Overview

Village Voices is a collective memoir that brings to life the authors, publishers, and friends who frequented one of the most famous English-Language bookshops in Paris - the Village Voice bookshop. Founded by Odile Hellier in 1982, Village Voice was a hub for artists, writers, and anglophone literary life for over three decades. Told through the voices of artists that were reckoning, preserving, challenging, and archiving the time and languages that they lived in, this carefully curated collection, organized thematically, encapsulates some of the most important reflections and debates of 20th century literary history. From Allen Ginsberg to Toni Morrison, Michael Ondaatje, Raymond Carver, and Amy Tan, Hellier preserves the decades-long vibrant readings and dialogues that took place in this tiny bookshop on the Rue Princesse. Hellier mines decades of archival footage to present anecdotes and insight from the spontaneous and informal exchanges that occurred among generations of literary and cultural icons. These artists present a multidimensional landscape of Parisian literary history in dialogue with American and global literary conversation. The book is a life-long curatorial project, a conversation across time, and a historical archive, created by a bookseller seeking to preserve the history of her much-loved bookshop.

Full Product Details

Author:   Odile Hellier ,  C. K. Williams
Publisher:   Seven Stories Press,U.S.
Imprint:   Seven Stories Press,U.S.
Weight:   0.369kg
ISBN:  

9781644213797

ISBN 10:   1644213796
Pages:   320
Publication Date:   24 September 2024
Audience:   General/trade ,  General
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   In Print  
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Table of Contents

Foreword   Prologue   Introduction   PART ONE - “Paris, Paris, Above All, Paris” 1 - It Takes a Village: A Time and a Place   2 - The Lost and Found Generation: Paris Was a Woman Noël Riley Fitch, Shari Benstock, Joan Schenkar   3 - The Third Wave of American Expatriates and the Small Presses John Strand, Kathy Acker, Edward Limono, Ricardo Mosner, Carol Pratl, David Applefield, Jim Haynes 4 - Black American in Paris: Updating the Myth “Remember Me”: The Legacies of James Baldwin and Richard Wright Gordon Heath, Julia Wright, Ernest Gaine, James Emanuel, Jake Lamar   5 - Emergence of a Literary Force: To Each Writer Their Own Paris Diane Johnson, Steven Barclay, David Downie, David Sedaris, Edmund White The Cultural Divide Diane Johnson, Adam Gopnik, Edmund White   6 - From Home to Paris and Elsewhere: Irish Writers at the Village Voice Bookshop Tributes to James Joyce and Samuel Beckett Zeljko Ivanjek, John Calder, Anne Atik Living in Words to Tell the World Harry Chifton and Deirdre Madden   7 - Varieties of Exile: Two Canadian Parisian Nancy Huston, Mavis Gallant   8 - Dark Times: An Anglo-American Focus on the Vichy Regime Raymond Federman, Carmen Callil, Alan Riding, Alice Kaplan on Louis Guilloux Intermezzo: One Decade Ends, A New One Begin   PART TWO - A Literary Journey Across the United States   9 - An Era of Hope Leading to Disillusionment Julian Beck, Judith Malina, Allen Ginsberg, Jayne Cortez, Andrei Voznesensky, Kazuko Shiraishi, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Hubert Selby Jr., William H. Gass, William Gaddis, Don DeLillo   10 - Bright Lights and Twilights Jay McInerney, Jerome Charyn, Richard Price, James Ellroy   11 - Highways and Byways Barry Gifford, David Payne, John Biguenet, Terry Tempest Williams   12 - Spectacular Sceneries, Ordinary Lives: American Writers Reel in the French Imagination Jim Harrison, Raymond Carver, Jonathan Raban, Richard Ford, Russell Banks   13 - Four Remarkable Women Breaking from Convention Hazel Rowley, Grace Paley, Adrienne Rich, Susan Sontag   14 - Native American Renaissance: Storytelling as Repossession James Welch, Louise Erdrich, Sherman Alexie, David Treuer   15 - “Me and you . . . we need some kind of tomorrow.” Open Wounds in African American Literature Jake Lamar, John Edgar Wideman, Paule Marshall, Barbara Chase-Riboud, Jayne Cortez, Sapphire, Toni Morrison   16 - Shadow Lands: The Here and There in American Stories of Exile André Aciman, Amy Tan, Jamaica Kincaid, Dinaw Mengestu, Junot Díaz, Azar Nafisi   17 - Memories of Silenced Lives The Holocaust: Naming the Inexpressible Gwen Edelman, Gitta Sereny, Cynthia Ozick, Art Spiegelman, Nicole Krauss, Daniel Mendelsohn Intermezzo: The Twenty-First Century is Upon Us Adam Zagajewski, Jacques Derrida   PART THREE - Rounding Out Shakespeare’s Stage: Commonwealth Literatures   18 - Expanding Horizons: British Literature in Pursuit of Renewal David Lodge, Antonia Byatt   19 - In the Footsteps of Salman Rushdie: Life Stories from the Indian Subcontinent Hanif Kureishi, Abha Dawesar, Tarun Tejpal   20 - Reshaping South Africa: Moving Forward and Out of Apartheid Denis Hirson, Breyten Breytenbach, Mandla Langa, Damon Galgut   21 - Australian Narratives: As Wide and Varied as the Country Peter Carey, Tim Winton, Julia Leigh   22 - Multilayered English Canadian Voices: Lingering Memories of Europe Margaret Atwood, Jane Urquhart, Michael Ondaatje   PART FOUR - Closing Ceremonies   23 - The Center Holds: Our Circle of Poets Stephen Spender, Harry Mathews, Marilyn Hacker, Margo Berdeshevsky, Marie Ponsot, Kathleen Spivack, C.K. Williams, Ellen Hinsey, William S. Merwin   Epilogue   Acknowledgments   Notes   Index

