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A Gallant Writer Celebrated
“At an early hour for the French man of letters Henri Grippes—it was a quarter to nine, on an April morning—he sat in a windowless, brown-painted cubicle, facing a slight, mop-headed young man with horn-rimmed glasses and dimples. The man wore a dark tie with a narrow knot and a buttoned-up blazer. He signature was ‘O.Poche;’ his title, on the grubby, pulpy summons Grippes had read, sweating, was ‘Controller.’ He must be freshly out of his civil-service training school, Grippes guessed. Even his aspect, of a priest hearing a confession a few yards from the guillotine, seemed newly acquired. ” – Mavis Gallant, “Grippes et Poche”
A bizarre bureaucratic feud, between a novelist and a tax official, lasts two lifetimes in this story by contemporary master Mavis Gallant, who reads her own work.
Gallant made a rare visit from her home in Paris to Symphony Space to read her own story. She was joined that evening by a number of literary luminaries who gathered on stage to pay tribute to a writer many of them said was an inspiration. These included the poet Edward Hirsch, and the writers Russell Banks, Michael Ondaatje, and Jhumpa Lahiri, whose introductory remarks we have included in this program.
“Grippes and Poche,” by Mavis Gallant, read by the author
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Love Tony Roberts, but please tell him that the word quay is pronounced "key".
I love Selected Shorts even though it is not on the air in the Milwaukee area. I often stream it. However, as we all know, not all authors read their own material very well, and Mavis Gallant is one of those authors. It was an unusually disappointing episode of the marvelous show Selected Shorts.
It's not a failure either of her reading or writing that kept me fighting to keep my mind from wandering away from Mavis Gallant's reading of her short story "Grippe et Poche" on NPR. Her recitation is a guide to the tone she wishes us to have in our head as we read this piece and as such is an invaluable gift. Somewhere, I and others have lost the ability to focus on characters without the help of camera close-ups and angles that hint or tell us outright what we should feel and think. As a writer myself I'm forever reaching for new tools to help me keep the clouds of my intense emotionality from obscuring the ideas and images I want to express. Ms. Gallant's intricate speaking and literary voices may not music to everyone's ears but her mastery of emotional bias and the power and brilliance with which she employs her writing tools need never be in question.
Saw the comment about Selected Shorts not being available in some markets.
Previous episodes are free on iTunes.
Just download the podcast and you'll be able to listen whenever it's convenient.
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