by Jamie Robertson
Cafe de la Paix, antique postcard
Portraits of Paris: A Traveler’s Literary Companion (Adam’s Media, 2010) is a compilation of novel excerpts set in Paris depicting a character’s thoughts about and experiences as an outsider in Paris. The character may be a new-comer to the city, or a quick passer-by tourist. The unique anthology is set to be released in the travel essay section of bookstores in August, 2010, and available online. (Join our mailing list to be the first to know about the book release and signings in your area.)
Portraits of Paris is a beautifully designed book in linen-overboard and filled with antique postcards of Paris carefully selected to relate in some fashion to the story it precedes. Not only is the book a great read, but it will make a fantastic souvenir or gift.
“America is my country,
Paris is my hometown.”
~Gertrude Stein
“If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life, it stays with you, for Paris is a moveable feast.”
~Ernest Hemingway
“You start at a café table, because everything in Paris starts at a café table.”
~Irwin Shaw
by Jamie Robertson
Author, Jamie Cox Robertson
Jamie Cox Robertson holds a Master’s Degree in Literature. She has designed and taught literary seminars for the OASIS Institute, a nation-wide adult education organization, and taught literature and writing at Webster University, the Chautauqua Institute, and the Cambridge Adult Education Center in Cambridge, Massachusetts. She currently teaches English at Suffolk University in Boston–part-time. In addition, Robertson was the founding editor of Southern Literary Review, www.southernlitreview.com, an on-line source for quality southern fiction, and she has published fiction and non-fiction in literary and commercial magazines.
Robertson lives with her husband and daughter in Boston, Massachusetts.
by Jamie Robertson
Eiffel Tower, antique postcard
Many places in Paris have literary significance…
In M.F.K. Fisher’s collection of short stories she writes of a memorable meeting between her and her father. They road the Gare De Lyon, named after one of its most popular stops, Lyon. The railway is one of the six large railway termini in Paris. Built for the Exposition Universelle of 1900, the station also houses a beautiful ornately decorated restaurant where Fisher most likely ate on several occasions, called the Le Train Bleu.
Saint Germain-des-Prés is named for the church that it surrounds—the
church of the former Abbey of Saint-Germain-des-Prés. After the
the Second World War, the Boulevard came alive with writers, intellectuals, and artists who
frequented the cafés.
Cafe Les Deux Magots was once frequented by Hemingway, Sartre and Picasso.
The cafe has the good fortune of sitting in the heart of the chic Saint-
Germain-des-pres-Prés and its popularity is attributed to its alluring history
and unbeatable location however more than its cuisine.
The Church of Saint-Germain-des-Prés is referred to often in literature. Victor Hugo lived near the church and led the effort to restore the building to its former glory. After such extensive restoration the church is arguably among the most beautiful in the Paris.
Well-known for being the street of Hemingway’s first Paris apartment, Rue Moffertard is one of Paris’ oldest and most historically interesting streets. It has been a major roadway since Roman times. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the street was called Grande Rue du Faubourg St-Marcel meaning “street of the suburb Saint-Marceau.” Even now, many shops have ancient painted signs. Practically every building along this street has a story worth knowing.
Portraits of Paris: A Traveler’s Literary Companion is filled with information on the history and literary significance of place in Paris.
Buy your copy today at http: www.adamsmedia.com
by Jamie Robertson
Cours de Vincennes, antique postcard
They all wrote about Paris as outsiders…
“Often in France I have used a rather ruthless gauge of a restaurant’s worth, no matter what its class or reputation, by ordering a portion of the ‘pate maison,’ and as is often the case in other fields, I have found some of the best in the most unpretentious eating places.” ~M.F.K. Fisher
“Paris the cold, Paris the drizzly, Paris the rainy, Paris the damnable. More than a hundred years ago somebody asked Quin, ‘Did you ever see such a winter in all your life before?’ ‘Yes,’ said he, ‘Last summer.’ I judge he spent his summer in Paris. Let us change the proverb; Let us say all bad Americans go to Paris when they die. No, let us not say it for this adds a new horror to Immortality.” ~ Mark Twain in a letter to Lucius Fairchild, 28 April 1880.
“If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life it stays with you, for Paris is a moveable feast.” ` Ernest Hemingway
“The best of America drifts to Paris. The American in Paris is the best American. It is more fun for an intelligent person to live in an intelligent country. France has the only two things toward which we drift as we grow older — intelligence and good manners.” F. Scott Fitzgerald
by Jamie Robertson
Pendant la Belle Saison, Paris, France
“You start at a café table, because everything in Paris starts at a café table.” With these words, Irwin Shaw captured the Paris he knew. But Hemingway, Colette, and Maugham had their own distinct observations and peculiar opinions of this great city, which they captured in carefully chosen words and evocative imagery. Portraits of Paris: The Traveler’s Literary Companion is an anthology that brings together the world’s greatest writers and the stories they set one of the world’s most captivating and inspiring cities.
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