Writers of Montparnasse

Martine and I spent a lovely afternoon in Montparnasse cemetery a few weeks ago, visiting the graves of writers.

Short stories
Tall grave

Guy de Maupassant was a renowned short story writer . I first came across him thanks to George Saunders, who did a close reading and breakdown of the story Boule de Suif in his story club, and concluded that learning from Maupassant is a must for any short story writer. His grave is imposing and covered with flowering shrubs.

One of these names has faded...

Simone de Beauvoir and Jean Paul Sartre are buried together, in a grave that is covered anew every day in tributes...to Simone. Sartre's name has faded on the headstone. When they were both alive it was he who was more celebrated, but she and her work have aged better.

Self-effacing Sam

The grave of Samuel Beckett and Suzanne Dechevaux-Dumesnil is modest and low to the ground, and the inscriptions are already fading after less than forty years. This all seems rather appropriate for Beckett's personality. I picked up a new copy of Waiting for Godot at Shakespeare & Company and was reminded how vibrant and full of life his writing still is.

Never forget...

Alfred Dreyfus wasn't a writer, but he inspired Émile Zola to write his famous letter J'accuse. I made a brief visit to Montmartre cemetery and saw Zola's grave but didn't take a photo. However, I did place a pebble on Dreyfus' grave in Montparnasse and was happy to see that many others had done the same. 

2025 Readings

In 2025 I read twenty-two books of fiction, six of creative non-fiction, and three new-to-me poetry collections. I read many other things too, in literary magazines and on SubStack for example, but I committed a significant amount of time to each of these thirty-one books.

Fiction

Asimov, Isaac: I, Robot

Barbeau-Lavalette, Anaïs: La femme qui fuit (en français)

Bradbury, Ray: Fahrenheit 451

Carson, Jan: Quickly, While They Still Have Horses

Cusk, Rachel: Coventry (my 2nd reading)

Cusk, Rachel: Parade

DeLillo, Don: The Silence

Egan, Jennifer: A Visit from the Goon Squad

Erskine, Wendy: The Benefactors

Flanagan, Richard: Question 7

Gallant, Mavis: Montreal Stories

Harding, Paul: Tinkers

Holloway, Patrick: The Language of Remembering

Lalami, Laila: The Dream Hotel

McCormack, Mike: Getting it in the Head

Ní Chuinn, Liadan: Every One Still Here

O’Neill, Heather: Valentine in Montreal

O’Neill, Joseph: Godwin

Ryan, Donal: heart, be at peace

Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft: Frankenstein

Thien, Madeleine: The Book of Records

Tolstoy, Leo: The Death of Ivan Ilyich

Non-fiction

Arendt, Hannah: Eichmann in Jerusalem

Bouchard, Serge: Caribou Hunter / Récits de Mathieu Mestokosho, chasseur innu (In English et en français)

Cron, Lisa: Wired for Story

Gallant, Mavis: Montreal Standard Time

O’Connor, Sinéad: Rememberings

Stonebridge, Lyndsey: We are Free to Change the World

Poetry Collections

Collins, Billy: Aimless Love

MacNeice, Louis: Autumn Journal

Muldoon, Paul: Selected Poems

There are a few connecting threads: Hannah Arendt's life and work for example (the books by Thien, Stonebridge, and Arendt herself), my interest in evolving views of AI and consciousness (Asimov, and Mary Shelley's Frankenstein), and my exploration of the possibilities of the short story (Carson, Gallant, and Ní Chuinn).

In previous years it's been difficult to pick a single favourite read of the year, but I have no such problems this year. Richard Flanagan's Question 7 is far and away the best thing I've read in a long time. It's an extraordinary book, a combination of fiction, biography, and non-fiction, that delves deep into Flanagan's family history while sweeping across the arc of the 20th century. I loved his Booker-winning novel The Narrow Road to the Deep North and Flanagan has explained how his father's experience as a prisoner-of-war of the Japanese was one of its inspirations for that. In Question 7 his father's experience is once again a starting point, as his father was released when Japan surrendered, an event that could conceivably have its origins in the love affair between Rebecca West and H. G. Wells...

Without Rebecca West’s kiss H. G. Wells would not have run off to Switzerland to write a book in which everything burns, and without H. G. Wells’s book Leo Szilard would never have conceived of a nuclear chain reaction and without conceiving of a nuclear chain reaction he would never have grown terrified and without growing terrified Leo Szilard would never have persuaded Einstein to lobby Roosevelt and without Einstein lobbying Roosevelt there would have been no Manhattan Project and without the Manhattan project there is no lever at 8.15am on 6 August 1945 for Thomas Ferebee to release 31,000 feet over Hiroshima, there is no bomb on Hiroshima and no bomb on Nagasaki and 100,000 people or 160,000 people or 200,000 people live and my father dies. Poetry may make nothing happen, but a novel destroyed Hiroshima and without Hiroshima there is no me and these words erase themselves and me with them.

I'd rate Question 7 as highly as the best work by W. G. Sebald, which is the highest praise I can offer. This review in The Guardian came to the same conclusion.

• 2024 Readings
• 2023 Readings
• 2022 Readings