Dennis Stock, Cafe de Flore

I am of those who like to stay late at the cafe, the older waiter said. With all those who do not want to go to bed. With all those who need a light for the night. I want to go home and into bed. We are of two different kinds, the older waiter said. He was now dressed to go home. It is not only a question of youth and confidence although those things are very beautiful. Each night I am reluctant to close up because there may be some one who needs the cafe.
Ernest Hemingway, A Clean, Well Lighted Place

I was in Prague, attending a symposium at the Polytechnics, at the School of Electrical Engineering, and I remember their elevator. It was the Pater type - running continuously, very slowly, to allow people to get on and off. It was going up, at the top it was moving horizontally from one pit to the other, then it was going down, where again was moving horizontally.

A special dinner was organized on the last evening, the restaurant was in the middle of a huge garden. We were all very young and noisy, so after the dinner we went out in the garden and started to sing and to make fun. An old waiter came to us and asked in German, is this your last evening in Prague? I was the only one of the group speaking a bit of German, so I was supposed always to be the spokesman. Yes, it's our last evening. Then have fun, said the old waiter, with a mild smile.

You know, they say the finest German is spoken in Prague, while Vienna is the place for the finest Czech.

My first encounter with Hemingway was a movie, The Old Man and the Sea, it was also my first encounter with Spencer Tracy. After some years, I found A Farewell to Arms. I was in the Sadoveanu bookstore in Bucharest, and by that time they had a special section with books printed in the USSR - most of them in Russian, some were in English or French. The first time I was reading something in English, and to my great surprise I read it quite easily.

There are many ways leading to Hemingway. Some books that I am trying now to read are of authors in the great line of him: Anthony Loyd (My War Gone By I Miss It So), Michael Herr (Dispatches), Ryszard Kapuscinski (The Soccer War, Imperium). Kapuscinski is really great. John Le Carre says about him, if Marquez is the grand wizard of modern fiction, Kapuscinski is the conjuror extraordinary of modern reportage. I'd like to write more about him, I have something in mind, let's see how it'll look like.

As for Dennis Stock, he is well known for his photographic portraits of James Dean, as well as of Satchmo, Billie Holiday, Duke Ellington ... American jazz is a religion, it is humor, it is vitality and sadness.




(Hemingway)