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Business Insider
5 days ago
- Business Insider
I began traveling solo after my 20-year marriage suddenly ended. These are my 5 favorite places I've visited alone.
I began solo traveling after my 20-year marriage unexpectedly ended. I've now seen 21 countries. Some of my favorite solo trips have been to New York City, where it's hard to feel lonely. I've also really enjoyed my solo travels to places like Luang Prabang, Paris, and Budapest. My 20-year marriage imploded over dinner on an ordinary Friday night. I hadn't seen it coming. When the dust settled, I knew I wanted to travel, but I'd never done it alone. So, I began with familiar destinations, expanding into more challenging locales as my travel muscle grew. Now, I've been to 21 countries alone and tackling the world on my own terms has become my favorite way to travel. Here are some of the best places I've visited as a solo traveler and why I enjoyed them so much. Many of my first and finest trips have been to New York City. Most of my first forays into solo travel were local, and I am fortunate to live just an hour outside New York City. NYC can be great for solo travel because its bustle encourages anonymity — it's hard to feel alone in a city of millions. For some weekend trips, I'd buy concert tickets to see my favorite artist, Billy Joel, who recently completed a decadelong residency at Madison Square Garden. I'd take the train on a Friday afternoon, see the show, and check into a nearby hotel. On Saturday morning, I'd treat myself to brunch and walk the High Line, stopping at Chelsea Market or the Village to window shop and sip artisanal coffee. Since the city is densely packed with shops and restaurants, switching up my trips was easy. And, by immersing myself in one neighborhood at a time, the huge metropolis felt like a series of small towns to explore. These weekends in NYC taught me that I was my own best company. In Paris, I explored my own interests and enjoyed the local arts scene. I'd visited Paris twice before my solo trip, first with my husband and later with my daughter. Arriving alone, though, the French city felt brand new. I felt so inspired by the local art scene — there really is something for everyone, from architecture to live performances. I used this trip as an opportunity to satisfy my own curiosity and spent the week walking with self-guided audio tours. It was thrilling. My favorite tour explored the haunts of the 1920s "Lost Generation" of writers and painters. I was captivated by Sylvia Beach's Shakespeare and Company, the cafés frequented by literary legends like Hemingway and Fitzgerald, and Gertrude Stein's apartment salon, but I'd never had the opportunity to tour the sites because my husband and daughter weren't interested. This time, I did. Although I was solo, indulging in my individual passions and enjoying such beautiful art made me feel less alone. My trip to Budapest was a mix of spontaneity and pre-booked plans. My first New Year's Eve apart from my daughter, I welcomed the new year with a fresh city — I flew to Budapest. I'd made some reservations in advance, like a tour of the imposing Hungarian Parliament Building and an evening cruise on the Danube. I even booked a ticket to see the operetta "Die Fledermaus," in Hungarian, at the opera house. I didn't speak Hungarian, but watching elegant opera patrons swirling about in gowns and furs felt like an adventure. Here, it was also easy to sprinkle spontaneity into my trip — an impromptu nighttime photography tour and a local lunch of paprikash and cream cake at a restaurant recommended by an Uber driver. In many ways, Budapest's walkability made foreign solo travel less logistically overwhelming for me. The Buda and Pest sides of the city are joined by grand bridges with walkways, making it easy to cross on foot. Although trams or taxis were readily available, I could count on my feet instead of trying to navigate car rentals or public transit. Plus, walking affords deeper exploration in a new city. My trip to Antigua, Guatemala, was a nice mix of solo adventures and group trips. In February, I try to escape the chilly wintery weather at home by visiting someplace warm. One of my favorite picks so far has been Antigua. Although the flight from the New York area was only about four hours, the Gautamalan town felt a world away from home. Framed by might volcanoes and filled with cobblestones and low, pastel-hued buildings, it felt lost in time in the best way. In Antigua, I wandered through Cathedral ruins, marveling at the blue sky pouring through gaping windows. I toured a museum filled with ancient pottery, sampled local craft beer at Antigua Brewing Company, and shopped for jade. I also booked day trips with small groups that took me to Lake Atitlan's villages and Chichicastenango, one of the largest markets in Central America. All in all, my four-day trip was a perfect mix of solo time in town and excursions with groups outside of it. I appreciated how many group trips and tours were available in the area, which are great for solo travelers. When I go back, I'm going to join a group to hike a volcano. I loved mixing spontaneity with planned experiences in Luang Prabang, Laos. After a tour through Laos, I returned to spend more time in its northern city, Luang Prabang. I really appreciated how the quiet city seemed to encourage solitude in the company of others. My riverside hotel offered complimentary bike rentals and a sunset Mekong River cruise, and I took advantage of both. The views were incredible. During the trip, I rose before sunrise to give alms, providing rice to orange-clad monks of all ages. Together in silence, I didn't feel alone. At one point, while walking back to my hotel, I passed an English language school recruiting volunteers and spent the morning helping a young man practice English for an upcoming interview. In the afternoon, I hiked up Mount Phou Si, which was laden with Buddha statues of all sizes and colors. All in all, I liked that my trip was filled with planned cultural activities and wonderful spontaneous opportunities.
