'Francis Carco embodied the spirit of his age; he was the Paris of the teens, twenties, and thirties. He will always be remembered as the underworld dilettante and latter-day boulevardier who sang of murky thoroughfares and drizzle-dappled pavements, and who solemnized for an entire generation the studied irreverence of the professional outsider, and the velvet crush of the demi-mondial "Life." Carco was at his best in the role of "gutter poet." But he was not merely a celebrant of lowlife, nor was he a moralist, for he did not judge his subjects, but presented them without preachification or prescription. He was simply a gifted poet who etched with words the vicissitudes of the damned and not-so-beautiful inhabitants of society's darkest corners.' -- Gilbert Alter-Gilbert
'Francis Carco (1886–1958) was a French author, born at Nouméa, New Caledonia. He was a poet, belonging to the Fantaisiste school, a novelist, a dramatist, and art critic for L'Homme libre and Gil Blas. During the War he became aviation pilot at Étampes, after studying at the aviation school there. His works are picturesque, painting as they do the street life of Montmartre, and being written often in the argot of Paris. He has been called the "romancier des apaches." His memoir, The Last Bohemia: From Montmartre to the Latin Quarter, contains reminiscences of Bohemian life in Paris during the early years of the twentieth century. He had an affair with Katherine Mansfield in 1915.' -- Wikipedia
Media
(slide show) "Le Doux Caboulot" (1931): Francis Carco - paroles
Jean Ferrat on Francis Carco (in French)
Valérie Ambroise sings 'Il pleut', a song by Francis Carco
Further
'His Last Bohemia: The Novels Of Francis Carco'
'Forgotten on my bookshelf: Francis Carco's Perversity' @ International Noir Fiction
Francis Carco posts @ The Wonderful World of Tam Tam Books
Francis Carco page @ Facebook
Francis Carco bio & info @ aquadesign (in French)
Buy 'Streetcorners'
Buy 'Perversity'
Gallery
portrait of Francis Carco by Maurice Utrillo
Francis Carco first edition
Francis Carco postage stamps
Montmartre during Francis Carco's heyday
Francis Carco visits Prison Saint Lazare
Francis Carco's 'prison' research file
Francis Carco's flat
The books
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Francis Carco StreetcornersGreen Integer
'Streetcorners collects, for the first time in English, a number of Francis Carco’s renowned prose poems, works which defined the Paris scenes of Montmartre and Montparnasse for decades. The translator has brought together sixty pieces that reflect everything from rainy nights in Paris, to the world of music halls, seedy bars, the hairdresser’s, and houses of prostitution.' -- Green Integer
'I just finished reading Streetcorners and it's a very straight forward prose poems on a particular (meaning Paris) location and a slightly sad or regretful mood. It also captures the bar life/cafe scene with the girls and fellow drinkers. It's very beautiful in that it excepts a mood swing that is thoughtful and kind of bluesy. It sort of reminds me of a Bryan Ferry song where the observer is sort of in a so-so mood and is observing the citizens of a neighborhood doing what they do best - having sex, drinking, smoking, and basically walking in the rain. He writes a lot about the essence of rain and how it affects the city visually. ' -- Tosh Berman
Excerpt
It's intermission and everyone steps outside for air. Two bars are lit, active. A throng has spilled onto the street. Nothing can be heard but the sparking and sputtering of striking matches punctuating a haze of cigarette smoke. All of a sudden, this noise subsides. A buzzer goes off and rustling sounds supersede: the audience shuffles back inside. Everyone sits. It's curtain time.
I watch as a heavy-set man appears, wearing a black jacket, black vest, and black cravat. Sinister-looking, he cuts across the stage and through the crowded house, wading among the seats, waving a revolver. Slowly, he loads it in front of us, cocks it, and begins the atrocious pantomime. He has been cleaned out in a card game. Oblivious as a lunatic, he collapses on a chair, crying. But an odious force makes him get to his feet. My eyes are glued to the puffy flesh of his swollen face, his two stubby hands. Some cruel and tragic strength enables him to draw himself up blearily before us, the living embodiment of rank despair, anguished but redoubtable. He spares us nothing, not even the blood which dribbles from his lips when he fires the pistol point blank.
