Ashcan Memories Mauvignier Talks Trash in France, Celery Stalks Italy, and Holland Peeps at Lost Souls The dustbin has popped open in France this month and rendered up Laurent Mauvignier’s elegiac second novel, Learning to Finish, which details the plight of a trash collector who announces he is leaving his wife — only to maim…Continue Reading
French Lessons Napoleon’s Deluge in France, Coelho in Teheran, and Italy’s Wayward Professor A fiendishly degenerate account of a dead academic leads off in France this month, as the pseudonymous author San Antonio (the late Frédéric Dard) tramples all cultural propriety in his delirious novel Napoléon Pommier. Here’s the pitch: The august Professor Titan Ma…Continue Reading
