Author Archives: maristed
On a fait des valises (my bags are packed…)
Mes cher(e)s lecteurs, lecteuses, The winds of internet change have blown me from this simple but undiscoverable forum to the more complex universe of substack. (Learning curve as yet incomplete.) Please click the link for the latest posts, and join me there (at no charge) for the usual PointdeVue sensibility, book reviews, and a wider-ranging […]
Gangsters at the Gates
The sun-soaked, Phoenician-founded port of Marseilles has long been famous for its succulent bouillabaise, formidable soccer talents, and, in long-ago decades, blood-thirsty gang vs gang subculture. But while the cocaine trade of the ‘sixties and ‘seventies, as dramatized in the iconic film The French Connection, has faded from public awareness, it never went away. What […]
PdV Reviews Eva Menasse’s Darkenbloom–an Austrian village seen through a glass, darkly
As published in The ArtsFuse, Feb 3, 2025 By Kai Maristed Darkenbloom is a hefty novel, in which a blood-stained, depraved swath of history is laid bare by in-depth examination of a narrow geographical sample (think One Hundred Years of Solitude, or, for that matter, Gone With the Wind). Darkenbloom by Eva Menasse. Translated by Charlotte Collins. Scribe, 480 […]
When Zuck Announces a ‘Cultural Tipping-Point’, my dream world stiff-arm salutes!
Until the night of the Inauguration (which I consciously avoided like the plague to come) my regular dream world miniseries, comprising between two and five episodes per night, mostly kept step with the angsty times. Nightmares landed me in Gaza, on traffickers’ boats, in the torched Amazon. That kind of thing. You’ve all been there. […]
PointdeVue’s Reads of 2024
Bonjour à tous les bibliophiles! Only a few days left before the tree falls smack on your head. (Wrong gift. Ouch. Forgotten gift. Ouch.) A book is always appreciated because it shows that you think the recipient intelligent and refined. He/she might also actually read it. Support writers and booksellers, dammit! To make the choice […]
The Bells of Notre Dame Are Ringing!
To tell the truth, today I am content to listen to the newly resurrected bells (a trial run), or to classical music, or to small kids playing in the park. It grates, though, to hear the repetitive lamentations and blame-throwing, or American tourists in Paris who chatter and whoop… as if. As if anything. Leave […]
Don’t Drink the Water!
An Anglophone writer living now partly in France, well-versed in French leftist philosophy, brings out with much fanfare a novel that uses the serious French farmers’ and ecologists’ aggravation over ‘mega-reservoirs’ as background and hook. I’ll be curious to see what French readers make of this fiction, once translated. Meanwhile, the Arts Fuse published my […]
POINT de VUE: PARIS 
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