written word of imagery, video, music, narration, links, animation, all those things being now possible on the Internet.
   Whether it has been done or not, this is a direction I would like to investigate further, and not necessarily for young adults...
   I already researched images of gliders of the 1930's:

 images of STUKAS(diving Junkers):

 and images of "L'Exode" of June 1940:

 just for myself, but what about using them as part of a new kind of interactive electronic book? 

     Sound of a  Junker 87 diving with it's siren on.

Post 12: A Language Test, The First Page in French

  As an exercise, let's take the first three paragraphs in the last post and rewrite them in French. I am saying rewrite rather than translate, because I am well aware that I speak the two languages in a different way. Here I go:

CHAPITRE 1:  L'EXODE
 Samedi 13 Juin 1940 
    #1.  "Ras le bol. Ras le bol. RAS LE BOL! Je clopinais a grand peine a cause des ampoules aux talons qu'avaient fait éclater mes beaux escarpins du Dimanche tout neufs, et j'avais l'impression d'avoir les bras a demi arrachés a force de trainer a tour de rôle d'une main puis de l'autre la vieille valise de carton bouilli marron ou j'avais la veille au soir entassé mes trésors. Ma veste du Dimanche en épais drap de laine marine pesait de plus en plus lourd et se raidissait sur mes frêles épaules de treize ans, complètement imbibée par la sueur qui ruisselait depuis des heures entre mes omoplates. Ma mère me trainait par la main depuis cinq heures du matin sur la route de Chartres, fuyant l'avancée des Boches sur Paris dans une cohue indescriptible de voitures, camions, vélos, landaus, hommes, femmes et enfant surchargés de meubles, matelas de lin rayé, valises distendues, ballots rebondis, paquets de papier brun grossièrement ficelés, pendules de cheminée aux aiguilles arrêtées, et cages a oiseaux ou piaillaient encore faiblement des canaris a demi morts de soif..."

  #2.  "Deux fois déja depuis notre départ de Paris a l'aube par la route de Chartres, les Stukas de la Luftwaffe avaient soudainement surgi des nuages, plongé dans un hurlement grandissant et assourdissant de sirène sur notre colonne affolée, et suivi en rase-mottes une courte ligne droite en nous arrosant de leurs mitrailleuses, nous propulsant tels des pantins terrifiés dans les haies et les fossés ou nous nous égaillions a la recherche d'un abri malheureusement illusoire. Nombreux sont ceux qui restèrent a plat ventre le nez dans la boue du fossé, alors que le filet d'eau boueuse se teintait lentement de rouge vif.
   Partout sur la chaussée éclatée, abandonnées en catastrophe, des voitures  en flammes vomissant une fumée noire, des carcasses de camions noircies et fumantes, ouvertes comme des boites de conserve, des cadavres déchiquetés, des mères hurlant leur détresse, et des enfants perdus en pleurs. Un âne blessé, empêtré dans les brancards d'une charrette renversée, brayait a coeur fendre. Les survivants s'enfuyaient droit devant eux sans rien voir voir, poussés par cette panique incontrôlable et aveugle qui oblitère toute pitié, toute humanité, toute miséricorde...
   Un peu plus loin, tout était bloqué."

