Paris Maps (Night of the Smashed Crystal)
'Future
it seemed had disappeared. He could no longer believe in the illusory
promise of something he'd never grasped even when he believed it to be
there . . . '
Paperback here
Extract here
Paris Maps tracks the journey of Mackie Kaplan as 40 years on he
searches for the identity of a 1968 bomber responsible for an outrage
in Paris of which Mackie was always suspected.
Set
against a present day Paris-wide sans papiers arrest
operation, Mackie is joined in his search by young Congolese sans
papiers, Bala.
Across
a landscape of activism and Gendarmerie assaults far from the black
and white picture of ’68, Mackie’s search is forced to encompass
both that for his mysteriously missing son and his grand chagrin
d’amour of 40 years ago.
Deftly
guided by Bala through political territory he thought he knew so
well, Mackie finally finds reunification with his son and through him
resolves both the identity of the bomber - and the truth of his lost
love affair.
***
Interview in pro per (conducted prior to publication):
EP:
Now, this novel is shortly to be published but it’s been hanging
about for quite a bit hasn’t it?
TC: Which is why no one has read it perhaps? I completed the first finished draft towards the end of 2009 – so that would actually make it the what – the 6th or 7th draft? I rewrote it again in the first part of 2011 and essentially that’s the draft that will be published.
EP:And does the cover blurb give an accurate description of what it's about?
TC: It gives the story. Well, you have to say something? Yes, it gives the framework I’ve set to explore the themes.
EP: Which are?
TC: God knows . . . I told an agent it was a novel about growing old, accepting certain landmarks have arisen and passed – accepting loss – accepting that which remains: the present – the world created with the materials found at the time, and accepting oneself within that present. But are they even themes?
EP: You don’t mention the Jewish stories that are in the novel – doesn’t the plot take its impetus from Kristallnacht? The theme of someone coming back to their faith made a lot of sense to me.
TC: But isn’t it a parallel to anyone returning to their center?
EP: So can I ask where are you in all this?
(Long silence)
TC: I’ve always thought books should speak for themselves.
EP: Yet surely you must have wondered about the writers you’ve read and admired?
TC: Okay. Look, in ’68 I was picking up prizes at film school. But there was internal territory I had to back track over. It didn’t matter then because in your 20’s and 30’s whatever you do, however you ‘suffer’, just ahead of you there's always some intangible promise of wholeness that is to come. As you get older you realize, well, maybe it ain’t coming - and never was actually. So then you must acknowledge yourself in your present - which is perhaps what you should have done all along?
EP: And this is another theme from the novel?
TC: Is it a theme? It’s in the book. But it’s not the ‘story’ is it?
EP: Still a narrative?
TC: Oh, don’t let’s get into all that.
EP: Tell me about the character of Leah in the book?
TC: When I returned to Paris not having been to the city for 40 years I traveled both in the spirit of the 16 year old I once had been visiting a girl about whom I was passionate – and as a father to the son I was actually going to see. And so I became interested in exploring the disappearance of future, the search for old hopes amidst present day passions – the new radicals: the sans papiers. I became interested in what happens to youthful passion, in what happened to all those who fought ‘The Night of the Barricades’ - in what happened to the girl I went to see so many years ago – who as it happens didn’t want to see me when I got there.
EP: And you’ve never seen her since?
TC: Not in how many years?
EP: I ask about the character Leah since she seems to me a fairly complex character – a Jewish left radical who commits an unbelievable crime – is she really of the Left - given that you suggest the Left is anti-Semitic?
TC: No, no. I don't. Another character in the book suggests that.
EP: So where do you stand on these somewhat intractable issues?
TC: If a Jewish person is of the Left can they be anti-Semitic? Or is that naive? Unlikely then that the Left is anti-Semitic. ’68 in Paris saw large numbers of active Jewish progressives – revolutionaries. They wanted to survive in different ways - they wanted to become living survivors.
EP: Yet one of the most moving sections of the book for me is the long interview with the Ausvitch survivor – where did that come from?
TC: Humm. . . Well, much of it is verbatim from many conversations held with a dear friend who has sadly passed on now. I suppose in our progressive desire to move forward, I don’t think we should forget – those experiences, her experiences.
EP: Indeed. The character Mackie lives with this sense of a gallery forever looking down on him, and it’s populated with all those he knew and didn’t know who have passed on, and who perhaps are trying to tell him they’ve saved him a parking place?
TC: Well, I am going to join them all eventually, aren’t I . . .
TC: Which is why no one has read it perhaps? I completed the first finished draft towards the end of 2009 – so that would actually make it the what – the 6th or 7th draft? I rewrote it again in the first part of 2011 and essentially that’s the draft that will be published.
EP:And does the cover blurb give an accurate description of what it's about?
TC: It gives the story. Well, you have to say something? Yes, it gives the framework I’ve set to explore the themes.
EP: Which are?
TC: God knows . . . I told an agent it was a novel about growing old, accepting certain landmarks have arisen and passed – accepting loss – accepting that which remains: the present – the world created with the materials found at the time, and accepting oneself within that present. But are they even themes?