Reviews

"""Village Voices is a completely unique and cherishable chronicle of a time and a place which—if you were lucky enough to be there—gracefully invited you into the wider world's literary imagination. Odile Hellier is incomparable.""  —Richard Ford ""In the early 1980s, as if seeking a fresh mission in life, a well travelled French woman, Odile Hellier, decided to open an English-language bookstore in Paris. To her considerable surprise, almost overnight the Village Voice became a Left Bank shrine to Anglo-American thought and letters. In her aptly named memoir, she recalls the extraordinary parade of visiting and ex-pat writers for whom a reading at the bookstore became something of a rite of passage. Her decision to close shop in 2012 is mourned to this day, but in these pages, she vividly recaptures the brilliance, humor and camaraderie that made the cramped space on the rue Princesse so special. Indeed, in Village Voices, Odile Hellier gives scores of writers a fresh chance to be celebrated."" —Alan Riding, author of And the Show Went On: Cultural Life in Nazi-Occupied Paris."

"""Village Voices is a completely unique and cherishable chronicle of a time and a place which—if you were lucky enough to be there—gracefully invited you into the wider world's literary imagination. Odile Hellier is incomparable.""  —Richard Ford"

Author Information

Odile Hellier was born in the South of France during World War II and raised in the two different regions of Lorraine, near the German border still haunted by past wars, and Brittany fronting the Atlantic Ocean. After advanced studies in Russian language and literature she taught in high school for two years, she decided to broaden her scope and work in world organizations. During the fall of 1968, Hellier enrolled in a professional school in Paris that trained translators and interpreters in international relations. Hellier is the founder and owner of the Village Voice Bookshop—a hub of Anglophone literary life and culture that operated in the heart of Saint-Germain-des-Prés in Paris for over thirty years. This book is Hellier’s archival project and personal memoir. Charles Kenneth ""C. K."" Williams (introduction) was an American poet, critic and translator. Williams won many poetry awards. Flesh and Blood won the National Book Critics Circle Award in 1987. Repair won the 2000 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, was a National Book Award finalist and won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize.

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