BOOKPATHS

Novelist Sebastian Beaumont chooses his “top 10 books about psychological journeys.”

Bookpath: Arles, France

The Yellow House: Van Gogh, Gauguin, and Nine Turbulent Weeks in Arles, by Martin Gayford (New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2006)

“Making use of Van Gogh’s voluminous correspondence and new evidence,” Martin Gayford describes the nine creative and volatile weeks when Vincent van Gogh and Paul Gauguin lived together in a yellow house in Arles. Gayford pulls readers into time and place, sharing the details of the artists’ lives between October and December 1888, from household budgeting and cooking, to the creation of masterpieces and Van Gogh’s “psychological crisis.” The Yellow House is a must read for anyone contemplating a pilgrimage to the Arlésienne landscape of Van Gogh and Gauguin and to all who are transfixed by their paintings.

“Paul Gauguin settled down in the Café de la Gare to wait for dawn. When the sun finally rose, he went out, crossed over to number 2 Place Lamartine, whose yellow walls and green-painted woodwork could now be clearly seen, and knocked on the door. It was opened by Vincent van Gogh.” – from The Yellow House, by Martin Gayford

Related Websites

Publisher’s Website

Fondation Vincent van Gogh – Arles

Van Gogh Walking Tour

Nigeria

Chinua Achebe talks with Ed Pilkington “about inventing a new language, his years in exile from his beloved Nigeria – and why he changed his name from Albert.”

“Someone asked him recently, he says, to write about his favourite place. It got him thinking about why he loves Ogidi so much when it has no great mountain or cathedral and even the River Niger is miles away. So what is it that explains this deep longing?

His voice rallies just a little as he replies: ‘I can't really explain it. But for me this place, this village, is significant. It is where I formed my identity’.” – from “A Long Way from Home,” by Ed Pilkington, The Guardian

California; France

Scott Timberg talks with Michael Ondaatje, whose new novel, Divisadero, takes place in California and France.

Timberg: What drew you to set your novel in California?

Ondaatje: It was partly because I was there for a while: I was asked to teach at Stanford as a writer-in-residence, about five years ago. And I decided to live up north of San Francisco and drive down once a week. We lived up in the San Anselmo/Petaluma area, and we kind of fell in love with that region; it's really stunning. Especially near Petaluma, that landscape feels so separate from the rest of the world. I had a friend who had a farm there, and she got me a place to work during the day on my book. – from “Ondaatje on Divisadero,” by Scott Timberg, Los Angeles Times

Bookpath: World

The Art of Travel, by Alain de Botton (New York: Vintage International, paperback 2004)

With “guides” including J. K. Huysmans, Charles Baudelaire, Edward Hopper, Gustave Flaubert, Alexander von Humboldt, William Wordsworth, Edmund Burke, Job, Vincent van Gogh, John Ruskin, and Xavier de Maistre, Alain de Botton ponders “the art of travel,” from “departure” to “return.” The Art of Travel encourages readers to think about their own journeys, whether worldwide or the familiarity of home.

“If our lives are dominated by a search for happiness, then perhaps few activities reveal as much about the dynamics of this quest – in all its ardour and paradoxes – than our travels. They express, however inarticulately, an understanding of what life might be about, outside of the constraints of work and of the struggle for survival. Yet rarely are they considered to present philosophical problems – that is, issues requiring thought beyond the practical. We are inundated with advice on where to travel to, but we hear little of why and how we should go, even though the art of travel seems naturally to sustain a number of questions neither so simple nor so trivial, and whose study might in modest ways contribute to an understanding of what the Greek philosophers beautifully termed eudaimonia, or ‘human flourishing’.” – from The Art of Travel, by Alain de Botton

Alain de Botton’s Website

Publisher’s Website

San Francisco, California

In the July issue of Smithsonian, Armistead Maupin explains why, after thirty-five years, he still loves “his city by the bay.”

“A century and a half later – despite earthquakes, epidemics and dot-com disasters – people still chase their dreams to San Francisco. They don’t so much move to the city as defect to it, warmed by the glow of their burning bridges. Like the heroine of my Tales of the City novels, newcomers have been known to take this leap overnight, enduring high rents, low pay and joblessness in the hope of becoming someone else.” – from “Mad, Stark Mad,” by Armistead Maupin, Smithsonian

Bookpath: Chapelle St.-Pierre, Villefranche, France

Visitors travel to the medieval Chapelle St.-Pierre to see the frescoes created by poet, artist, and filmmaker Jean Cocteau in 1957. The chapelle, located on Quai Amiral Courbet, near the Hôtel Welcome, is open Tuesday through Sunday. Admission is 2 euros. For additional information, including hours, phone 04 93 76 90 70.

Photo credit: NoeHill

Neil Griffiths chooses his “top 10 outsider books.”

“No outsider wants to be one, it is not a lifestyle choice. Whatever its psychological aetiology, it is like an accident of birth: you are either in or you're out.” – Neil Griffiths, The Guardian

Bookpath: Whittier, California

Among Friends, by M. F. K. Fisher (Emeryville, CA: Shoemaker & Hoard, Publishers, 2004; and previous editions)

M. F. K. Fisher was born Mary Frances Kennedy on July 3, 1908 in Albion, Michigan, but her family moved to the then “predominantly Quaker settlement” of Whittier, California in 1912. In Among Friends, Fisher takes readers on a journey back to her Whittier childhood, writing with affection and truth of family, friends, acquaintances, time, and place.

“In Whittier we walked too, everywhere, because it was the way Aunt Gwen moved best from place to place, and always for an exciting reason. We walked in the rain, and in the scorching heat, to Bailey Park, to the hills behind the College, best of all to the hills back of the town reservoir, where occasionally a motor would start coughing in the little shed and make us laugh. There was a big wooden cover over the round pool of water, and we could look through the fence and see black glints and now and then hear a rippling sound, as if perhaps a mouse had jumped in. We would walk through eucalyptus groves and in the springtime pick wild flowers, and then settle our backs against a fallen tree and look down upon the rooftops of our town, and across brown plains to the occasional shimmer of the ocean, many miles away. On fine days we learned to study the horizon and find the long blue line of Catalina Island. This always pleased Aunt Gwen, to agree with us that indeed it was that far place, where I finally went when I was eleven.” – from Among Friends, by M. F. K. Fisher

Publisher’s Website

Bookpath: Prague, Czech Republic

“In the Footsetps of Franz Kafka” is “a cultural and educational program” offered by The Franz Kafka Society in cooperation with the Education and Culture Centre of the Jewish Museum of Prague. The 90-minute program includes a short introduction to Kafka’s life and work and visits to the Franz Kafaka Library and other Kafka-related sites, including “Maiselova Street, Franz Kafka Square, Little Square (Malé náměstí), the Old Town Square (southern part), Železná Street, Fruit Market (Ovocný trh), Celetná Street, Old Town Square (eastern and northern parts), Dlouhá Street, and the Franz Kafka Monument (in front of the Jewish Museum).” Tours are offered in Czech, English, German and Spanish. For information on joining a tour, visit The Franz Kafka Society website.