Macaque's Hungry Mind
Just another WordPress.com weblogA year in the Merde!
When i first started reading the book I didn’t expect much to be honest. But after a few pages I found it hilarious. The book narrates Paul West’s adventures, an English man who moved to Paris for work. The author, Stephen Clarke describes the French way of life in a very ironic way. You might think that mocking French people in a book might be a bit outrageous, but the truth is that all my French friends who read it, loved it.
Not only did this book make me laugh, but it also gave me some very useful tips about visiting Paris. Since I live in England, it was quite easy for me to understand some of the character’s reaction to the French culture, and I also understood why in the end, Paul West decides to move to Paris, and not go back to England. I guess after a period when all you get is merde, you get used to it so much that you can’t live without it anymore.
I strongly recommend the book, mostly because although it is very funny, its sarcasm is not malicious. My favourite parts might have been the descriptions of how hard it is to make French people learn English. Here’s a nice quote that would describe the process:
“OK, Philippe, what would you say to the waiter if you had no cutlery?”
“Er, excuse me, I want a knife and a fuck.”
Divisadero
By Michael Ondaatje, author of the more famous ” The English Patient”
While “The English Patient” ( book and movie) remains one of my favourite pieces of art ever created, I was confident enough the style of the same author would reflect itself in his new book, “Divisadero”.
Like the title, the book is divided in two parts, retracing the lives of 2 sisters separated by a mistake during their adolescence and the live of a French writer, whose biography one of the 2 sisters is investigating in her later years. Divised from the very title, the book remains divised till the very end. The thin thread connecting the two parts ( one of the female characters) is not at all inforced so that in the end, the book itself is starting to break into pieces. The conclusion left me wondering : why talk about all these characters, their experiences, open up so many threads (!?) and then just leave loose ends all around you?
The book won in 2007, the year it appeared, several literary prizes, so it couldn’t just have been “literature de gare” , which is certainly not. But I don’t know if this time Ondaatje’s style brought me butterflies and made me think of wishes left unspoken, as with the “English Patient”. Can someone explain me what made sense in this novel so much as to give its authors several prizes? I sincerely hope this is not a case of ” when the name is worth than the book, because the name is so important”.
In the end maybe the book is just reflecting my state of mind. If someone is divided, they start to think everything else breaks, divides.
One quotation from the book is however, worth ten times more the rest of the babble in the book. It goes like this :
“Who comes from afar can lie more easily”
and the picture too. Coffee to the side.
Music genres, or better said: one thing leads to another
I was browsing my iTunes library a couple of days ago and something caught my eye. The diversity of music genres i have in there. That made me curious and had an attempt to do some research to find out what makes them different. So, i went on ‘holy’ wikipedia, but realized my goal was rather impossible to achieve. There are hundreds if not thousands of music genres. If i were to give examples of new discoveries i would say: 4×4 garage, beatbox, bio-music, clicks n cuts, elevator music? 
This happening taught me a lesson, no matter how much you think you know about something, in the end you will be disappointed to find out you have no idea what is actually going on out there, in the wide world.
Now, my research was not completely useless though. I found a very interesting video, and then after listening to the song for a while i found it quite captivating. I read a bit about this guy called Dub Fx, who is a street performer and travels mainly in Europe. I must admit that, although i don’t normally listen to this kind of music i loved it, and watched almost all videos i could find on youtube. If you’re wondering about the music genre…it’s mainly beatbox, but it’s quite experimental, and dubstep would be another good guess.
I will post the first video i saw, the one that made me look for more:
Adelaide Vroshevski
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