Somewhat Luxury

Paul Bowles, while travelling in 1953, had trouble securing a decent hotel in Istanbul. He settled on a “de luxe” establishment, and reports the following benefits of his choice.

The hotel is considered by my guidebook to be a “de luxe” establishment—the highest category. Directly after the “de luxe” listings come the “first class” places, which it describes in its own mysterious rhetoric: “These hotels have somewhat luxury, but are still comfortable with every convenience.” Having seen the lobbies of several of the hostelries thus pigeonholed, complete with disemboweled divans and abandoned perambulators, I am very thankful to be here in my de-luxe suite, where the telephone is white so that I can see the cockroaches on the instrument before I lift it to my lips. At least the insects are discreet and die obligingly under a mild blast of DDT. It is fortunate I came here: my two insecticide bombs would never have lasted out a sojourn in a first-class hotel.

From Their Heads Are Green and Their Hands Are Blue, by Paul Bowles (published 1963).

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Good to be Back in England

Michael Beard, aging Nobel laureate and wholesale curmudgeon, arrives at Heathrow after spending some time in Berlin:

He had reached the place where the amorphous overlapping ten queues narrowed down to three in order to line up for the immigration desks. And here he came, a gaunt parchment-faced fellow in a loden coat (Beard had always despised the style) sliding in from the left, trying to use his height to squirm ahead, angling his oversized briefcase at knee height to use as a wedge. Abruptly, driven by shameless rectitude, Beard stepped forward to deny the man space and felt the briefcase bang against his knee. At that moment Beard turned and sought out the man’s gaze and said politely, though his heart beat a little harder, “Terribly sorry.”

A rebuke poorly disguised as an apology, pretending manners to a man he would rather at that moment kill. It was good to be back in England.

From Solar, by Ian McEwan (published 2010).

On Paris

Much has been written about “the other Paris” (or, to be realistic, “the other Parises”), but Julian Green (sometimes written as Julien Green) sums it up nicely:

Paris is a city that might well be spoken of in the plural, as the Greeks used to speak of Athens, for there are many Parises, and the tourists’ Paris is only superficially related to the Paris of the Parisians. The foreigner driving through Paris from one museum to another is quite oblivious to the presence of a world he brushes past without seeing. Until you have wasted time in a city, you cannot pretend to know it well. The soul of a big city is not to be grasped so easily; in order to make contact with it, you have to have been bored, you have to have suffered a bit in those places that contain it. Anyone can get hold of a guide and tick off all the monuments, but within the very confines of of Paris there is another city as difficult to access as Timbuktu once was.

From Paris, by Julian Green (published 1991).