Telegraph
06-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Telegraph
So you want to be a writer? Here's some (polite) advice from the best
The persistent allure of Shakespeare and Company, Paris's most mythologised bookshop, has long been its ability to function both as a kind of temple and as a performance space. Shakespeare and Co is associated with both the history of modernism and the Beats: the original shop, founded in 1919 by Sylvia Beach, was the site of the publication of Ulysses, and when George Whitman opened a shop of the same name, at a different location nearby, it became a place of pilgrimage for the likes of Allen Ginsberg, Henry Miller and Anaïs Nin. Now, under the stewardship of Whitman's daughter, also Sylvia – and certainly in this collection of interviews, edited by the novelist Adam Biles – the shop continues to attract plenty of famous authors and names, who are regularly hosted to do public talks. And talk they most certainly do. The Shakespeare and Company Book of Interviews offers 20 conversations with writers who have appeared at the shop over the last decade or so. The names of the novelists, short story writers and non-fiction authors are mostly Anglophone and Anglo-American – George Saunders, Percival Everett, Rachel Cusk, Geoff Dyer are just some – with a few francophone and international presences (Annie Ernaux, Meena Kandasamy) thrown in to interrupt the inexorable drift towards the Anglosphere. There's a brief introduction by Whitman and a foreword from Biles, the bookshop's literary director and all-round in-house interlocutor. Otherwise, what we're left with is a loose transcript of exchanges – by turns illuminating, meandering, sharp, glib and ruminative – about books, ideas and the writing life. As a document of the current literary moment, it's perhaps uneven, but also rather revealing. The format is simple. Each chapter reproduces a recorded interview from one of the shop's live events – which is also typically released as a podcast – lightly edited and mercifully short. It's a winning approach. The unguarded setting – a small Parisian bookshop, a live audience, a fellow writer asking questions – often coaxes from the guests a nice, informal exchange of ideas. Writers who can often seem rather verbose and stage-managed – George Saunders, say, or Karl Ove Knausgaard – come across here as lucid and personable. One of the things that the book demonstrates most clearly is that the idea of the 'writer' has become rather diffuse. Save the venue, no unifying theme or thread really binds the interviews together: we get theoretical physicist Carlo Rovelli, talking about his book The Order of Time, for example, alongside Reni Eddo-Lodge on Why I'm No Longer Talking to White People About Race. These days, novelists are also often simultaneously essayists, memoirists, activists and cultural critics. Olivia Laing, for example, reflecting on her book about the curses and blessings of urban life and solitude, The Lonely City, glides effortlessly from discussing art to sex to psychiatry in little more than 10 pages of transcript. Like many of the authors, Laing is intellectually supple, charismatic and finely attuned to the needs of the audience. These reflections on writing are various, and often fascinating: Marlon James, for example, reveals that after a long day's work he tends to crash and burn 'and cry about my miserable life'; George Saunders talks about his life as an 'aspiring Buddhist', and Leïla Slimani reflects on the challenges of writing about the psychology of children. At its best, the book presents writers trying to think aloud rather than simply performing thought. Percival Everett is a case in point: a writer who resists the very format of the interview itself. Wry, dry and reluctant to indulge in interpretation or self-revelation, he dispatches many of Biles's questions about his Booker-shortlisted novel James with an easy shrug. Asked about his hopes for his work, he replies, 'Most of the time I just hope that when I'm driving down the freeway the other driver stays on his side of the road.' This refusal is pointed. In a literary culture where authors are often expected to expound upon their work and sum it up into neat little paraphrases, Everett's resistance is a demonstration of integrity. As such, the collection's tone varies throughout. Some writers approach the interview as a site of intellectual play – Cusk does so brilliantly – while others treat it as a promotional stop over. Colson Whitehead 's chat, for instance, is extraordinarily smooth, with him reciting the origin story of The Underground Railroad in the same press-friendly cadences one suspects he may have used elsewhere. The conversation with Claire-Louise Bennett – the author of Checkout 19 – by contrast, is a brisk, personal and lively exchange, offering more insight per page than most: she's at once frank, funny and revealing. The idea of 'Paris' as an exclusive home-from-home for the literary elite hovers politely in the background throughout the book. It's rarely discussed, but you can sense the effect the city exerts on the writers, with its subtle invitation to cosmopolitanism and a certain café-theoretic fluency. And even more noticeably – for better or worse – Shakespeare and Company now presents itself not so much as a bohemian curiosity of that city but as a high-end cultural export: a kind of unofficial literary embassy for English-language publishing in France, complete with its own tote bags. It's notable that few of the writers engage seriously with French literature or culture – save Nobel Prize-winner and memoirist Annie Ernaux, of course, whose conversation, translated