Category: Culture

Balthazar NYC French Restaurant Turns 20: Why Its Influence Endures – Thrillist

The rose-hued light glinting off the downward-tilted gilded mirrors, the high-backed red leather banquettes, the patina on the walls that look aged with decades of smoke, the wafting aroma of snails in garlic and butter — it all evokes Paris in a visceral way. So do the servers dressed in all-black with white aprons, some of whom say their uniforms make them feel they’re in a play instead of a dining hall. But, then, Balthazar from the beginning has been a kind of theater, the play always the same and always different, on a set where 10,000 customers have crossed the tiled floor every week for the past 20 years [ . . . ]

More at source: Balthazar NYC French Restaurant Turns 20: Why Its Influence Endures – Thrillist

‘Animals have no place in art’: French ‘human hen’ artist condemned after eggs hatch

Abraham Poincheval hardly slept in the 23 days he spent nesting inside a glass vitrine in a Paris art museum which he finally left Thursday after all but two of the eggs hatched [ . . . ]

More at source: ‘Animals have no place in art’: French ‘human hen’ artist condemned after eggs hatch | world-news | Hindustan Times

Proust Letter About Neighbor’s Sex Lives Up For Auction

Marcel Proust is famous for transforming an evocative sensory experience into literary brilliance: I am writing, of course, of the nibble of a madeleine that catalyzed his immortal stroll down memory lane in “Swann’s Way.”

The author also, apparently, could turn an unwanted sensory intrusion into fairly amusing epistolary material. Among an astonishing collection of French literary miscellanea that will shortly go up for auction in Paris — the archive, which currently belongs to prolific collector Jean Bonna, includes first editions of works by Samuel Beckett and Honoré de Balzac, as well as correspondence from Victor Hugo and Gustave Flaubert — is a letter from Proust to his landlord’s son in which he objects to a certain unwanted auditory phenomenon in his apartment [ . . . ]

More at Source: Proust Letter About Neighbor’s Sex Lives Up For Auction – The Forward

How Champs Elysees attack could swing the French presidential election

With the motives of the Champs-Elysées gunman considered terror-related, the timing just three days before the first round of the French presidential elections and during a prime time TV “debate” between all 11 official candidates clearly suggests that extremists are seeking to influence the tone of the debate – and perhaps its outcome [ . . . ]

More at source: How Champs Elysees attack could swing the French presidential election