Page 209 "...in the hills of Brittany."

From page 209 of the book:  "...Their youth ended in 1939, when the seven were on a hike in the Hills of Brittany.   ...a jolt in the fault line, engendered by what no one could say, broke the sitting hill of sand and took Ebert's brother down with the ensuing collapse."  

and what made 1939 worse? A year later...

" ...he'd graduated in a Paris occupied by the Nazis."

Page 194 Addendum (Shanzenbach & Walter in the Cabro du Roi) Pertuis

L'avenue Jean-Moulin, Pertuis, France

The old clocktower, Pertuis



The Tower of St. Jacques, Pertuis



Church of St. Nicholas, Pertuis

"...Shanzenbach suggested that I have lunch with him at a palatial restaurant and botanical garden in Pertuis and discuss some business."  (p. 192)  "...Over discreet, mechanical sips from his glass the German gave me a verbal tour of the 14th-century St. Jacques Tower, the 13th-century clock tower, yet another castle, and finally the Church of St. Nicholas...." (p. 195)


Photos of Pertuis, 1-3, courtesy of filoer (www.flickr.com/photos/filoer/with/5387221829).
Photo 4, Church of St. Nicholas, courtesy of Communaute du Pays d'Aix.

Page 207 "...likened it to a book by Arnold Bennett called The Old Wives' Tale"

Clockwise from top left: A youngish Arnold Bennett; a cover for The Old Wives' Tale; an older Bennett; another cover for The Old Wives' Tale.

Arnold Bennett is a significant influence on my literary thought.  I read Margaret Drabble's biography of Bennett years ago and I highly recommend it, especially if you're a post-modern romantic like myself.  Bennett's novel "These Twain," which I read more than a decade ago, was great, and I'm looking forward to reading "Clayhanger."  I'm reading that trilogy out of order but, honestly I can manage it.  "Riceyman Steps" was a profound book for me back in 2004, I can't tell you.

The Old Wives' Tale, when I read it many years ago, was a new style for me to get used to; and it wasn't the same for his later novels.  However, the portions of the book dealing with the Siege of Paris were intense.  I think I had just recently read Henri Barbusse's "Under Fire", so the two together gave me a horrendous picture of the stupidity of the French military and the indescribable daily horrors of World War I, which I was to read more about vis-a-vis Martin Gilbert and John Keegan and others.

Hence my inclusion of the following images about the Siege of Paris during the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71:

Two French children killed during the Prussian bombardment of Paris.



A Paris street scene showing the sale of rats, because food was so scarce during the Siege.



French battery station.

Painting of a soup kitchen in a Paris neighborhood during the Siege. It was a common occurrence.

 




From page 207-208 of the book:  "...I thought about Sarah's day with Mme. Cendre and likened it to a book by Arnold Bennett called The Old Wives Tale: where Mme. Cendre could easily have been the character Sophia Baines, who leaves England and elopes to Paris at the horror of her parents.  She is deserted by her husband, buys a boarding house, and struggles to stay alive during the Franco-Prussian War."

Page 194 "...Shanzenbach and I arrived at the Cabro du Roi..."



Although this is not actually the Cabro du Roi (because I made up the restaurant),
it does have everything I was imagining for the scene in which Shanzenbach
seduces Walter.  The bottom left photo is one of many lovely neighborhoods
in Pertuis.



From page 194 of the book:  "...When Shanzenbach and I arrived at the entrance to the Cabro du Roi, or in English, 'the King's Goat,' the chauffeur promptly ejected himself from the car and helped the old man out."

Page 183 "...walked to Fort Hamilton, to Thomas's office."




Images  of the Verrazano Narrows, the Verrazano Narrows Bridge, and Fort Hamilton, Brooklyn.

Clockwise from top left:  Aerial view of the Narrows; Ft. Hamilton Parkway; Verrazano Bridge; memorial site in Ft. Hamilton; entrance to the Ft. Hamilton Officers' Club;  Ft. Hamilton neighborhood; Main Gate to Fort Hamilton U.S. Army base; soldiers onboard the USS Maurice Rose (which, at the time the character Thomas was serving at Ft. Hamilton, was the USS Admiral Rodman); the battery at Ft. Hamilton.



Fort Hamilton as it is today:

From page 183 of the book:  "...I walked over to Union Square and took the F train to Brooklyn, got off at the end of the line, and walked to Fort Hamilton, to Thomas's office.  If I were to keep walking straight instead of turning toward Fort Hamilton, I would end up looking out at The Narrows, the strip of water connecting Upper New York Bay with Lower New York Bay, and across which spanned the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge."

Page 177 "...one more episode would have pushed him over the Reichenbach Falls"

Clockwise from top left: Sherlock Holmes and Moriarty battle at the top of the Falls;
The Reichenbach Falls, Switzerland; Sherlock Holmes climbing the Falls;
another view of the Falls.

From page 177 of the book: "...But because Owen had gone a little over the bend, the stories of his life which had been told in cold blood, had reached a point where if he didn't get sick from the telling, one more episode would have pushed him over the “Reichenbach Falls.” One more thing was going to drive him completely insane. Like Sherlock Holmes, it was going to be the final problem. And like Holmes, whose instinct was to survive and whose death over the Reichenbach Falls was a mere fiction, our instinct nevertheless was to survive. Owen's elemental impulse was to survive."

Page 176 "...reading Cobban's History of Modern France..."