  #3. "L'antique pont de pierres qui traversait la petite rivière depuis des siècles n'était plus qu'un amas de cailloux. Seul restait après le bombardement un petit panneau de guingois avec un nom a moitié effacé : Alène. Deux camions bloqués en travers de la route ne laissaient qu'un étroit passage. Les vieilles planches de chêne de leurs ridelles avaient été arrachées et jetées tant bien que mal en travers du cours d'eau en guise de pont, et il fallait faire la queue pour le traverser. 
      Juste devant nous, un vieillard décharné vêtu d'une salopette bleue toute rapetassée et coiffé d'une casquette plate a bouton s'engagea sur la passerelle improvisée en poussant péniblement une vieille brouette branlante surchargée de paquets et de sacs de jute, au sommet desquels était assis en équilibre précaire un petit garçon vêtu d'une barboteuse jaune sale qui pleurait en appelant sa mère. 
     Soudain surgit par derrière un garçon brun de mon âge poussant une "Hirondelle" toute neuve, portant un vieux sac a dos de cuir et un fusil de chasse sur l'épaule gauche. Il me bouscula et cria au vieil homme méchamment : "Dégage, pépère!". Surpris, celui ci sursauta, hésita un instant, et fit l'erreur de s'arrêter.  La brouette vacilla. Il tenta désespérément de reprendre son équilibre, mais la roue ferrée glissa, la brouette versa, et il tomba a l'eau dans un grand plouf avec son précieux chargement.  
    La matinée avait été éprouvante, et j'étais de mauvais poil...  La colère me saisit. A mon tour, je bousculai le petit salopard de toutes mes forces, et sautai a l'eau. J'étais bon nageur, ayant passé plusieurs fois les grandes vacances a la campagne près de Beynes, une quarantaine de kilomètres a l'Ouest de Paris, dans une petite ferme sise au bord d'un grand étang. La rivière n'était pas bien large, et en trois brasses, avant même qu'il ait eu le temps de boire la tasse, j'avais saisi le gamin par les bretelles et l'avais ramené sur la berge, hurlant de frayeur, mais indemne. Le vieillard s'était raccroché a la brouette renversée, et pagayant d'une main, se débrouilla pour me suivre. Je lui tendis la main pour le tirer sur la terre ferme près du petit garçon, qu'il saisit aussitôt et berça dans ses bras maigres en répétant plaintivement, les yeux morts: "S'il te plait mon petit, ne pleures plus, ne pleures plus, on va bientôt la retrouver, ta maman"... Leurs hardes dégoulinaient sur l'herbe foulée et odorante. Ma mère avait laissé tomber ses bagages au sol et lui frottait doucement le dos,  encore toute tourneboulée, ne sachant que faire...
    C'est alors que je m'aperçus qu'en bousculant le garçon a la bicyclette, je l'avais fait tomber a l'eau, et qu'il se débattait désespérément en criant: "A l'aide, je ne sais pas nager!". J'étais encore tellement furieux que ma première pensée fut: "Bon débarras, connard". Son sac a dos trop lourd l'entrainait vers le fond, et il buvait déja sérieusement le bouillon, dérivant avec le courant... Finalement, j'eu pitié, couru le long de la berge a son niveau, sautai de nouveau a l'eau, et nageai vers lui. Le temps que j'arrive, il avait déja disparu, mais je sentis le sac, l'attrapai par les courroies, et le tirai a la surface. Sa tête resurgit, les yeux fous de terreur. Il battait des bras, toussant, crachant, cherchant l'air. Dès qu'il me vit, il s'agrippa a mes épaules, et dans sa panique, me fit plonger a mon tour. Nous sombrâmes tous les deux."

Post 11: The First Page in English

   Let's take my story, and assume I write it in the first person. It starts with the two Parisian kids meeting on a country road about 20 miles South of Paris while fleeing the Germans on June 13, 1920.
I could start with: 
Chapter 1: 'L'Exode"
May 13, 1940 
  #1.  "I was in a foul mood, soaked in my own stinking sweat, my blistered feet and hands hurting as hell, and my arms feeling as if they had been stretched taking turns lugging my bulging brown boiled cardboard suitcase down the narrow country road, while clinging desperately to my mother, in an apocalyptic chaos of cars, trucks, carts, bicycles and humans, all loaded to the gills with everything from striped mattresses to cuckoo clocks and bird cages with half dead yellow canaries."

