β Scribed by Julian Barnes
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
Anyone who loves France (or just feels strongly about it), or has succumbed to the spell of Julian Barnes's previous books, will be enraptured by this collection of essays on the country and its culture.
Barnes's appreciation extends from France's vanishing peasantry to its hyper-literate pop singers, from the gleeful iconoclasm of nouvelle vague cinema to the orgy of drugs and suffering that is the Tour de France. Above all, Barnes is an unparalleled connoisseur of French writing and writers. Here are the prolific and priapic Simenon, Baudelaire, Sand and Sartre, and several dazzling excursions on the prickly genius of Flaubert. Lively yet discriminating in its enthusiasm, seemingly infinite in its range of reference, and written in prose as stylish as haute couture , Something to Declare is an unadulterated joy.
From the Trade Paperback edition.
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A collection of essays on France from Julian Barnes. Written over a 20 year period, the topics Barnes covers range from landscape to literature, food to Flaubert, film and song to the Tour de France.
An Englishman abroad -- Spending their deaths on holiday -- The promises of their ordination -- The land without Brussels sprouts -- Tour de France 1907 -- Tour de France 2000 -- The pouncer -- French letters -- Flaubert's death-masks -- Not drowning but waving : the case of Louise Colet -- Drinking
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