Unfortunately no use to me as I am allergic to Coco/chocolate 
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Naw, never got used to that stuff.
[quote=âGeof_Cox, post:213, topic:34421, full:trueâ]
Yes Iâve been to BĂ©cherel - loved it, and would go regularly if I were a bit closer. I got nice old editions of Camus there (whose Hemingway-esque style, by the way, is rather easier for a non-native reader than many French classics).
If all this covid nonsense ever ends I fancy a long road trip - and youâve sparked the idea of a âbook townsâ tour-de-France.[/quote]
Great idea! You may be interested in this book then: Book Towns, it has the main French book villages/small towns in it, namely Bechérel, Montmorillon and Fontenoy-La-Joûte (near Nancy) + a couple of others.
You could also incorporate Redu in the Belgian Ardennes, north of Charleville-MĂ©ziĂšres, thatâll also give you a great opportunity to visit the Arthur Rimbaud Museum + his old house across the road in Charleville + his old parentsâ farm 20 miles away bought by Rimbaud-mad Patti Smith a few years ago and thatâs sheâs thinking of having renovated and turned into an arts & literary centre/retreat), Redu is approx⊠10 miles from the French border.
Ah, Hemingway. In a nutshell as I donât want to go off topic too much (bollards, encore ratĂ© !), in the 1980s (as an English student and literature lover), and occasionally later in the 1990s-2000s on an ad hoc basic whenever I found myself in Paris (Iâve moved to England by then), I used to take mostly foreigners (usually Americans, British and Irish people, friends of mine, fellow students, friends of friends etc.) on informal tours around central Paris where Anglo writers had lived or written in cafĂ©s, so it was mainly Left Bank flĂąneries, mostly through the Latin Quarter, Saint-Germain-des-PrĂšs and Montparnasse.
In the main, weâre talking Edith Wharton, Henry James (who only stayed a year before moving permanently to London), Gertrude Stein + other famous âsalonniĂšresâ such as the American Natalie Clifford Barney who ran a famous salon for over 60 years Rue Jacob in St-Germain-des-PrĂšs (in the grand tradition of the 18th century pre-French Revolution salons that, along with the ground-breaking ideas of the Enlightenment thinkers (Voltaire, Montesquieu, Diderot & co), did the sort of preliminary radical thinking that shook things up and helped pave the way for the French Revolution), these were very much part of the âfirst waveâ of US writers to migrate to Paris, in the Belle Ăpoque era then, they were part of the US elite, much wealthier than the following post WWI wave who would migrate to Paris for very different reasons) + Sylvia Beach of course (who founded the original Shakespeare and Company bookshop, in the OdĂ©on neighbourhood), + Oscar Wilde bien sĂ»r.
Then post WWII arrived that âsecond waveâ who migrated to/lived in Paris for very different reasons, namely Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ezra Pound, Dos Passos etc. aka the âLost Generationâ as Stein famously called them (+ Orwell, and Joyce for the non Americans), Henry Miller too (famously immortalised by the photographer BrassaĂŻ in Henry Miller: The Paris Years).
Finally, the third post WWII âBlackâ wave, to wit James Baldwin, Richard Wright, William Gardner Smith, Chester Himes, Maya Angelou (briefly in her case) etc. who lived in/migrated to Paris for different reasons too from the previous two groups (they considered themselves more as âexilesâ, as Josephine Baker or Sidney Bechet said Paris and France at the time were a sanctuary from segregation and discrimination for them).
It certainly was a loooong literary tour! (and bien arrosĂ© of course, plenty of visits to cafĂ©s where they wrote in, those still extant anyhow, quite a few are actually, or theyâve been replaced by restaurants etc. such as the Dingo Bar in Montparnasse an now an Italian restaurant. And that area shouldnât dĂ©payser too much Geof as itâs a very Breton neighbourhood, dozens of crĂȘperies, Breton cultural centres too etc. given that Montparnasse railway station is round the corner, it was the area when so many Breton migrants would settle in Paris when the railway connected Brittany to the capital, from the 1850s onwards).
In passing, I watched Hemingway & Gellhorn at the beginning of the first lockdown and quite liked it, itâs not without its flaws but I still strongly recommend it.
In an effort to help matters along, I have posted the following in Discourse Meta and hope to receive a response:-
The thread has been moved to a new topic so link updated.
tagging @strudball and @plod specifically as they have expressed interest in this subject.
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Canât help there but maybe James can give you a Treet or two ? 
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Can we have a ban on awful puns? Who would decide the rule for a particular thread?
I think it would be six of one and half a dozen of the other who would decide the rule 
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Letâs have a committee 
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Why not have a poll ?
Brexit taught me that Brits love a poll.
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A PunDit?
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What has a hazel in every bite
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Squirrel Poo
Sorry
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Doesnât have the same giggle effect 
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I was trying to be sophisticated
bien sûr 
You are running hours behind:
Great minds clearly think alike!
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Should have read posts sloooowly, sorry Mat I have given myself a slapped wrist 
I think it probably sets us as a certain age.
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All we need now is an accord in SF that this convention will have a meaning to the topic - itâs one for important information and ânoiseâ should be kept to an absolute minimum to encourage people to use the thread as a serious reference point.
Views/comments?
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Appolling indeed
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