by Alice Heathwood, is one of the strongest in the collection. Compared to the other writers, Ernaux is trenchant and unsentimental. She reminds us how rare it is to hear a writer speak directly, without stylised modesty or career-consciousness, about class, gender and politics. But Ernaux is the exception. Most of the writers here speak in the rather careful language of contemporary publishing, which means that the interviews can tend towards the predictable: 'This was a book where I wanted more than anything else that the book that's in my head comes on the page'; 'I'm a big believer that when I write, I show up to work'; 'my process is very intuitive and very iterative'; 'The voice gives me absolutely everything.' This is no fault of Biles, who is a genial host rather than a probing interlocutor: he draws writers out but seldom challenges them. The effect is that one finishes the book both entirely satisfied and yet curiously uninformed: this is what literary conversation sounds like when everyone is being terribly well-behaved. Ultimately, this is both the book's great strength and its weakness. As a time-capsule of early 21st-century literary decorum, it's essential: all of the authors here are smart, likeable, articulate, politically aware, vaguely progressive and professionally successful. But it's also perhaps symptomatic of a literary climate that privileges affability over aesthetic risk. You won't find here the combative energy of, say, a 1960s or 1970s Paris Review interview with Robert Lowell, Marianne Moore or William Gaddis. That kind of personality – prickly, unreconciled, unreconstructed – is either unwelcome or extinct. This is because literary culture has changed, just as the bookshop has changed: Shakespeare and Company today is no longer the domain of exiles or provocateurs but of visiting authors on European tours, filmed, streamed, and politely applauded. The authors are engaged in reiterating a kind of contract between writer and reader: trust me, I've thought about this; I'll try not to bore you; we're in this together; and, fundamentally, everything is fine. As a performance, this is both pleasing and reassuring. As an insight into the messy, irrational, perverse work of writing, it's incomplete. If there's one thing missing here, then, it's dissent. Not rudeness or incivility as such – who wants any more of that, in a world of endless online hot-takes, take-downs and click-bait? – but a simple willingness to say what might be even slightly unpalatable or unresolved. This book, for all its charm and clarity, rarely risks that. Then again, perhaps its most eloquent testimony is unintended: that today, even in the heart of literary Paris, the truly novel idea is the one we don't yet quite know how to speak aloud. ★★★☆☆
The Advertiser
21-06-2025
- Entertainment
- The Advertiser
Who doesn't love an Austen-tacious rom-com with a modern twist?
Jane Austen Wrecked My Life M, 98 minutes 3 Stars Once again, one of England's best and most popular novelists has a thing or two to answer for. Here we have another romantic comedy for the screen that was inspired by the wonderful books of Jane Austen about village life set in the south of England two centuries ago. It is a charmer. Set in the literary milieu in Paris, it is no surprise to hear bookseller Agathe (Camille Rutherford) tell a customer at Shakespeare and Company that Sense and Sensibility is her favourite Jane Austen read. And to confide that her favourite heroine is Anne Elliot in Persuasion. The fabled English-language bookshop in Paris that has featured in films by Woody Allen and Richard Linklater and more takes another bow. Agathe adores the company of characters in books, but life outside of work for this thirtysomething isn't scintillating. She quite fancies her good friend Felix (Pablo Pauly), but hasn't slept with anyone in two years and struggles with imposter syndrome as she tries her hand at writing fiction. Felix, she says, is a "breadcrumber". Well, if I'm leading women on, he replies, you're reclusive. Not into digital, not into likes on social media. Just not born into the right century. Touché! British-French actress Rutherford is a natural for her role as Agathe. She and Pauly, like most of the actors in this charming comedy of manners set on both sides of the English Channel, are bi-lingual. English suits Agathe's writing style and she wins a residency at the Jane Austen estate. She will spend two weeks deep in the English countryside, working alongside a small group of other writers who have also been selected for assistance with their development. One the day she departs, the Channel crossing isn't especially choppy, but as you might expect, Agathe gets seasick anyway. When her lift at the other end, Oliver (Charlie Anson) shows up in his vintage sports car, she cannot hold it any longer. Anyway, he has unbearable attitude, and he declares his celebrated great-great-great-great aunt overrated. Then his car breaks down and they have to complete their journey in sullen silence, with a lift in an apple cart. Although she's a sophisticated, cultivated Left Bank Parisian, Agathe clearly belongs to the tradition of clumsy and awkward female romantic leads, like Rene Zellweger of the first Bridget Jones film, famously inspired by the works of Jane Austen, and a hugely popular series. Of course, the wider the gulf between the romantic couple, the more fun it is. Agathe thinks Oliver is insufferable and arrogant, while he lets her know he finds her underwhelming. Of course, they will despise each other at the start. Think 10 Things I Hate About You. And so continues the never-ending tit-for-tat between the French