***
It was in a transient hotel, recently, that I saw myself again, shut up in a room, immobilized, not daring to go out at all. Where else would I have hidden myself except in one of these hotels of the basest order, among other anonymous clients of the night? There, passing many nights and days, lying in wait, watching, fully clothed, from behind a door or, at the slightest noise, taking flight over the rooftops, I had been terribly afraid, and I couldn't shake the impression that I stayed there for centuries, perhaps, or that I had successively exhausted several existences which had yielded nothing but poisons to glut a trough already sloshing with disgust, shame, and desolation.
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Francis Carco PerversityBlack Mask
'If Céline had a kid brother ... he would have been a lot like Francis Carco (1886-1958). Carco was regarded as a serious writer in mid-twentieth century France: a winner of the Grand Prix du Roman of The Académie Française, a member of the Académie Goncourt, he was an intimate of Colette, Modigliani, Utrillo, and Cocteau, an integral part of the last Bohemia of Paris and an unflinching portrayer of the street life of Montmartre, often writing in the argot of the Parisian demi-monde. In the U.S. he was published by Berkley Books (35 cents a copy), and marketed as a kind of Gallicized—and hence depraved—Mickey Spillane. Apparently Carco, in his capacity as Katherine Mansfield's lover, gave her syphilis and perhaps the tuberculosis that killed her. His best work is generally regarded to be his novel Perversité, first published in 1928 and translated into English by Jean Rhys (her lover Ford Madox Ford was wrongfully identified as the translator in the first English edition). No less a luminary than Ford himself described Perversity as “a second Madame Bovary.”' -- Peter McLachlin, The Evening Redness in the West
Excerpt
He thought that he was in a place where, notwithstanding Irma's comings and goings, his comfort would be the first consideration. Then one night, towards midnight, he was awakened by an unusual noise. Emile listened. In La Rouque's room a man was talking without troubling to lower his voice, and the girl—far from silencing the speaker—answered with animation. Once or twice Emile heard a laugh, and protested by a grunt.
“He chut! chut!” then said Irma, but too late. Emile was awake. He sat up in bed and asked weakly: “Is this noise going on for long?”
Someone answered at once: “No, no, all right.”
“Annoying people!” grumbled Emile. “Keeping people from sleeping!”
He waited, leaning on his elbow, then plunged into the bedclothes and shut his eyes. But he could not sleep. He tossed and turned, and perhaps for the first time began to picture his sister with a stranger—laughing and talking. He had never till the present moment dwelt on the thought of Irma in her room accomplishing her nightly task. But because he had been disturbed in his sleep, Emile confusedly began to imagine the scene which was taking place on the other side of the partition. He was not shocked. He was irritated, filled with ill temper and discontent. Certainly what Irma did was not his business, but why was she making such a noise? It was intolerable. At this time of night Emile did not admit this loud talking. Were they laughing at him? Did they mean to be personally disagreeable to him?
He grumbled: “If it begins again I'll—”
The idea that they were doing it on purpose was provoking, and he was on the point of telling his sister that she must keep quiet, when a moaning sound, at first almost inaudible, but which grew louder, came from the next room, and Emile knew no more what to think. It was Irma moaning, and to her complaint the creaking of the bed added a cynical and degrading confession.
Then all that had gone before became precise to Emile's eyes, assailed him with such force that he dared ask himself nothing more. “Ah well,” he thought, “well... well... Surely.” His wrath cooled down, and gave place to a feeling of stupor which increased as Irma's sighs became more numerous and hoarser. The sounds reached him through the partition, as in a hospital the panting breath of a sick man dreaming can be heard by the helpless person in the next bed. Emile found himself in an exactly similar situation. He was unable to do anything, and could only wait for La Rouque to stop crying out from the next room her detestable and painful pleasure. Then she sometimes found pleasure? Emile felt humiliated at the idea. And with whom? He was curious about the unknown man. What could he be like? It was extraordinary. Emile could not picture him. The more he thought about it the more complex became his imaginings, his brain accumulating a hundred preposterous, grotesque and unlikely details.