EP: You don’t mention the Jewish stories that are in the novel – doesn’t the plot take its impetus from Kristallnacht? The theme of someone coming back to their faith made a lot of sense to me.
TC: But isn’t it a parallel to anyone returning to their center?
EP: So can I ask where are you in all this?
(Long silence)
TC: I’ve always thought books should speak for themselves.
EP: Yet surely you must have wondered about the writers you’ve read and admired?
TC: Okay. Look, in ’68 I was picking up prizes at film school. But there was internal territory I had to back track over. It didn’t matter then because in your 20’s and 30’s whatever you do, however you ‘suffer’, just ahead of you there's always some intangible promise of wholeness that is to come. As you get older you realize, well, maybe it ain’t coming - and never was actually. So then you must acknowledge yourself in your present - which is perhaps what you should have done all along?
EP: And this is another theme from the novel?
TC: Is it a theme? It’s in the book. But it’s not the ‘story’ is it?
EP: Still a narrative?
TC: Oh, don’t let’s get into all that.
EP: Tell me about the character of Leah in the book?
TC: When I returned to Paris not having been to the city for 40 years I traveled both in the spirit of the 16 year old I once had been visiting a girl about whom I was passionate – and as a father to the son I was actually going to see. And so I became interested in exploring the disappearance of future, the search for old hopes amidst present day passions – the new radicals: the sans papiers. I became interested in what happens to youthful passion, in what happened to all those who fought ‘The Night of the Barricades’ - in what happened to the girl I went to see so many years ago – who as it happens didn’t want to see me when I got there.
EP: And you’ve never seen her since?
TC: Not in how many years?
EP: I ask about the character Leah since she seems to me a fairly complex character – a Jewish left radical who commits an unbelievable crime – is she really of the Left - given that you suggest the Left is anti-Semitic?
TC: No, no. I don't. Another character in the book suggests that.
EP: So where do you stand on these somewhat intractable issues?
TC: If a Jewish person is of the Left can they be anti-Semitic? Or is that naive? Unlikely then that the Left is anti-Semitic. ’68 in Paris saw large numbers of active Jewish progressives – revolutionaries. They wanted to survive in different ways - they wanted to become living survivors.
EP: Yet one of the most moving sections of the book for me is the long interview with the Ausvitch survivor – where did that come from?
TC: Humm. . . Well, much of it is verbatim from many conversations held with a dear friend who has sadly passed on now. I suppose in our progressive desire to move forward, I don’t think we should forget – those experiences, her experiences.
EP: Indeed. The character Mackie lives with this sense of a gallery forever looking down on him, and it’s populated with all those he knew and didn’t know who have passed on, and who perhaps are trying to tell him they’ve saved him a parking place?
TC: Well, I am going to join them all eventually, aren’t I . . .
*
EP: . . . there’s another character
in the book about whom we haven’t talked.
TC:
Bala? Or Incabala Kalifia II as he’s known to his friends from
Kinshasa.
EP: Not Bala - Saul – the old
politico who lives in a courtyard utility cupboard crammed with one
thousand books?
TC: None of which he’s opened
in a decade or more.
EP: Why?
TC: He’s read them? No. He
doubts the value of big ideas - big projects. Better to send a single
sans papiers to some sketchy location where he might find cockroach
accommodation and illegal work.
EP: Because the great project
of 1968 failed him? Like Mackie, he’s an old ‘68er isn’t he?
TC: Saul may well feel it
failed him. I don’t think it failed – if that's what you're
asking. It’s easy to be unaware of, even to throw away, freedoms we
have become accustomed to living with since ‘68.
EP: Why did it fail Saul? You
use what I might call the device of having him knocked down by a
Number 24 bus along the Euston Road and thereafter he is permanently
disabled – but his disability doesn’t render the dream of a
Utopia to the scrap-heap does it?
TC: Even if he feels that’s
where he is?
EP: Because of his disability?
TC: You know I steer slightly
clear of full-on politicos, rampant intellectuals and ardent
academics - a bit like Saul – we live in the present we are
surrounded by.
EP: Where there is no
‘illusion’ of future?
TC: Well, that’s something
that’s tracked through all the characters.
EP: But there’s a
contradiction. You appear to doubt the value of 'big thinking', yet
you’re writing books that presumably Saul won’t ever read?
TC: We don’t know that Saul
will never read another book, do we? Doesn’t ‘Across the River
and Into The Trees,’ finally catch his eye?
EP: You’ve evaded the
question.
(Long pause)
TC: I set out to set down
simple stories. If other things inevitable emerge or someone wishes
to extrapolate something more – fine. I admired Barbara Pym and the
minutia of her worlds. I once interviewed her in her country cottage.
Had a lot of respect for her anthropological view on things.
EP: Yet all the characters in
Paris Maps go on believing in the possibility of some intangible
future – even the villain of the piece; you might say his
fanaticism parallels that of the hero, Mackie?
TC: Yes, but Mackie comes
through – acknowledges the present. I’m not sure the others do.
And when they can’t . . .
EP: You mustn’t reveal
endings . . .
TC: Thank you. I won’t.
EP: And you live with all these
characters?
TC: Doesn't every writer embody
all of their creations? It’s sometimes a quite crowded cupboard, I
can tell you.
