France: A Literary Adventure
Janet Hulstrand
Dates: Six Fridays, Sept 14, 21, 28, Oct 5, 12, 19 1-3 p.m.
September 14: The Road from the Past: Traveling through History in France, Ina Caro
September 21: France in Mind (ed. Alice Powers)
September 28: French Spirit: A House, A Village and a Love Affair in Burgundy, Jeffrey Greene
October 5: My Father, Renoir, Jean Renoir
October 12: Chasing Matisse: A Year in France Living My Dream, James Morgan
October 19: Summary and Round-up discussion of our literary adventure
Price: $130 ($110 members)
A companion to our very popular “Paris: A Literary Adventure,” this class offers a literary exploration into the heart of France (la France profonde). We will begin our journey with a discussion of The Road from the Past: Traveling through History in France, by Ina Caro, which offers an authoritative historical, yet personal and idiosyncratic tour of France, moving from South to North “through its beautiful regions, and chronologically through its colorful history.” We will then read selections from Alice Powers’s anthology, France in Mind, a wonderful collection of essays and excerpts by British and American writers from the 18th century to the present. French Spirits: A House, a Village, and a Love Affair in Burgundy, by poet Jeffrey Greene, is a lyrical, often humorous, and thoroughly engaging account of how Greene and his wife came (somewhat unexpectedly) to be homeowners of an ancient presbytery in need of repair, in a tiny village in Burgundy, and how they adjusted to the intimacy (for better and worse) of village life. We will continue with Jean Renoir’s classic memoir My Father, Renoir about the great Impressionist painter, Pierre Auguste Renoir; and will round out our armchair traveling with James Morgan’s account of his adventure following in the footsteps of Matisse around France. “Part memoir, part travelogue, and part biography of Matisse,” Chasing Matisse is also 100% inspiring for anyone who has thought about chucking an “old, settled life” and going on the road in pursuit of a dream.
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.
