Thursday, November 10, 2011

Spike Jonze - To Die By Your Side (at Shakespeare & Co)



As per usual, I get most of my cool quirky art recs from the dear Corinne. She posted this even before I could see it on Nowness. (Side note - I have Nowness envy. I wish I could be Nowness. Do you know it? Check it out for sure.)


Jonze teamed up with designer Olympia Le-Tan for this "tragicomic stop-motion" romp through Paris's amazing Shakespeare & Company. It's definitely one of my favorite settings. Recently, I've been writing a party thrown by Sylvia Beach at her store. It starts as a joyous fete the kind notorious for Paris in the 20s.  But it melts down into something very very scary. And even though the current incarnation of the bookstore/commune at 37 rue de la Buchere is more the invention of George Whitman than Sylvia Beach's rue de l'Odeon literary epicenter of the 20s, it's still a nice launching pad to imagine that world with Beach presiding over her court.  


She was pretty sparky. The store on rue de l'Odeon closed in 1940 during Nazi occupation of France. Rumor has it the store was shut down during  because she denied a German officer the last copy of Finnegan's Wake. (The fictitious version of which plays a huge part in my novel.) Even though Ernest Hemingway personally "liberated" the place, the store never reopened. Well, until George Whitman came along in the 1950s. Which is its own separate, wacky-awesome story


If you're a book nerd, you're sure to love this cheeky frolic across book covers and into their pages. I know I did!


Spike Jonze: Mourir Auprès de Toi on Nowness.com.


For more interviews with creator Olympia Le-Tan, check out Nowness's fb page.

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