le blog

There is a joke that everyone in France was in the Résistance. Many people criticize the French as exaggerating facts, but I would like to defend the French (shocker, I know). I'm not saying that there were no collaborators. That would just be silly and historically inaccurate. But there were more French than not who resisted the enemy. While not everyone who claimed they were in the Résistance was in the formal, organized group, there were countless French who helped in many ways to, in one way or another, resist the Nazis. Whether they were on sabotage missions or simply did not denounce a neighbor, there were a number of ways to defy the occupier. Those who contributed to anti-Nazi propaganda, fed or sheltered a Résistance member or downed Allied pilot, leaked information, made false IDs, or helped Jews in any way technically were resisting the Nazis. Of course the actual organization was important, but it could not have functioned as it did without the collective help of the...

It is no great secret that I have what you might call a "literary crush" on Ernest Hemingway. I am completely vested in the romantic notion of Hemingway in Interwar Paris as the ruggedly handsome struggling young writer of the Lost Generation. After all, what is not to love about a man who writes, "If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life it stays with you, for Paris is a moveable feast"?  This summer, I finally had the time to read The Paris Wife by Paula McLain - the story of Ernest Hemingway and his first wife, Hadley. I was a bit apprehensive as I cracked open the book. My mother warned me in a shocked and horrified tone that her friend from book club had read The Paris Wife and now hates Hemingway because he was such a cad. I had to remind myself that not everyone is as obsessed about Paris during the Jazz Age as I am. I knew the history, so I was not going in blindly. But after my mom...