![Gustave Caillebotte. Paris Street, Rainy Day (La Place de l’Europe, temps de pluie). 1877. Oil on canvas. Art Institute of Chicago. [Source: Wikimedia Commons]](http://blindflaneur.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/02/gustave_caillebotte_paris_street_rainy_day_1877_wiki.jpg "gustave_caillebotte_paris_street_rainy_day")
![Fog at Isle Royale [Source: wildmengoneborneo.com]](http://blindflaneur.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/04/isle_royale_fog.jpg "Fog at Isle Royale [Source: wildmengoneborneo.com]")
"Brendan, this is what the world looks like all the time to me. Just a little fog. It’s a fine day for boating on the Great Lakes.” Without missing a stroke he turned to dart a skeptical glance at me. Brendan the Navigator. When we named him I didn’t tell his mother everything the legendary Irish name implied. But I imagined him taking on the role of navigator for me. Growing up with Coastal Survey charts and tales of Great Lakes shipwrecks, he came to know Superior as another home. He never doubted the wisdom of canoeing there with a father who was half blind. ![President George H.W. Bush signs into law the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) on July 26, 1990 as Justin Dart looks on. [Source: ucp.org]](http://fairuselab.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/ada_signing_072690_ucp_2.jpg "ada_signing_072690_ucp_2")
![Shepard Fairey’s “Barack Obama/Hope” image went viral during the 2008 election. Then controversy about the image’s source transformed it into the poster child for fair use in the public debate over copyright and free culture. Now FULAB takes “Hope” as its icon [Image source: Wikipedia]](http://fairuselab.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/shepard_fairey_hope_2008.jpg "shepard_fairey_hope_2008")
If there is an emerging genetic underclass, I could run for class president or class clown. Read more in 
The legendary Kiki of Montparnasse posed for Man Ray’s 
New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer, with his wife, Silda, announces his resignation at his Manhattan office. [Source: NYT]
I admit, I’m as guilty as the next guy when it comes to prurient interest and schadenfreude. I came of age in the reign of Richard Nixon, so I expect sleaze and delusional behavior from politicians, even [...]
Entries Tagged as 'Les Misérables'
“As Befits A Caprice of Love and Magistracy”
2
March 13, 2008 at 12:15am
by Mark Willis
Les Misérables · Rodin · VIIe · Victor Hugo · gossip · politics Add Your Comment
Rodin’s “Fall of Illusion: Sister of Icarus”
2
October 21, 2007 at 7:31am
by Mark Willis
Auguste Rodin. L’Illusion soeur d’Icare. 1895. Musée Rodin, Paris. [Photo by Dave Rytell]
This sculpture beguiled me when I saw it at the Musée Rodin. I so much wanted to touch her wing. It was marble but it looked like a living thing. It had the delicacy of feathers, the muscularity of pulsing blood, the [...]
Art · Flaneur's Gallery · Les Misérables · Paris · Rodin · VIIe · Victor Hugo · surrealism Add Your Comment
A Gavroche Retrospective
1
October 16, 2007 at 6:54am
by Mark Willis
When I began quoting and commenting on Les Misérables in September — I’ll call it blog-reading — I didn’t know exactly why I was doing it or where it would lead. I needed content to work with to learn the ropes in WordPress. I was experimenting with text editors in pursuit of “pure text” [...]
Gavroche · Les Misérables · Victor Hugo · reading · reading now · surrealism Add Your Comment
“The Paris brat ain’t made of straw”
0
October 4, 2007 at 6:41pm
by Mark Willis
Gavroche’s sleep inside the Elephant is interrupted by a whistle from the thug Montparnasse. He needs the gaman to help rescue one of his gang who has escaped from prison and is stranded precariously on the edge of a high wall not far from Place de la Bastille. Chapter IV.6.3 describes the prison break in [...]
Gavroche · IVe · Les Misérables · Paris · reading now Add Your Comment
“Mice which ate cats”
1
September 27, 2007 at 6:28am
by Mark Willis
In Notre-Dame de Paris, Victor Hugo’s characters do not exchange dialog. They declaim at one another, often histrionically. The novel was written immediately after the tempestuous debut in 1829 of Hugo’s play, Hernani. Dramaturgy in one guise or another was paying the bills, and it sustained the young novelist as he scrambled to satisfy a [...]
Gavroche · IVe · Les Misérables · Paris · Victor Hugo · reading now Add Your Comment
From Gavroche to Huckleberry Finn
0
September 26, 2007 at 7:13am
by Mark Willis
I continue to marvel at the rogue Gavroche and see in him the prototype for Huck Finn. After explaining how he “borrowed” his bedroom furnishings from the beasts at the Jardin des Plantes, Gavroche adds insouciantly, “You crawl over the walls and you don’t care a straw for the government.” Victor Hugo pauses in telling [...]
Gavroche · IVe · Les Misérables · Paris · Ve · Victor Hugo · reading now Add Your Comment
“The beasts had all these things”
1
September 24, 2007 at 7:12am
by Mark Willis
Gavroche climbed nimbly up the leg of the Elephant in Place de la Bastille, entering its cavernous belly through a breach so narrow “only cats and homeless children” could pass through it. He dropped a rope so the little boys could join him. Then Gavroche lit a bit of wax-coated string called a [...]
Gavroche · IVe · Les Misérables · Paris · Victor Hugo · reading now Add Your Comment
Two Views of Place de la Bastille
1
September 21, 2007 at 10:50am
by Mark Willis
Two 19th-century illustrations depict Place de la Bastille in the years before and after Victor Hugo ’s description of the Elephant in Les Misérables IV.6. 2: [above left] Elephant caparaconne d’or by Alvoine, from the time of Napoleon; [below left] La Colonne de Julliet, from the time of Louis-Phillippe.
The source for these illustrations is [...]
French history · IVe · Les Misérables · Paris · Victor Hugo · Walter Benjamin Add Your Comment
The Elephant in Place de la Bastille
4
September 20, 2007 at 11:35am
by Mark Willis
After Gavroche and the “brats” devour their sou’s worth of bread, they continue down Rue Saint-Antoine to Place de la Bastille,where Gavroche has taken up residence, surreptitiously, in the belly of the Elephant. Yes, the Elephant. One is tempted to say that only Victor Hugo could have imagined the ensuing scene, but in fact the [...]
Gavroche · IVe · Les Misérables · Paris · Victor Hugo · reading now Add Your Comment
A Sou’s Worth of Bread
4
September 12, 2007 at 7:15pm
by Mark Willis
Les Misérables is one of those roman á fleuvre (a phrase cribbed from Walter Benjamin, who knew all about the genre after translating Proust) that descend through treacherous eddies and backwaters before finally reaching the sea. It takes a stalwart, even obsessed, reader to cover its vast distance in one passage. I [...]
Gavroche · IVe · Les Misérables · Paris · Victor Hugo · reading now Add Your Comment