  Or I could go with:
    #2.  "Twice since we had fled Paris at dawn, German Stukas had come out of the clouds in a wild dive, frightening us with their loud siren wail, and flown just barely over our heads down a straight section of  road, unleashing the deadly staccato of their machine guns on the terrified trapped crowd scrambling for cover towards the hedges, or diving head first into the muddy drainage ditches in a futile attempt at salvation. Many would remain in that mud, face down, and the trickle of dirty brown water would slowly turn red. 
   Burning cars, still smoking blown up trucks, mangled dead bodies, sobbing mothers and hysterically crying lost children had been left behind in that visceral panic that overwhelmed most of us and made us run away as fast and as far as we possibly could, extinguishing all feelings of compassion and basic humanity.
  But just ahead, everything stopped. "

  Or instead:
   #3.  "Only a pile of rubble was left of the centuries old stone bridge that crossed the river Alène, the name on the crooked signpost that was all that remained up after the bombing. Two large abandoned trucks almost completely obstructed the road and left only a very narrow passage by the edge of the stream. Rough hewn weathered planks had been torn off the bed of one of the trucks and laid across the water as a makeshift bridge. A skinny old man just ahead of us, wearing tattered blue overalls and  a brown plaid cap,  was trying to get across pushing an unsteady antique wooden wheelbarrow overloaded with packages and burlap bags, on top of which a small boy in soiled yellow bloomers was sitting in tears, calling for his mother.
    Suddenly, a boy about my age carrying an old leather rucksack, a shotgun on his left shoulder and pushing a brand new "Hirondelle" came from behind, shoved me aside, and yelled at the old man to get out of his way. Startled, he shook and wavered, lost his balance, and fell into the river with his precious load.
    I saw red, shoved the bastard aside, and jumped into the river to rescue the boy. I was a good swimmer, having spent several summer vacations with my parents on a small farm with a big pond near Beynes, a small town about 30 miles East of Paris. I caught the screaming boy before he even sunk, and dragged him back to shore. The old man was hanging on to the floating overturned wheelbarrow and somehow paddled back to shore on his own. He grabbed the hand I was holding out, and I pulled him back on the bank near the boy, whom he embraced and hugged, saying over and over: "I am so sorry, please don't cry, we will find your mommy soon...". My mother had dropped her bags to the ground and was patting his back, still stunned by the quick turn of events, not knowing what to do.
   That's when I realized I had shoved the nasty kid back so hard he had fallen into the river too and was struggling to stay afloat, pulled under by his heavy backpack, yelling for help I was still so mad at him my first thought was "good riddance, reap what you sow, asshole", but he was totally panicked, swallowing water, drifting slowly downstream, yelling for help, and going under for good. I took pity on him, ran down the bank , jumped in again, and vigorously swam to him. By the time I reached him, only a waiving arm remained out of the water for me to latch onto. My other hand felt his bag underwater, grabbed the straps, and pulled up. His head came out gasping for air, eyes wild with primal fear, arms flailing. He grabbed me and pulled himself up, pushing me under water in the process, and we both sunk." 

  Obviously, I used more words in French to tell the same story. Why? Is it good or bad? I don't know.
   I will actually use all three paragraphs in the story, but in which order, and which is the best to start with?

Post10: The importance of the first sentence and the first page

    I don't know about you, but as a general rule, a good book grabs me right from the first page, often from the first sentence. But to this day, I can't tell exactly what it is that makes it happen... It has to be a direct path into the story, something that gets you  into it right away. It is often very simple and matter of fact. The choice of words counts, as they will set the tone. 

Post 9: French or English?

   That is a good question... Actually, the best way to answer it might be to write the first pages in both languages and see what I prefer. I believe I can write in both languages, but the fact of the matter is that they are very different languages, and that I will write them very differently, just as I speak them very differently. There is no such thing as literal translation, and crude words are much more acceptable in English. I don't use them nearly as much in French. English is in some ways a simpler language. For example, there seems to be more words in French, and there are many specific words in French for things that are expressed in colloquial English by two words, a basic word plus an adjective or adverb: a "red bird" is called a "cardinal"; a "small pond" is a "mare", a "large pond" is an "étang"; "going up" is "monter, "going down" is "descendre", "going forward" is "avancer", "going back" is "retourner", "going on" is "continuer", "going off" can be a bunch of different things, "back up" is "reculer"; "hair" can be "poil", "pelage", or "cheveux;  a "ball" can be "balle", "ballon", "bille", boulet", "bal"; "ice" can be "glace", "glaçon", "verglas"; "sweet" can be  "sucré", "doux", "gentil"; "soft" can be "mou" or "doux",  etc...)
   On the other hand, there are actually more words in English, as there are often two words for the same thing, a more common Anglo Saxon word, and a more sophisticated French word, and there are a lot of scientific and technical words that other languages have borrowed. As a Frenchman speaking fluent English, I feel sometimes at an advantage over the ordinary American because I know all the common English words, as well as all the common French words that have become fancy words in English... 
     The problem if I write in French is that nobody here will read me except may be Serges, and he will tear me up!