and the English. No one besides the English themselves are better at sending themselves up, and the same can be said of the French. For both countries, farce is a national sport. Filmed in France, this charming frothy rom-com is the work of French writer-director, Laura Piani. It's a delicious concoction, a contribution to a genre that we barely see on the cinema screen these days, and hope will one day return. A film like Materialists, a rom-com for these digital times that was released last week, is unusual at the cinema these days. And Notting Hill was a very long time ago. Jane Austen died young and wrote anonymously during her lifetime. Yet her six novels were hugely influential and have had a life of their own on screen. You have to wonder what she would have thought of the many films and series made in her name. As a writer fed up with the gothic and exaggerated romanticism in popular literature in her time, she would have liked the humour mixed with realism, even if it couldn't match her incisive, comic insight into the absurdities of ordinary daily life. There is a touching moment at the end of Jane Austen Wrecked My Life that has a serious bit of advice for the wary and the uncertain, when a well-known American documentary filmmaker appears in a cameo, reading a poem about letting life in. It hints at a little more than froth and farce and is a good note to end on. Jane Austen Wrecked My Life M, 98 minutes 3 Stars Once again, one of England's best and most popular novelists has a thing or two to answer for. Here we have another romantic comedy for the screen that was inspired by the wonderful books of Jane Austen about village life set in the south of England two centuries ago. It is a charmer. Set in the literary milieu in Paris, it is no surprise to hear bookseller Agathe (Camille Rutherford) tell a customer at Shakespeare and Company that Sense and Sensibility is her favourite Jane Austen read. And to confide that her favourite heroine is Anne Elliot in Persuasion. The fabled English-language bookshop in Paris that has featured in films by Woody Allen and Richard Linklater and more takes another bow. Agathe adores the company of characters in books, but life outside of work for this thirtysomething isn't scintillating. She quite fancies her good friend Felix (Pablo Pauly), but hasn't slept with anyone in two years and struggles with imposter syndrome as she tries her hand at writing fiction. Felix, she says, is a "breadcrumber". Well, if I'm leading women on, he replies, you're reclusive. Not into digital, not into likes on social media. Just not born into the right century. Touché! British-French actress Rutherford is a natural for her role as Agathe. She and Pauly, like most of the actors in this charming comedy of manners set on both sides of the English Channel, are bi-lingual. English suits Agathe's writing style and she wins a residency at the Jane Austen estate. She will spend two weeks deep in the English countryside, working alongside a small group of other writers who have also been selected for assistance with their development. One the day she departs, the Channel crossing isn't especially choppy, but as you might expect, Agathe gets seasick anyway. When her lift at the other end, Oliver (Charlie Anson) shows up in his vintage sports car, she cannot hold it any longer. Anyway, he has unbearable attitude, and he declares his celebrated great-great-great-great aunt overrated. Then his car breaks down and they have to complete their journey in sullen silence, with a lift in an apple cart. Although she's a sophisticated, cultivated Left Bank Parisian, Agathe clearly belongs to the tradition of clumsy and awkward female romantic leads, like Rene Zellweger of the first Bridget Jones film, famously inspired by the works of Jane Austen, and a hugely popular series. Of course, the wider the gulf between the romantic couple, the more fun it is. Agathe thinks Oliver is insufferable and arrogant, while he lets her know he finds her underwhelming. Of course, they will despise each other at the start. Think 10 Things I Hate About You. And so continues the never-ending tit-for-tat between the French and the English. No one besides the English themselves are better at sending themselves up, and the same can be said of the French. For both countries, farce is a national sport. Filmed in France, this charming frothy rom-com is the work of French writer-director, Laura Piani. It's a delicious concoction, a contribution to a genre that we barely see on the cinema screen these days, and hope will one day return. A film like Materialists, a rom-com for these digital times that was released last week, is unusual at the cinema these days. And Notting Hill was a very long time ago. Jane Austen died young and wrote anonymously during her lifetime. Yet her six novels were hugely influential and have had a life of their own on screen. You have to wonder what she would have thought of the many films and series made in her name. As a writer fed up with the gothic and exaggerated romanticism in popular literature in her time, she would have liked the humour mixed with realism, even if it couldn't match her incisive, comic insight into the absurdities of ordinary daily life. There is a touching moment at the end of Jane Austen Wrecked My Life that has a serious bit of advice for the wary and the uncertain, when a well-known American documentary filmmaker appears in a cameo, reading a poem about letting life in. It hints at a little more than froth and farce and is a good note to end on. Jane Austen Wrecked My Life M, 98 minutes 3 Stars Once again, one of England's best and most popular novelists has a