Writer in Residence

Memoir of a Literary Translator

Non-Fiction - Memoir
180 Pages
Reviewed on 08/04/2011
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    Book Review

Reviewed by Alice DiNizo for Readers' Favorite

Writer in Residence, Memoir of a Literary Translator is the rather raunchy, but totally brilliant, story of the narrator's submergence into the literary, bohemian side of Paris in the late 1990's. At book's beginning, he is into drugs, drinking and eccentric off-the-wall behavior with a host of unique characters: ancient George Whitman, owner of the offbeat Parisian bookstore, Shakespeare and Company; huge Simon, another writer in residence; Fatboy, who sells Shakespeare and Company's books; Madame Twi, who runs a nearby restaurant of sorts; and totally insane Janie, the narrator's love interest of those nutty moments. As the story proceeds, the reader will be acutely aware that the narrator is slowly getting his life in order and is becoming a serious translator of French writers.

Writer in Residence is created in the free flowing style of the beatnik generation, in the off-beat style of William Burroughs and Henry Miller. It is well-written and well-edited, but the casual reader may be put off by the book's rhythm. Once over the shock of free-style Bohemia, any reader will be hooked until book's end. The characters, including the narrator, are well-created, amusing, totally believable and absolutely delightful. Fatboy tells off customers who come unknowingly into Shakespeare and Company. George, who claims to be Walt Whitman's grandson, cooks a goose for Christmas dinner...for five hours at an oven temperature of four hundred degrees. And sad-eyed Byron passes himself off as Jimi Hendrix. Writer in Residence is a book that should not be skipped. It's one man's story of successfully settling into a unique lifestyle.