Post 8: A Growing Hodge Podge of Notes and Tidbits

 I will keep coming back to this post to add more notes .
     *Joseph Kessel joined the "Résistance", crossed to Spain and joined the French Forces in England in the aviation."Le Chant des Partisans" was actually composed by Anna Marly(Betoulinsky) in 1941 in Russian in honnor of the Bolshevicks, and the French words were written by Kessel and his nephew Maurice Druon at the White Swann Pub on May 30, 1943. It was whistled twice a day on the radio at the beginning of the BBC's broadcast "Honneur et Patrie".
     * There were lots of American black performers in Paris in the 20's and early 30's. After 1933, regulations favored French performers(only 10% of foreigners allowed).
    *Josephine Baker was a performer in the 20's and 30's, and a war resistant.
    *The Quintette du Hot Club de France was formed in 1934 by Django Reinhardt and Stephane Grappelly. They played at "La Grosse Pomme"in 1937. Django spent the war in Paris Grappely in England.

Post 7: Another Major Decision, How to tell the story?

   The other major decision is the way the story is told. The obvious simplest way is a plain linear chronological recounting of the facts.
  There is also the option to keep the first person and the basic story, but not necessarily stick to chronology, using digressions and flashbacks.
  Another more cinematic way, would be to start the story today, with the main character now an 86 year old man telling the story to his great grand child. That would allow the introduction of elements of modernness in the story(the grandchild's iPod, WW2 video shooting games, etc...), and introduce a totally different persona for the main character, no longer just a child, but an old man having lived all those years since the story happened, and being able to reflect on things and tell other stories of his long life after the war. This could add a lot of pages to the book.
   Yet another option would be to use multiple narrators, which would allow the retelling of some of the events with a totally different point of view, and the recounting of facts unknown from the other characters. That opens up a lot of interesting combinations and opportunities for psychological explorations.
   Then there is the possibility of using an outside narrator, which opens access to all kinds of things and information that the characters didn't do, witness nor know about. It would certainly allow an expansion of the historical context, and an opportunity to delve into the political and social life of the period, from Leon Blum and the rise of the "Front Populaire" to Pétain and the regime of Vichy.
    I am wondering, since after all this is only an experiment in writing and a learning exercise, whether to write the story first in the simplest linear fashion in the first person, and see later about eventually rewriting it differently...

Post 6: A major decision, who is telling the story?

   That is indeed the big issue to debate and be decided before any writing is done. In the Dream, I was the main character, so it seems natural that I should be the narrator, and write in the first person. It is easier, and does gives immediacy and truthfulness to the story. But that limits me to telling about what I actually do, see and hear(as well as some hearsay I suppose...). Digressions are very difficult, and I cannot delve deeply into the other characters personal stories.
   Having a separate outside narrator would allow the introduction of a lot of side stories not necessarily known to the main character, and make it easier to delve into the historical context, which is a subject I am particularly interested in: the rise of Leon Blum, the short lived Front Populaire, and it's very important legacy: female ministers (although women would only acquire the right to vote in 1944...), the 40-hour week, paid holidays for the workers, collective bargaining on wage claims and the nationalization of the arms industry.

Post 5: A Major Character: The Glider

     I wanted the glider that the kids build to be a very simple design, and also wanted a picture of one for the blog. While doing research for that title  image, I found a wonderful "model" for it in a German design from 1926 called the "Zogling Primary Glider". It was designed to be launched from a hillside with a bungee cord and had a 33 ft wingspan, and was originally completely made of wood, fabric and cables. No wheels, just a skid. Just what I needed!