thing or two to answer for. Here we have another romantic comedy for the screen that was inspired by the wonderful books of Jane Austen about village life set in the south of England two centuries ago. It is a charmer. Set in the literary milieu in Paris, it is no surprise to hear bookseller Agathe (Camille Rutherford) tell a customer at Shakespeare and Company that Sense and Sensibility is her favourite Jane Austen read. And to confide that her favourite heroine is Anne Elliot in Persuasion. The fabled English-language bookshop in Paris that has featured in films by Woody Allen and Richard Linklater and more takes another bow. Agathe adores the company of characters in books, but life outside of work for this thirtysomething isn't scintillating. She quite fancies her good friend Felix (Pablo Pauly), but hasn't slept with anyone in two years and struggles with imposter syndrome as she tries her hand at writing fiction. Felix, she says, is a "breadcrumber". Well, if I'm leading women on, he replies, you're reclusive. Not into digital, not into likes on social media. Just not born into the right century. Touché! British-French actress Rutherford is a natural for her role as Agathe. She and Pauly, like most of the actors in this charming comedy of manners set on both sides of the English Channel, are bi-lingual. English suits Agathe's writing style and she wins a residency at the Jane Austen estate. She will spend two weeks deep in the English countryside, working alongside a small group of other writers who have also been selected for assistance with their development. One the day she departs, the Channel crossing isn't especially choppy, but as you might expect, Agathe gets seasick anyway. When her lift at the other end, Oliver (Charlie Anson) shows up in his vintage sports car, she cannot hold it any longer. Anyway, he has unbearable attitude, and he declares his celebrated great-great-great-great aunt overrated. Then his car breaks down and they have to complete their journey in sullen silence, with a lift in an apple cart. Although she's a sophisticated, cultivated Left Bank Parisian, Agathe clearly belongs to the tradition of clumsy and awkward female romantic leads, like Rene Zellweger of the first Bridget Jones film, famously inspired by the works of Jane Austen, and a hugely popular series. Of course, the wider the gulf between the romantic couple, the more fun it is. Agathe thinks Oliver is insufferable and arrogant, while he lets her know he finds her underwhelming. Of course, they will despise each other at the start. Think 10 Things I Hate About You. And so continues the never-ending tit-for-tat between the French and the English. No one besides the English themselves are better at sending themselves up, and the same can be said of the French. For both countries, farce is a national sport. Filmed in France, this charming frothy rom-com is the work of French writer-director, Laura Piani. It's a delicious concoction, a contribution to a genre that we barely see on the cinema screen these days, and hope will one day return. A film like Materialists, a rom-com for these digital times that was released last week, is unusual at the cinema these days. And Notting Hill was a very long time ago. Jane Austen died young and wrote anonymously during her lifetime. Yet her six novels were hugely influential and have had a life of their own on screen. You have to wonder what she would have thought of the many films and series made in her name. As a writer fed up with the gothic and exaggerated romanticism in popular literature in her time, she would have liked the humour mixed with realism, even if it couldn't match her incisive, comic insight into the absurdities of ordinary daily life. There is a touching moment at the end of Jane Austen Wrecked My Life that has a serious bit of advice for the wary and the uncertain, when a well-known American documentary filmmaker appears in a cameo, reading a poem about letting life in. It hints at a little more than froth and farce and is a good note to end on. Jane Austen Wrecked My Life M, 98 minutes 3 Stars Once again, one of England's best and most popular novelists has a thing or two to answer for. Here we have another romantic comedy for the screen that was inspired by the wonderful books of Jane Austen about village life set in the south of England two centuries ago. It is a charmer. Set in the literary milieu in Paris, it is no surprise to hear bookseller Agathe (Camille Rutherford) tell a customer at Shakespeare and Company that Sense and Sensibility is her favourite Jane Austen read. And to confide that her favourite heroine is Anne Elliot in Persuasion. The fabled English-language bookshop in Paris that has featured in films by Woody Allen and Richard Linklater and more takes another bow. Agathe adores the company of characters in books, but life outside of work for this thirtysomething isn't scintillating. She quite fancies her good friend Felix (Pablo Pauly), but hasn't slept with anyone in two years and struggles with imposter syndrome as she tries her hand at writing fiction. Felix, she says, is a "breadcrumber". Well, if I'm leading women on, he replies, you're reclusive. Not into digital, not into likes on social media. Just not born into the right century. Touché! British-French actress Rutherford is a natural for her role as Agathe. She and Pauly, like most of the actors in this charming comedy of manners set on both sides of the English Channel, are bi-lingual. English suits Agathe's writing style and she wins a residency at the Jane Austen estate. She will spend two weeks deep in the English countryside, working alongside a small group of other