![]() Plenty of novelists also take risks with time and pacing. Plenty of novelists withhold information about their narrators, names included. Susan Stewart, author of The Ruins Lesson: Meaning and Material in Western Culture In this luminous picaresque, Giono gradually unveils the tensions between necessity and risk, work and grace, that stand at the heart of the novelist's vocation itself. ![]() Veering through a landscape of forests, villages, farmsteads, and mills, Giono's vagabond narrator at once yearns for a hearth and pushes on blindly, treacherously, to the horizon, drawing the reader under the spell of his continuous present tense. Paul Eprile has rendered Giono's Les Grands Chemins with all of the original's propulsive energy, and with attention to the diction, costumes, and mores of the immediate postwar period. Giono the writer is not interested in reality, regional or otherwise, until it becomes mythological. This virtual event is part of New York Review Books’ ongoing series with Brooklyn’s Community Bookstore. On November 11, 2021, Paul Eprile discussed The Open Road and Jean Giono's life and work with fellow Giono translator Bill Johnston and author Edmund White. As always in Jean Giono, the language is rich in natural imagery and as ruggedly idiomatic as it is lyrical. But it is ultimately an exploration of the tensions and boundaries between affection and commitment, and of the competing needs for solitude, independence, and human bonds. While The Open Road can be read as loosely strung entertainment, interspersed with caustic reflections, it can also be interpreted as a projection of the relationship of author, art, and audience. He himself is a curious combination of qualities-poetic, resentful, cynical, compassionate, flirtatious, and self-absorbed. Everything is told in the first person, present tense, by the vagabond narrator, who goes unnamed. He also picks up a problematic companion: a cardsharp and con man, whom he calls “the Artist.” The action moves from place to place, and episode to episode, in truly picaresque fashion. He picks up work along the way and spends the winter as the custodian of a walnut-oil mill. The south of France, 1950: A solitary vagabond walks through the villages, towns, valleys, and foothills of the region between northern Provence and the Alps. It does not store any personal data.October 2021 selection of the NYRB Classics Book Club The cookie is set by the GDPR Cookie Consent plugin and is used to store whether or not user has consented to the use of cookies. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Performance". ![]() This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookies is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Necessary". The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Other. The cookie is set by GDPR cookie consent to record the user consent for the cookies in the category "Functional". The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Analytics". These cookies ensure basic functionalities and security features of the website, anonymously. Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. ![]()
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