   Copies of the Zogling were built in Great Britain as the Dagling and the Slingsby T3, in France as the Avia, in Italy as the LT30, and in the US as the Detroit G1 Gull and the Waco Primary Glider. 
   It is a very basic machine, and blueprints were available in the 30's:

       Digging a little deeper, I found that the Aeronautics Club of the University of Paris, the C.A.U.(Club Aeronautique Universitaire) had started fling an AVIA glider at a small airfield in Beynes, about 27 miles east of Paris in 1931. The family of my hero could well have spent summer vacations there, and the child have seen and learned about gliders in 1936-39.

   They often crashed or were damaged, and he could have seen one being rebuilt. We could even imagine that somebody built one there one summer in those years, and that the kid helped. The father could well have been interested too, and might even be the builder...

Post 4: The Characters

  ME IN THE DREAM, Joseph Frank(nicknamed Jo), 13 in 1940, good boy, good student, slightly undisciplined, dreamer,  occasional choir boy, voracious reader, interested mostly in books, girls, cars and airplanes. Lives with his parents and younger sister in Paris(in Boulogne Billancourt where his father has a small clinic. Spends his summer vacation at a farm house in Beynes, about 30 miles West of Paris, where he learns to swim well, and meets students from Paris flying a beat up AVIA glider.  Builds balsa wood AVIA models and flies them off the Eiffel tower on Sunday afternoons. 

  THE YOUNG THUG, Antoine Mattei (nicknamed Tony), 14  in 1940, bad boy, young thug and bully, bad student, skips school, friend of the local prostitutes, small time thief, etc... Lives with his parents and older sister in Paris (Saint Ouen). Had never set foot outside Paris.

  MY MOTHER, Sarah Frank, of Jewish Russian decent, catholic, big dark frizzy hair, green eyes, petite and thin, homemaker, good musician, teaches piano.

  MY FATHER, Erik Frank , Medical Doctor, studied in France where he met my mother in 1925, German, blond hair, blue eyes, tall and skinny, classical music lover, listens to 78RPM records of   Wilhelm Furtwangler directing the Berlin Philarmonic in Wagner. Went back to Germany at the beginning of the war to avoid internment and served as a surgeon.

  MY SISTER, Frieda Frank, school girl, dark hair, blue eyes, skinny and sickly, will die of tuberculosis. 

  THE FATHER OF THE YOUNG THUG, Mateo Mattei, from Corsica, night club owner("Le Pousse au Crime"? "The Blue Star"?) , small time gangster, drug dealer, pimp, but with a code of honor("coeur pur"), tough but good hearted, involved at the same time in the Black Market and in the "Résistance", shot by the Germans in 1943.

  THE MOTHER OF THE YOUNG THUG, Angela Mattei, runs a night club owned by her husband, alcoholic and drug addict(C et H), pimps her own daughter to German Officers.

  THE  SISTER OF THE YOUNG THUG, Serafina Mattei ( nicknamed Fina), "Danseuse et Chanteuse", entraineuse in her father's nightclub, occasional prostitute, involved in the "Résistance" collecting information from German Officers.

THE SHOT DOWN PILOT, French, nom de guerre Victor, an ace, flying missions for the British dropping supplies to the "Résistance", met Kessel in England.

THE GLIDER, a simplified AVIA, copy of the Gorling.
THE HEAD OF THE MAQUIS LOUIS, near Luzy, Morvan,  Lieutenant Armand
THE FARMER AND HIS WIFE, elderly Morvandiau couple
THE SAWMILL OWNER
THE MILLER

Post 3: "THE DREAM"

    Nourished for over a couple of months by this rich diet of adventure and masterful storytelling, I had a very exciting particularly vivid partially Lucid Dream the other night. As soon as I awoke, I rushed to the studio, grabbed a pen and a piece of paper, and threw down what I remembered of the dream as quickly as I could before it faded away. It was barely legible, and I proceeded right away to type it into the computer. As I transcribed my scribbles, I started to fill in some of the blanks. I don't know if actual parts of the dream came back to me, or whether I just made it up as I went, but I ended up with a very rough outline of a story, a title, and some additional material as well. Here it is(originally part English part French, I translated the French) : 