writers who have also been selected for assistance with their development. One the day she departs, the Channel crossing isn't especially choppy, but as you might expect, Agathe gets seasick anyway. When her lift at the other end, Oliver (Charlie Anson) shows up in his vintage sports car, she cannot hold it any longer. Anyway, he has unbearable attitude, and he declares his celebrated great-great-great-great aunt overrated. Then his car breaks down and they have to complete their journey in sullen silence, with a lift in an apple cart. Although she's a sophisticated, cultivated Left Bank Parisian, Agathe clearly belongs to the tradition of clumsy and awkward female romantic leads, like Rene Zellweger of the first Bridget Jones film, famously inspired by the works of Jane Austen, and a hugely popular series. Of course, the wider the gulf between the romantic couple, the more fun it is. Agathe thinks Oliver is insufferable and arrogant, while he lets her know he finds her underwhelming. Of course, they will despise each other at the start. Think 10 Things I Hate About You. And so continues the never-ending tit-for-tat between the French and the English. No one besides the English themselves are better at sending themselves up, and the same can be said of the French. For both countries, farce is a national sport. Filmed in France, this charming frothy rom-com is the work of French writer-director, Laura Piani. It's a delicious concoction, a contribution to a genre that we barely see on the cinema screen these days, and hope will one day return. A film like Materialists, a rom-com for these digital times that was released last week, is unusual at the cinema these days. And Notting Hill was a very long time ago. Jane Austen died young and wrote anonymously during her lifetime. Yet her six novels were hugely influential and have had a life of their own on screen. You have to wonder what she would have thought of the many films and series made in her name. As a writer fed up with the gothic and exaggerated romanticism in popular literature in her time, she would have liked the humour mixed with realism, even if it couldn't match her incisive, comic insight into the absurdities of ordinary daily life. There is a touching moment at the end of Jane Austen Wrecked My Life that has a serious bit of advice for the wary and the uncertain, when a well-known American documentary filmmaker appears in a cameo, reading a poem about letting life in. It hints at a little more than froth and farce and is a good note to end on.
Hindustan Times
30-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Hindustan Times
Trapped between two wars: The art of the Lost Generation
Sometime in the early 1920s, Gertrude Stein took her ancient Ford Model T from her home in Paris's Rue de Fleurus to a local mechanic. The car had been having starting trouble, and the young mechanic assigned to it was making heavy weather of it. Eventually, Stein deemed his efforts unsatisfactory and complained to his boss, who berated the boy, saying: 'You are all a generation perdue.' When Ernest Hemingway, a friend, next visited her home, she applied it to him and others of his generation. 'All of you young people who served in the war. You are a lost generation,' she said. Hemingway, who understood the value of phrases like that, used it as an epigraph for his first novel, The Sun Also Rises (1926), which follows the lives of a group of American and British expatriates in Paris in the mid-1920s, rootless people wounded physically and emotionally by the Great War, looking for, and not always finding, an anchor. The expatriates in Paris at the time, incidentally, made up a sort of who's who of the cultural icons of the first half of the 20th century. The poet Ezra Pound moved to Paris in 1921. Writer Ford Madox Ford in 1922. Novelist John Dos Passos in 1919. James Joyce came to Paris intending a two-day layover en route to London, and ended up staying until France fell to the Germans in World War 2. Sylvia Beach, the daughter of American missionaries, moved to Paris in 1917, and set up Shakespeare and Company, one of the world's most famous bookshops. F Scott Fitzgerald and his wife Zelda Fitzgerald visited in 1921 and '24. (A year after that second visit, he would release his best-known work, set in this era, but in New York: The Great Gatsby. It is 100 years old this year.) Back to Paris, in the wake of the Great War, this was a city where people caught fish in the Seine for dinner, and toilets with aluminium containers were still emptied into cesspools that were cleared by horse-drawn wagons. But it was also the home of Picasso, Modigliani, Chagall and, on occasion, Salvador Dali. It was the city of Sergei Diaghilev's Ballets Russes, of Coco Chanel and the singer Josephine Baker. It was a world of people who had been in the war young, were trying to build their own anchors — through art and sculpture and dance, stories and fashion and architecture — and didn't yet know another war was coming. *** The rootlessness was not restricted to Paris. In England, in 1922, TE Lawrence, better known as Lawrence of Arabia, dissatisfied with life as a civil servant, applied to the Royal Air Force under the name TE Ross and was initially rejected, before people like Winston Churchill recommended he be accepted. The poet Robert Graves suffered so badly from shell shock that even the smell of flowers reminded him of the gas warfare attacks he had suffered as a soldier. Siegfried Sassoon, awarded the Military Cross, one of the war's highest decorations, became a poet and a conscientious objector. Wilfred Owen, generally considered one of the great poets of the war, was