Paris: A Literary Adventure
Janet Hulstrand
Seven Fridays:
April 19, 26, May 3, 10, 17, 24, 31, 1-3 p.m.
Price: $150 ($140 members)
Books:
Paris Was Ours, edited by Penelope Rowlands
Satori in Paris, Jack Kerouac
The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, Gertrude Stein
A Moveable Feast, Ernest Hemingway, 1964 edition
Down and Out in Paris and London, George Orwell
Le Divorce, Diane Johnson
REFUND POLICY: Please note that we can issue class refunds up until seven (7) days before the first class session.
Paris: A Literary Adventure offers an eclectic peek at the rich vein of English-language literature written in or about Paris. We will begin by reading and discussing Paris Was Ours, a collection of essays by a variety of wonderful writers. Our journey will continue with an unlikely “patron saint” of travel, Jack Kerouac, with his relatively unknown work Satori in Paris. From there we will jump back in time to the Paris of “the lost generation” (and will learn the surprising source of that label), reading Hemingway’s classic memoir A Moveable Feast and Gertrude Stein’s Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas. We will round out our journey with a fascinating look into the lives of the working poor in Paris of the 1920s through the eyes of George Orwell, with his classic work Down and Out in Paris and London, and will return to the present with Le Divorce, a delightful comedy of manners that sheds light on Franco/American cultural differences through the adventures and misadventures of Isabel Walker, a young American in Paris. Our final session will provide the opportunity to revisit and wrap up our discussion of all the works we’ve read together.
ABOUT THE INSTRUCTOR
Janet Hulstrand is a writer, editor, teacher, and writing coach. She has created and taught literature courses in Paris, Florence, Hawaii, and Cuba for Hunter and Queens Colleges of the City University of New York, and Writing from the Heart workshops in Essoyes, a village in the Champagne region of France. She is a regular contributor to Bonjour Paris and France Revisited, and she writes about travel, literature, and France on her blog, Writing from the Heart, Reading for the Road. She is coauthor of Moving On: A Practical Guide to Downsizing the Family Home, and is currently working on her next book, A Long Way from Iowa, a literary memoir.