     The dream first takes place during "la débacle" in June 1940, on a small country road along a small river with small bridges made of wooden planks. I am a Parisian, very young(may be 14), a rather nice smart idealistic little guy, interested in girls, books (I have read the novel of Kessel l'Equipage), and airplanes . I have made balsa wood gliders and thrown them from the top of the Eiffel tower.  I am walking along with my mother carrying a brown cardboard suitcase tied with a string, and somehow get into an argument with another young guy from the suburbs of Paris, who is more or less a young thug(un mauvais garçon en herbe, graine de truand). The argument turns into a shoving match, and we fall into the water fighting. I am a good swimmer, so I somehow manage to get his head under water and hold him there until he almost starts drowning, and let him go. 
    He is coughing up water, but keeps fighting, so I push him back under water a couple of times till he nearly drowns. Then I pull him out and revive him. He is coughing up water and cussing.
   We somehow become friends and get back on the road together. We talk about our lives: his rough upbringing with an abusive drug dealer father and an alcoholic mother on C and H, his trashy sister, his "girl friends" in the brothels of Pigalle, my quiet life with my doctor father and musician mother, my studies, my passion for airplanes. 
    A German plane comes down the road shooting, and he saves me by grabbing me and jumping in the ditch. My mother is killed.
    We both get back to Paris under German occupation. His parents take me in. His father is a collaborator with the Nazis, and a black market dealer providing fine foods, women and selling morphine to an addicted German Gestapo Commander. His sister is a "dancer" in a night club(entraineuse, et plus).
    The dream then moves in space and time to 1943. The two friends have decided to join "la résistance"(the shadow army) in Morvan. They find a wounded English pilot shot down while parachuting guns and supplies to the Maquis Louis. He takes morphine.
     They decide to build a glider that will be loaded with explosives and crashed into the German ammunition dépôt in the valley below.  The nearby saw mill will supply the wood, the pilot's parachute will be used to cover the wings. The controls will be simplified to the extreme(ailes et queue articulés comme mon modèle réduit?). 
EXTRA IDEAS
   After taking quick written notes when I finally woke up, I started brainstorming ideas. I don't know whether they're from the actual dream or not.
   The child has a jewish mother and a German father, and has blond hair and blue eyes. He is not circumcised. His father was a doctor and went back to Germany to serve as such. Or the father is french and prisoner of war?
   The wounded pilot could be dying of gangrene and volunteer for a Kamikase mission piloting the glider. But he dies before the glider is built and one of the friends has to take his place without having ever flown a plane. He manages to jump off before the glider crashes into the munitions depot.
    The "maquisards"(freedom fighters) have no weapons for them. They are staying in an old farm. There is a grassy slope at the edge of the cliff for take off.
    The old saw mill on the river nearby supplies the wood. They make rabbit skin glue with the rabbits from the farm to glue the wood, starch glue with flour they steal from the old mill to glue the parachute fabric to the wings, hemp string for the controls.  They make powder with saltpeter from the walls of the cellar.                   
    The child has only one book with him that he reads every night:
"L'Equipage" de Kessel. The wounded pilot actually met Kessel once in England.        
   There is a radio set at the farm, and they listen to the BBC. One night, they hear the "Chant des Partisans" whistled at the beginning of the broadcast in 1943(composed by Ana Marly Betoulinsky), but do not know Kessel wrote the lyrics with his nephew Maurice Druon.
   Les Résistants représentaient seulement 1% des Francais…
   The father of the child was a doctor, socialist and partisan of Leon Blum and the Front Populaire in 1936.
   The two friends take off on the glider, point it towards the ammunition depot, but one of the two gets tangled up, cannot jump in time and dies(which one?). 

