Authors Electric

As the untrammelled lunacy of our times shows no sign of abating, I'm using this post to retreat to an age when communications were concerned with higher, more aesthetically challenging topics. A priceless recording has been discovered in the archives of the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris. Far from suffering from the distortions of the earliest Phonautograph waxings and the strangulated yells of Thomas Edison and Alexander Graham Bell, it has a clarity which has enabled the famous French scholar Jacques Frère to decipher every word. More remarkably still, it is the earliest example of a recorded interview. It dates from 1890 and the interviewer was a renowned contemporary art critic. His female interviewee is not identified by name but her role and historical importance are revealed in her answers. My translation of the transcript attempts to replicate her Parisian vernacular. Paul Cézanne via Wikimedia Commons CRITIC:         ...

The other night I found myself in a crush of shoppers at a big-top market. Its cavernous space cheerfully illuminated: Murmurs blended into the ambient up-music amid a kaleidoscope of kiosks, redolent with e xotic victuals. I was bringing an order of barbecued prawns to my inamorata and a couple of friends who sat at a food court table chatting merrily. As I approached, someone informed me that I had dropped something. Shrimp were falling from the soggy bottom of my bag, one-by-one, leaving a trail behind me. Then the bag gave way and the rest plopped to the tiled floor in a slippery mess at my feet. There was a hush. People tried not to stare. No use attempting to salvage anything. I could just hear, “Clean-up on aisle 4,” over the loudspeakers. “ Tooozi again! Get that Toozi off the court!” I remembered my red-faced high school basketball coach blowing his whistle and yanking me out of practice games for passing the ball to opposing players. I grinned fe...