Writers on Writers
This week, we talk with Paris expert Thirza Vallois, whose elegant series Around and About Paris has just been updated and issued as an e-book!
Thirza has lived in Paris most of her life and holds the agrégation* and several other post-graduate degrees from the Sorbonne. In addition to Around and About Paris, she is the author of Romantic Paris and Aveyron, A Bridge to French Arcadia as well as the Paris entry to the Encarta Encyclopaedia. Thirza lectures on Paris and France worldwide and has appeared on the BBC, PBS, the Travel Channel, the French Cultural Channel, Discovery, and CNN, the French Cultural Channel in France, BBC Radio 4 and NPR among others.
When meeting for a coffee in Paris, I am always delighted to let Thirza pick the place.
(*agrégation: an exam so difficult I wrote a whole book about it)
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Laurel Zuckerman : How did you get into writing?
LZ: Who or what were your biggest influences?
TV: I have no idea. But for a start my mother who was my lifeline. She taught me how to look and observe, how to travel, how to understand the world and those that populate it. It so happens that we also shared the same tastes, in fashion, food, literature, music, landscape, hiking, the English countryside, architecture, and on and on. By her bedside when she died was a copy of Madame de Sévigné's letters, Colette, Virginia Woolfe's Mrs Dalloway and Charles Lamb's Shakespeare, all of which are now on one of the shelves in my own bedroom.
LZ: How do you work?
Writing Around and About Paris, however, was complicated beyond the imaginable, and looking back I honestly don't know how I did it. I myself am overwhelmed by the quantity of information that I wove into a work that I wanted easy on the reader, and enjoyable. It was like working on a horrendously complicated jigsaw puzzle (in pre-computer days), with thousands of pieces of paper piled up according to their subject matter, literally all over one of my rooms, on both floor and furniture. This went on for years, as I went on beating the yokes of my eggs. The final polish and delivery of each arrondissement was a laborious delivery, even up until that final point I worked simutaneously on all the arrondissements simultaneously.
Romantic Paris, on the other hand, was a book I did structure ahead of time, because several of its chapters are listings and that didn't require much thought on my part. It was easy.
LZ: What is the concept of Around and About Paris?
TV: The title, which took me seven years to find, speaks for itself. It may seem simplistic, like a column/rubrique in an inflight magazine, but as a matter of fact it points exactly to the content of the books. The books are about Paris and whilst walking the reader around Paris, though all its arrondissement, so as to grasp the story better. Obviously, if you can't, you can read it from the comfort of your armchair and use your imagination. Which you are encouraged to do in any case, because as you walk in the present it's for you to "see" the past (sometimes the future...) which I try to help you bring alive. It's as if Paris becomes a theatre, a stage or a film, with lots of flashbacks woven into the story line, allowing the reader to travel back and forth in time, Paris as it was, Paris as it is, Paris as it is dreamed, all participating in the narrative.
LZ: Can travel writing be a form of history?
In short, I would say that travel writing emcompasses history among other components. Travel writing is about life, and history is an important part of it, but not the whole of it.
LZ: Tell us about your lectures.
LZ: Who are your favorite writers and travel writers?
LZ: What for you is the impact of new technologies on travel writing and reading? (e-book, apps...)
I therefore never resisted having an ebook version of my hard-copy books, quite the contrary. Especially because of the nature of my books, which, ideally, those who own them and are physically in Paris, can use to walk and explore the city. They don't have to fill their suitcase with a set of three books, they have them on their little device. How convenient! For the publisher too the ebook is a godsend. An ebook is less expensive to produce and one cap scrap a lot of the overheads. No commissions to distributors for example. The only losers, for the time being, unless they manage to adjust, which they can, but it's not easy, are the bookshops. Some are riding the waves, but others are folding up.
LZ: How is Paris developing today? Which changes are successful? Unsuccessful?
TV: I am not happy about the most recent changes.
For one, the lifting of the ban on the height of buildings is very worrying for the future. As is the inconsistent policy on environmental issues. Some monuments and gardens are shamefully neglected and the city is not as clean as it was a few years ago. It's also less safe. Suburban trains don't run as efficiently as they used to. I certainly see a deterioration in the last few years. Mass tourism isn't helping, including domestic tourism. It's increasingly invasive, cluttering chunks of the city that used to be quiet havens until recently, all of this with the blessing of the authorities. I have actually written an article about it for France Today magazine and one can find it on the internet. It's in their April 2011 issue.
I am particularly concerned about the increasing automobile congestion (and pollution) from July 2012 on, once they are banned from the lower quai of the Left Bank and the installment of sets of traffic lights on the lower quai of the Right Bank. It's very nice to want to replace them with bicyles, but they'll still have to make their way through the city. As things stand today, the suburban commuters' trains cannot absorb their users.
LZ: What is your next project?
Unfortunately, I can't leave a job unfinished and I still have two three years of work to revise and update volume 2 and 3 of Around and About Paris. It's an overwhelming undertaking, much longer and more tiring than I had anticipated when I embarked on the revision of volume 1. That alone took me a year and the half. So I don't dare to start writing something else (although I want to), because I feel obliged to go ahead with this. That being said, I write articles on a regular basis, which allows me to keep moving forward.
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Thirza Vallois is an expert on all things Parisian. She has lived in Paris most of her life and holds the agrégation and several other post-graduate degrees from the Sorbonne. She is the author of the Around and About Paris series, Romantic Paris and Aveyron, A Bridge to French Arcadia. She has also written the Paris entry to the Encarta Encyclopaedia. Thirza Vallois lectures on Paris and France worldwide and contributes to the international press, television and radio, notably BBC, PBS, the Travel Channel, the French Cultural Channel, Discovery, and CNN, the French Cultural Channel in France, BBC Radio 4 and NPR among others. She is also the author of the award-winning Three Perfect Days in Paris story, published in United Airlines' Hemispheres and aired on their international international flights and cable television worldwide.
Laurel Zuckerman is the author of Sorbonne Confidential and the Editor of Paris Writers News. An HEC graduate and long-time resident of France, Laurel caused an uproar here with her wickedly humorous account of her attempt to pass an elite exam for English teachers. Her essays and interviews have appeared in Hommes et Commerces, Cahiers Pédagogiques, The Paris Times, Le Point, Le Monde, Le Monde de l’Education, The Guardian, The Times, as well as on France 24, TF1,RFI, and the BBC.
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