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Crisp, magical language worth revisiting
Book Review
By Derryll White
Richardson, C.S. (2012). The Emperor of Paris.
I was immeasurably pleased and excited to get an advanced copy of C.S. Richardson’s new book. His first volume, ‘The End of the Alphabet,’ was one of the most touching books I have read in a very long time. I always wondered if the impact of ‘The End of the Alphabet’ might have been as a result of very difficult personal circumstances when I first read it. But I have read it twice more and was moved to both tears and laughter each time. So I am delighted to have the opportunity to take an early look at ‘The Emperor of Paris.’
C.S. Richardson opens his new volume with a quote from the Moderniste French poet Charles Baudelaire, which says in part: “The lover of life makes the whole world into his family, just as the lover of the fair sex creates his from all the lovely women he has found, from those that could not be found, and those who are impossible to find….”
At the point of reading that I paused, thought “oh shit, this is the illusion I have lived my whole life in,” and went and took the phone off the hook. I poured a glass of Rosemount Shiraz (2003) and settled in to be again enthralled.
Richardson plays with memory, with history that could have been. There is no absolute story of the meeting of Emile the baker and his wife Immaculate. There are simply infinite possibilities lovingly explored in crisp, magical language.
Like Baudelaire, Richardson uses a musical poetic prose to explore the moral complexity and imagist nature of a simple baker who creates a whole world. I will read ‘The Emperor of Paris’ again and again, also with my phone off the hook and the close comfort of a glass of good wine.
Excerpts from the novel:
FIRE – Smoldering flakes begin to blossom in the heavy air, sliding over slumped shoulders, resting for a moment on shoe tops, dying tiny shriveled deaths in the street. There are glimpses here and there: a sentence, a phrase, a doomed word drifts by.
WEATHER – A December wind armed with ice and knives gathered its skirts in a northern sea. It stepped ashore near Calais, dithered before finding the Paris road, moaned its way south through thick and ancient forests, entered the town of Beauvais along the high street, paused in front of the cathedral, circled the market square, then lifted its frozen hems and slipped uninvited under the door of the town’s only clothing shop.
POSSIBILITIES – On their way home she would ask her father where the luggage had come from. The brass-riveted trunks, the leather wardrobes as tall as she was, the hatboxes decorated as though they were birthday cakes.
How much could all that hold, Papa?
A world entire her father would say. The likes which you and I will never see.
– Derryll White once wrote books but now chooses to read and write about them. When not reading he writes history for the web at www.basininstitute.org.