Sometimes he told himself that there could be nothing very special about the individual. Sometimes on the contrary, Emile imagined him with striking features and an air which would force every one to notice him. And this idea was a very painful one. It was tormenting, for in order to react he was unconsciously comparing himself and opposing himself to the unknown. Alas! Emile had never given pleasure to a woman. He had done his best. But no! Never! Never to a single one. He had married two indolent and vulgar creatures: one had frankly disliked “the business,” the other had betrayed him the day after his marriage, and in his own house. Women were a detestable lot. Evidently he could have consoled himself with somebody else, but this he did not dream of doing. He thought far too highly of his own modest person to risk another adventure. The girls of the street did not tempt him. As for the women who awaited his choice in the different brothels of the quarter, the thought of them disgusted instead of pleasing him.
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p.s. Hey. It's Wednesday aka cleaning/exile day, and I'm definitely going to get exiled before I finish this, and I'll definitely be hurrying the p.s. a little so as to try to keep this post fashionably late rather than horribly late, and my apologies. ** Allesfliesst, Yeah, that's what I thought. An adaptation custom made for Ms. Vienne. Plus, I would presumably get to write the adaptation, slurp. We'll see. Btw, I didn't see her yesterday, but I will today vis a vis the DVD. ** David Ehrenstein, Ah, purple corduroy pants ... sigh. So in need of a come-back, those Sirenic babies. Fantastic about the Book Soup event. Larry-bob and Vaginal are two of my favorite people. Larry-bob is a total hero of mine. His book is one of the ones I'm in the middle of reading right now. And Vaginal is a genius, end of story. ** Exile. ** Bernard Welt, Back when guys had long hair, you didn't need girls, ha ha. ** MANCY, Hey. Oh, you have some time to figure it out. That's good. Thanks about 'EAYOR'. Yeah, that Gluck interview is my favorite one I've done. Yeah, thanks, man. ** Jon Reiss, Hi, Jon. The agent hunt is misery. You could try mine, if you want, and I'll put in a good word, but I have to warn you that he has rejected every writer who I've recommended to him in the past seven or more years. Nonetheless, if you want, say the word. Oh, yeah, I think you did mention the Nash interview was up. Can you give me the tumblr address again? I'd love to read it and link the folks here up as well. Mr. Taylor should be a good interview. He tells it straight, in the good sense of straight. There's a documentary about Toby Ross? Wow, I didn't know about that. I'll hunt that down if I can. Cool, thanks, man. ** Jose, That video is awesome and, yeah, fucked up. Everyone, courtesy of Jose, an awesome, weird music video and track by Earl Sweatshirt is highly watchable and right here. Go, yes? Thanks, J. How are you? What's going on? ** Ken Baumann, Oh, cool, yeah, exactly. That my thought on the connection precisely. I should have 'Solip' finished pronto, hooray. Yeah, CB got the nod, and, based on the others in his category, I think he has a really, really good shot at getting handed the statue itself unless there's some kind of 'King's Speech' sweep. Trippy and killer, man. ** Steevee, I figured it was water. You see the doctor today? Well, unless he can dismiss the symptoms as nothing worrisome easily, I guess there's x-rays and all that stuff? I hope it's simple. Let me know. ** Killer Luka, Hey. Yeah, I think my pal might win that thing. Really strange, really nice. But we'll see. Oh, your show there is so soon. That's really cool! Take tons of pix, obviously. No problem on the Skype thing. I'm around here for the next few weeks and then only away for a few days, so just let me know whenever the time's okay on your end. ** Dan, Hi, Dan! Lovely to see you, and thanks much for the congrats. Very cool about the imminent news, obviously! I was going to be in LA in early February, but I can't afford the flight/ trip right now, so it'll be in March sometime. I'll let you know when I've gotten the dates and stuff sorted out, Take care, man! ** Math, Hey. Thanks a lot about Monday's post, pal. Considering what it could have been, the dad and daughter stuff doesn't sound too bad really. Oh, the secret hiding place didn't disappoint. I felt 8 years old and jittery when I saw it. Seeing the lighter is a cool touch. And all that particle board, yum, ha ha. Nice photo sequence. Kudos. Everyone, witness Math's secret hiding place. *Whoosh* That is really depressing news about