Post 2: My Latest Literary Obsession

   I read a few of Joseph Kessel's books when I was a teenager and liked them a lot. He was a larger than life figure that made me dream of a larger life. And what a life he had, full throttle full time...
   All through my years as a student, I belonged to various Ciné Clubs, which were very popular in France in the sixties. We would watch what would be referred to here now as "Art Movies" by the major Directors of the day ( Fellini, Antonioni, Bergman, Bunuel, Hitchcock, Bertolucci, Polansky, Godard, Resnais, etc...), and have a discussion after the viewing.
   In 1967,  Luis Bunuel made "Belle de Jour" , one of Kessel's most controversial novels from1928, into a famous movie of the same name (with Catherine Deneuve playing the main character). Kessel was by then about my age, and had just published what many consider his masterpiece: "Les Cavaliers", which was made into a movie in 1971: "The Horsemen"(with Omar Sharif and Jack Palance). 
   A few months ago, I happened onto a copy of the book while sorting through the thousands of books I brought back from France over the years to satisfy my lifelong habit of bedtime reading. Except during the "morphine summer" of 2012, I can hardly think of a night when I didn't read in bed for a few hours before going to sleep. Even if I go to bed late, I still have to read for a while...
Anyhow, I read "Les Cavaliers" one more time, and enjoyed it so much I decided to read every Kessel book I could get my hands on.
    I also decided I would bind them in leather, so I have been scouring eBay France for old 1920's to 1950's "in octavo" editions that can be taken apart and sewn into an old fashion binding( unlike our post 1960 modern books, the pages of which start falling off after two readings or two years, whichever comes first...!). Book binding is another old interest of mine I have discussed at length on my web site some years ago.
   I have been reading Kessel books one after the other since, and am still not tired of him. He was a journalist traveling the world and reporting for the best newspapers of the day, and wrote novels that were basically about the people he met, himself and his adventures through life and through the world. He lived with gusto, and wrote as he lived. A born storyteller, he uses no literary effects or artifice, none of those contrived writing styles that get on my nerves so bad sometimes. He just tells the story with simple beautiful words put together just right, in a very cinematic way. Sometimes it is a simple story, sometimes an incredible adventure, it is told with the same preciseness and the same passion. He grabs you, takes you there, and doesn't let you go. Some of the shorter books I read straight through in one night. Very few writers can hold me captive as he does. Not surprisingly, many more of his novels were made into movies: "Fortune Carrée", "La Passante du Sans Soucis", "L'Armée des Ombres", "Coup de Grace", "Bataillon du Ciel", "Le Lion", "l'Equipage", and he wrote a number of screenplays. Surprisingly, even though he was a Lithuanian Jew, only one of his books mentions "jewishness"("La Passante du sans Soucis").

Post 1: Lucid Dreaming

     I know I have great dreams all the time, but I rarely remember them. I know some dreams are recurring(flying among trees, levitating). Dreams were particularly vivid and crazy when I was on morphine after my bike crash. I sometimes in fact took them for reality, and reality got so distorted I spent days hallucinating, being another person living in another world... But that is a whole other story to tell in an other blog someday...
    Lately I have made a deliberate effort to do something about it. I have done research on Lucid Dreaming, and kept a pad by my bed side to take notes as quickly a possible when I wake up from a dream, with some mild success. Memories of dreams start fading the second you fully wake up, and fade so fast you have to take notes frantically to preserve whatever little you can before they are all gone. And then, although dreams make perfect sense when you are inside of them, when you do remember bits and pieces and take notes, they usually make no sense at all, or at least do not amount to a coherent story. That is sort of where Surrealism came from...
     For some time now also, I have had a desire to write. Something I have not tried my hand at yet I suppose, and a new challenge, another potential  adventure within my now limited physical capabilities... But I had not so far come up with a story I felt interesting enough to warrant even a modest attempt at literature...
    Because of that pinched nerve in the neck that has been sending unwanted and erratic phantom pain signals down my left arm, I now often have to sleep flat as a corpse on my back, rather than curl comfortably in the fetus position as I did most of my life. I hate just laying there waiting for slumber and it takes time to come, but I have noticed an interesting side effect. Because I sleep more lightly, dreams are more present and I am more conscious of dreaming. It is I believe a form of Lucid Dreaming. I will sometimes almost wake up, but somehow manage to willingly keep myself asleep enough so the dream keeps going. I can even sometimes make myself go back to it after a short waking stage, as long as I remain still and keep my eyes closed.