 | In 1958 I was a student at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia in the USA.
My cousin, William Faulkner was teaching nearby in Charlottesville that year and I was just beginning to read his work.
My French professor decided to assign me LE GRAND MEAULNES and asked me to write a report.
The novel combined the dreams of a protected youth with the random cruelty of life with all its beauty and fascination in ways I had never imagined possible as an 18 year old student in the Southern United States.
Years later, after a rich and well-travelled life as a journalist, president of several book and magazine publishing companies, a father and a grandfather, I found myself driving down narrow roads in the Cher et Indre on one of those rare winter days when the weather seems almost like Spring, looking for a lost sand lot, a lake, the ruins of a chateau, and the memory of Yvonne.
Only very few people know what I am looking for -------- as the lines from the lovely Phillipe-Gerard/Vannier ballad "Chevalier de Paris" run through my mind.
Ah! Les pommiers doux
Rondes et ritournelles
J'ai pas peur des loups
Chantonnait la belle
Ils ne sont pas méchants
Avec les enfants
Qu'ont le coeur fidèle
Et les genoux blancs...
10 Mars 2009 |
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| | I am too.
I went to France for looking for Le chateau de Loroy in La Chappelle-d'Angillon.
I agree witk you. |
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