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Savannah (Paperback)
Jean Rolin; Translated by Max Welshinger
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R317
Discovery Miles 3 170
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Ships in 12 - 17 working days
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Savannah is a starkly tender and intimate recollection by French
writer and journalist Jean Rolin of his friendship with British
Vogue photographer Kate Barry. Both humorous and insightful, it in
many ways serves as the epitaph to her life, which ended in a fall
from her fourth-floor apartment in France. Barry was a very close
friend of Jean Rolin, and together the two of them made a trip to
the United States to retrace the footsteps of Flannery O'Connor, a
Southern writer for whom Kate was deeply impassioned. In 2014,
after Barry's death, Jean Rolin wanted to revisit this trip and
reconstruct the memory of their journey in her absence. As he
recreates his roadtrip over the course of this book, which ends,
fittingly, in Savannah, Rolin evokes landscapes, characters, and a
uniquely Southern atmosphere that underscores the relentless
passage of time. Juxtaposed against the themes of loss and
mortality, Jean Rolin evokes with light touches the figure of Kate.
His incredible descriptive talent shines through in vivid
descriptions of the South; he approaches his travel memoir with the
accuracy of a documentary and the vibrant writing of a poet, and
his memories of Kate are preserved beneath the motif of sucking the
marrow out of life and keeping death at bay.
In this nominally true story of an epic, transcontinental road
trip, Jean Rolin travels to Africa from darkest France,
accompanying a battered Audi to its new life as a taxi to be
operated by the family of a Congolese security guard. The ghost of
Joseph Conrad haunts Rolin's journey, as do memories of his
expatriate youth in Kinshasa in the early 1960s -- but no less
present are W. G. Sebald and Marcel Proust, who are the guiding
lights for Rolin's sensual and digressive attack upon history: his
own as well as the world's. By turns comic, lyrical, gruesome, and
humane, "The Explosion of the Radiator Hose" is a one-of-a-kind
travelogue, and no less an exploration of what it means to be human
in a life of perpetual exile and migration.
When Britney Spears begins receiving threats from an alleged
Islamic sect, the French secret service sends one of its own to Los
Angeles to investigate. At first blush, the agent in question
doesn't seem to be the most qualified: he smokes, doesn't drive,
isn't interested at all in the entertainment industry, and suffers
from a nervous condition. However, he does everything in his power
to get himself up to date quickly: he infiltrates the world of the
paparazzi, frequents Sunset Boulevard and Rodeo Drive, and becomes
an expert on Britney Spears and on the city's public transportation
system. Using the famous singer and a comical detective as a
starting point, the author offers his own satirical take on famous
people who are known more for their excesses and private lives than
for their work. "Cuando Britney Spears recibe amenazas de un
supuesto grupusculo islamista, los servicios secretos franceses
envian a Los Angeles a uno de sus hombres para investigar el
asunto. Asi a primera vista, el agente en cuestion no parece el mas
adecuado: fuma, no conduce, ignora todo sobre la farandula y sufre
de una condicion de los nervios. Sin embargo, hace todo lo posible
para ponerse al dia rapidamente: se introduce en el mundo de los
paparazzi, frecuenta Sunset Boulevard y Rodeo Drive y se convierte
en un especialista en Britney Spears y en la red de transporte
publico de la ciudad. A partir de la figura de la popular cantante
y de un comico detective, el autor ofrece su particular vision
satirica de unos famosos que son mas conocidos por sus excesos o
sus vidas privadas que por su trabajo."
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