killed a week before its end, aged 25. What passing-bells for these who die as cattle? / Only the monstrous anger of the guns. / Only the stuttering rifles' rapid rattle / Can patter out their hasty orisons. / No mockeries for them; no prayers nor bells, / Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs, — / The shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells; / And bugles calling for them from sad shires… he wrote, in Anthem for Doomed Youth (1917). *** This was also the beginning of a new world for the Western woman. First, with the men off in the battlefields, they took up jobs in factories. Many lost their menfolk and breadwinners; the lucky among them received war-widow pensions, but others struggled. More women were forced to seek permanent employment. This, directly and indirectly, contributed to the movement for women's suffrage, and the right to vote was finally extended to them. Back to Stein's phrase, 'Lost Generation' soon began to be used beyond its original context of her inner circle of artists, poets and writers who flocked to Paris in the 1920s. It became the tag for anyone born between 1883 and 1900. Franz Kafka (1883-1924) would fit the bill, even though he never fought in the war, having been found medically unfit. The Trial (1925) and The Castle (1926), his best-known novels, deal with the sense of despair, alienation and fruitless search for meaning that would come to define the young adults of this age. But what about Hugh Lofting of Doctor Dolittle fame, or PG Wodehouse? Well, there never has been just one kind of art. This is a period that saw the rise, for instance, of the crime novel, with people essentially binge-reading the work of great British pulp-fiction writers such as Sax Rohmer (a former soldier and creator of the Chinese criminal mastermind Fu Manchu); Hermann McNeile aka Sapper of the Bulldog Drummond adventures (who was still serving when he began to write these tales, and would inspire authors such as Ian Fleming and Alistair MacLean); Dornford Yates, who alternated been funny stories of upper-class Englishmen dealing with declining fortunes, and hard-edged spy thrillers, with characters that moved between genres. It wasn't just the men. Three of the four Queens of Crime who dominated the Golden Age of Mystery: Agatha Christie and Dorothy L Sayers in England, and Ngaio Marsh in New Zealand, were from this cohort. (The fourth, Margery Allingham, was born in 1904.) Christie served as a nurse with the Red Cross during World War 1, which left her with a vast knowledge of poisons (and a penchant for murderous nurses). Sayers, credited with popularising the statement 'It pays to advertise', also wrote the original advertising jingle for Guinness. Marsh toured as a stage actress during the war and would use her knowledge of stagecraft to great effect in her Roderick Alleyn books. *** Across the Atlantic, other Lost Generation authors were redefining the crime novel. Dashiell Hammett, an ambulance driver in the war, would define the 'hard-boiled' detective novel; a genre launched by Carroll John Daly's Three Gun Terry (1923). Raymond Chandler (1888-1959) would take up Hammett's mantle with gritty, hard edged crime thrillers such as The Big Sleep and Farewell, My Lovely. The Lost Generation changed children's literature as well. The Australian-British Pamela Lyndon Travers created Mary Poppins in 1934. Antoine de Saint-Exupery's The Little Prince (1943) remains one of the bestselling books of all time. The Englishwoman Richmal Crompton created that irrepressible schoolboy William Brown in 1922. Air Force pilot WE Johns (also the man who rejected Lawrence's application to the RAF) created Biggles. And there was, of course, Enid Blyton (1897-1968). *** World War 1 made Hollywood what it is today. The destruction of European cinema in the war saw a wave of actors and directors make their way to America. There were so many movies being made in the US after the war — 80% of all movies made worldwide — that the studio system evolved, as did the producers who would dominate the industry's golden age: Louis B Mayer, Irving Thalberg, Harry Cohn, Jack L Warner. All the great silent comedians belonged to this generation: Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Stan Laurel, Oliver Hardy, and Chico, Harpo and Groucho Marx. So did many of the great directors who would transform cinema: Ernst Lubitsch, Fritz Lang, George Cukor, Howard Hawks, Alfred Hitchcock, Jean Renoir, Rene Clair. And, of course, there were the actors. The South African-born Basil Rathbone crawled to the German side, across no-man's land, disguised as, of all things, a tree, to recover military intelligence that would earn him the Military Cross. He would go on to epitomise sneering British villainy in swashbuckling films, and is still considered one of the best portrayers of Sherlock Holmes. Claude Rains, who made every movie better just by being in it, and whose performance in Casablanca is still remembered, lost almost all the vision in one eye as a result of a gas attack. Within months of the war breaking out, Ronald Colman (A Tale of Two Cities, Prisoner of Zenda) had his leg shattered by a mortar shell, forcing him to crawl back to safety. The experience left him with an air of melancholic reserve that worked well for the characters created by another Lost Generation Englishman: James Hilton. His novels Lost Horizon (1933) and Random Harvest (1941) both featured world-weary protagonists scarred by the war. Colman played both men in the film adaptations. 'It was the war that made an actor out of me,' he would later say. 'I wasn't my own man anymore. We went out. Strangers came back.' (K Narayanan writes on films, videogames, books and occasionally technology)