Mid-19th century engraving of the storming of the Bastille

 Alfred Cobban (1901–1968)
Professor of French History, University College, London

From page 176 of the book: "...I was alone in the back yard, sitting between two kerosine lamps, reading Cobban's History of Modern France and fantasizing about the strange, romantic attachment I had to my mother's country."

Page 176 "...Aeneas' visit to hell in order to speak with his father"

Various images of the Aeneid

Aeneas visits the underworld

From page 176 of the book: "...As if to put a final topping on the discussion, relative to its meaning for fathers and sons, Ebert quoted from Virgil's Aeneid, a passage which spoke of Aeneas' visit to hell in order to speak with his father, Anchises. In translation, it said that the road to hell is easy, that the gate stands open night and day, but "to trace one's steps and return to the upper air, that is the toil, that the difficulty."

Page 174 "...our dinner table had an evolution that was nothing slight of spectacular"

A few images of Provence and its food.

From page 171 of the book:  "...In exchange for her volunteerism, Mme. Cendre was teaching her the French language and Provencal cooking.  The result of which was our dinner table had an evolution that was nothing slight of spectacular."


Some interesting links regarding Provencal cooking:

Life in Provence http://lifeinprovence.com/
Herbs and Spices of Provence www.beyond.fr/food/herbs.html

http://www.foodreference.com/html/art-provence.html

http://www.epiculinary.com/fra_valmouriane.html

Page 173 "...Camus once described the New York rain as a rain of exile"

From page 173 of the book:  "...Camus once described the New York rain as a rain of exile; and walking along Eighth Avenue, I'd felt not the encumbrance of the solitary patriot but indeed sensed the labyrinthine mess of our present course in life."


[an excerpt from Camus' essay]:
"New york rain is a rain of exile.  Abundant, viscous and dense, it pours down tirelessly between the high cubes of cement into avenues plunged suddenly into the darkness of a well: ...you suddenly feel caught in a trap....  And the very smell of New York rain tracks you down in the heart of the most harmonious and familiar towns, to remind you there is at least one place of deliverance in the world, where you, together with a whole people and for as long as you want, can finally lose yourself forever."

Page 173 "a book called Mr. Weston's Good Wine"

Clockwise from top left: Theodore Powys (early); Theodore Powys (later);
various covers for "Mr. Weston's GoodWine"

From page 173 of the book:  "...Owen nonetheless had pulled out of his intantry coat a pocket-size, cloth edition of a book called Mr. Weston's Good Wine, in which Death, disguised as a well-dressed, English wine purveyor, visits a small town and brings with him a special kind of wine.  What a title to be reading in the freezing dark of this train, I thought, slouched on the seat next to him."



[Mr. Weston's Good Wine (by T.F. Powys, a younger brother of John Cowper Powys) is the unusual tale of the struggle between the forces of good and evil in a small Dorset village. Its action is limited to one winter's evening when Time stands still and the bitter-sweet gift of awareness falls upon a dozen memorable characters. During the book a child knocked down by his car is miraculously brought back to life; the sign Mr Weston's Good Wine lights up the sky; and the villagers soon discover that the wine he sells is no ordinary wine. (Text copyright by The Powys Society)]


[an excerpt from Mr. Weston's Good Wine]

"If you let Tamar run about these hills in the way she does," Miss Pettifer told Mr Grobe, "who can say what might not happen! I wouldn't be in the least surprised to hear that the girl had fallen in love with a hay-trusser--or a badger. Or she might set up housekeeping with an old raven in a tree top. If a girl is not taught to play hockey, she might be found in a wood talking to a serpent."

Page 242 "...the Germans refer to his condition as Zerrissenheit..."

Zerrissenheit. Clockwise from top left: "Study of a Head,"
1952, painting by Franics Bacon; still from the movie "Of Men and Gods";
sculpture depicting "Lost Faith"; photo of Richard Burton as Hamlet, 1953.

The New Cassell's German Dictionary defines Zerrissenheit as raggedness, want of union, inner strife. It comes from the verb zerreissen, to tear up, lacerate, dismember.



From page 242 of the book:  "...The Germans refer to his condition as Zerrissenheit, a state of being torn apart. It was thus that Owen hadn't been able to satisfy the demands of his own individual world with those dire necessities of the real, objective world. Zerrissenheit ran through his veins."

Page 172 "...this time to the 53rd Street station..."

From page 172 of the book: "..A week had passed, and the end of a night had found Owen, Army, and me making our way along Third Avenue once again, this time to the 53rd Street station."

Page 168 "...He thought of Gordes not because of the things he saw..."

From page 168 of the book: "...He thought of Gordes not because of the things he saw that morning but because of the art of seeing and placing."

Page 162 "...blinded by the miniature plastic statue of Christ..."

A statue of Jesus baring the Sacred Heart.

From page 162 of the book:  "...He'd knelt before her, blinded by the miniature plastic statue of Christ above her bed's headboard. It was a robed Christ, standing with one foot protruding from His gown, baring the sacred heart."

Photos courtesy of Deborah Zipoli.

This particular statue, made of plaster, is actually a few inches above a foot high.  My father picked it up unpainted in 1961, shortly after my folks moved us into their first own house, on Home Avenue, in Meriden, Conn.  My father had a little workshop downstairs in the cellar where he would make wooden figures of characters from the Flintstones or Mickey Mouse, out of some kind of pressed board (using a jigsaw).  He painted this statue and it's been in Mom & Dad's household ever since.

I could think of no better image from my past than this statue as a balance to what Joseph Sarjevo sees upon entering the hospital room.  Whose heart is not sacred?