Renoiresque Paris (Reading Jill Rapaport)

Pierre Auguste Renoir, Farm Courtyard
private collection
(http://www.wikipaintings.org/en/pierre-auguste-renoir/farm-courtyard)
no copyright infringement intended

... I walked out between two potted plants and through the Renoiresque courtyard toward the street ... (Jill Rapaport, Duchamp et Moi and Other Stories / Pas Lilas, page 40)

Pas Lilas is a story taking place in Paris:  a place looking, at least at first view, like anywhere in the world. I mean the narrative seems to be completely indifferent about the city. It's just a place.

A place where the author makes an analysis of the estrangement between two sisters, badly hurting one of them, while seemingly keeping the other one casually indifferent about what's going on. Each one lives in her own universe, far away from the world of the other one, each one has her own values and perceives the values of the other one as completely alien. Who is right and who is wrong? The story obviously takes sides with the one who's telling the thing. I would say that one is asking for too much while the other doesn't intend to give anything, or simply doesn't notice anything (but who am I to give judgements?) Seemingly it was not like that during their childhood, and the story suggests a nostalgia coming now and then to visit the present, bringing echoes of some golden age in some indefinite past.

Well, with such a painful conflict, there is no much room left for Paris. Though...

Though Jill Rapaport has the gift to say rapidly some essential things about this city (which happens to be also her birthplace). I noticed this also in other works by her. She doesn't need to say hundreds of words about her impressions, be it of Paris, be it of this or that page of history, be it of anything. She is a very quick thinker, and her quick reflections come and go on the page the same as they are passing through her mind. For her, Paris means its Renoiresque courtyards (page 40), the cloudy gray sky like in a watercolor by Derain (page 43), Gertrude Stein's house on 27 Rue de Fleurus, occasion to remember a previous visit with her mom - again a nostalgic echo of  some golden age - she stumbled there by accident, unless her feet had secretly known where to take her (page 45), La Closerie des Lilas, blessed by the memory of past readings from Hemingway and Janet Flanner (page 47). The Paris of Jill Rapaport is actually very present throughout the story: a whole universe presented to us (and to her) in quick essentials.

(Renoir)

(Jill Rapaport)