Winnipeg Free Press
30-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Winnipeg Free Press
Hence the sensibility
This muted, somewhat melancholy and very French approach to the Jane Austen update (mostly in French with English subtitles, with a smattering of English) has many low-key charms. The settings, central characters and lead performances are all lovely, in an understated way. Still, considering Jane Austen Wrecked My Life is partly a love letter to writing and writers, this romantic comedy from debut French filmmaker Laura Piani is a bit patchy when it comes to story. Agathe (Camille Rutherford of Anatomy of a Fall) is a would-be novelist who works at Paris's historic English-language bookshop Shakespeare and Company. (Bibliophiles will be happy to see the bookish scenes are shot at the actual store.) Sony Pictures Classics Agathe is a would-be novelist looking for inspiration. Finding herself stalled out, both in her love life and her attempts to write a love story, Agathe compares herself to Jane Austen's Anne Elliot, the heroine of Persuasion who fears her chance at happiness has passed. This could change, though, when Agathe is pushed by her best pal, Félix (Pablo Pauly of The French Dispatch), into attending the Jane Austen Residency, a two-week writers' retreat at a beautiful Georgian house in the English countryside. Agathe finds herself experiencing some romantic confusion when Felix sees her off at the cross-Channel ferry with a surprisingly passionate kiss. This perplexity is compounded when she's picked up on the British side by the arrogant but attractive Oliver (Charlie Anson, who's done offbeat Austen before in Pride and Prejudice and Zombies). Oliver, who works at the Residency, happens to be Jane Austen's 'great-great-great-great nephew,' though he finds Austen's writings 'a little overrated and limited in scope.' Piani, who has worked mostly in French TV (Spiral, Plan B), is dealing with the gambit faced by all Austen-related projects: her film has a built-in audience, but that audience has very exacting standards. Here Jane Austen functions mostly as a hook, which might disappoint some superfans. Agathe's story holds a generalized Janeite spirit, but the specific literary references are slight. (It should also be noted that the movie is not related to the 2009 novel Jane Austen Ruined My Life by American author Beth Pattillo. Confusing!) Agathe, like Austen herself, is a doting aunt and fond sister, and like many Austen heroines, she finds herself choosing between two men while trying to figure out her own moral and emotional development. Sony Pictures Classics Félix (Pablo Pauly, left) and Agathe are just friends, or are they? There's certainly a Pride and Prejudice vibe to Agathe and Oliver's frosty initial meeting, with Oliver channelling a bilingual Mr. Darcy with just a touch of Hugh Grant's Edward Ferrars in Sense and Sensibility. And while Félix is a great best friend, Agathe worries he's maybe a bit too much like Mansfield Park's Henry Crawford, a compulsive charmer who can't commit. Still, for all the callbacks to Austen's early 1800s canon — Piani even supplies a Regency-costumed ball, with much dancing and glancing — this is a very 2020s work. Agathe sometimes feels as if she was 'born in the wrong century,' but her story is modern and French, with a lot of striped shirts, good coffee, alcohol and cigarettes — and also a bit of nudity and sex. There is some sisterhood with Bridget Jones. Agathe doesn't quite reach Bridget's level of comic klutziness, but she can be awkward and a little self-effacing. (When Félix suggests Agathe suffers from impostor syndrome, she tells him she's 'a genuine impostor.') And as with many modernized Austen heroines, Agathe is not dealing with social constraints — with not enough choice — but rather with too much choice. This especially applies to the wide-open options of what she calls 'Uber sex' and 'digital dating,' which she finds mostly involves guys tiptoeing out of her bed at night and trying not to wake her up. As a contemporary woman, Agathe is also struggling with work, in this case the writer's horror of the blank page, compounded by a past trauma she hasn't come to terms with. Sundays Kevin Rollason's Sunday newsletter honouring and remembering lives well-lived in Manitoba. This outline of Agathe's character arc sounds good, but with the film's swift 98-minute runtime, the outline is never quite filled in. Agathe's relationships with the other Residency participants, with the two men and even with herself remain vague. Sony Pictures Classics Like many Jane Austen heroines, Agathe (Camille Rutherford) finds herself choosing between two men. At one point, Agathe is arguing with an aggressive critical theorist about the purpose of literature, and she says she wants novels to reflect back to her what it means to be human. The film has bits of quiet humour, some less successful attempts at slapstick and some poignant scenes, but these beautiful moments don't quite add up to a fully developed story. Jane Austen Wrecked My Life could use a little more reflection. arts@ Alison GillmorWriter Studying at the University of Winnipeg and later Toronto's York University, Alison Gillmor planned to become an art historian. She ended up catching the journalism bug when she started as visual arts reviewer at the Winnipeg Free Press in 1992. Read full biography Our newsroom depends on a growing audience of readers to power our journalism. If you are not a paid reader, please consider becoming a subscriber. 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