Lyon-Martin. Really depressing. Ugh. Well, despite it all, happy Wednesday! ** Chilly Jay Chill, Yeah, 'Maria Malibran' is amazing, right? I think you'll like the 'Rose King'. I got into Joris Ivens when I was living in Holland, but I don't remember if I've seen that actual film. He's something. Very Dutch, very odd. And, no, I haven't read that Alisdair Gray novel. It's been a perpetual waiting list entry. I'll move it up to the top, and, if I can score, I'll let you know what I thought. Thanks, Jeff. ** Chris Cochrane, Oh, sorry. I think that happens here more often than I know. Usually when I click links and then come back to the blog and the page has resettled at a new point due to new comments having been added. Anyway, yeah, oops, sorry. Great about the pix weeding with Ish and the music mixing. Seems like things are flying along, although we haven't gotten a hard yes from Utrecht yet, right? I don't know that Haino album by name, but I have a bunch of his stuff on comps, and it might be there somewhere. I'll find out. Want to hear the new Gang of Four obviously. I like the way they're presenting and talking about it. Good day to you, bud. ** Polter, Hi! Yes, we should meet up for sure. Strange sounds good. And I guess I'll take a wet Oslo over a nightmarishly coldone. No, I'm just jetting into Oslo for more or less three days and then heading back here. You're sick? Oh, dang, are you feeling any better this afternoon? I hope so. ** Sypha, 'The Marble Index' is a book too? You said you finished reading it. Is it one of 33 1/3 books, or a separate thing or what? ** Andrew, Sadly, that angel thing is deader than dead. Sad. PF Chang's has excellent-ish cold sesame noodle. I always cut it some slack on that account. Congrats on the Willhelm score. An eBay score? Wow, Willhelm and I are like ... what, cousins? Or it's my nephew? Hm. ** Creative Massacre, Well, yeah, it's cool when you have more than one creative project going on and you can switch between them to match your inspiration of the moment. The novel and theater stuff is like that for me. And kind of the blog too, I guess. I'm down with seeing Saw 3D. I sure would like to see it in 3D though. With 3D movies, do they ever release them in 3D with special glasses or whatever attached? ** Inthemostpeculiarway, I don't think I've ever swum in a lake unless falling off a Jet Ski and scrambling back onto it counts. Rachel Ray in surround sound, ouch. I will tell Yury about that Park Chan-wook iPhone movie. He probably knows already. I think the Mac Rumors site is his homepage. Great about 'Blue Valentine'. Now I just have to wait until France gets its turn. Scissors are cool and fascinating. I once spend a whole LSD trip opening and closing a pair of scissors. True! Oh, yeah, uh, ugh, about the barista. Maybe he's ... bi-? You never know. Maybe he was flirting with them because he thought it was an amusingly camp thing to do? I'm sorry, man. You just never know, though. But, yeah, *hugs*. 'Flowers in the Attic'! I loved that book whenever I read it a long time ago, so no need to defend it to me. My day: It turned out to be pretty good for me because, in the early afternoon, my editor at HP sent me his edit of my novel to read through and fix or agree with or not agree with. And he said they were working on ideas for the cover. So, I can only imagine that means my novel has been officially accepted, and that they just forgot to tell me. Anyway, that was a big relief. Plus, his edit is really minor and light with no big problems at all. So, yay! I spent part of the afternoon going over the edit, and I'm going to finish it and hopefully send it back to him today. That was enough to make it a very swell day. Otherwise, I was supposed to see Gisele, but she got caught up in a bunch of technical stuff, so I'm seeing her later today instead. I had a coffee with the less jet lagged but still a bit spacey Kiddiepunk and Oscar, and that was nice, and we made some plans. In the evening, I had dinner with my agent, his boyfriend, and this guy named Oliver who's a food critic for the New York Times and other big places. We were supposed to eat at this brand new, super trendy restaurant designed by Rem Koolhaas whose name I can't remember, but, when we got there, there was a three hour wait, so we went to a favorite restaurant of mine, Passage Oblige in the Marais, instead, and I think the food critic guy felt all snotty and pooh-pooh about it not being a trendy enough place, but he kept his mouth shut. The dinner was talky and nice. My agent's boyfriend is a pretty well known writer/ journalist named Bob Morris, and he's covering fashion week for Elle Magazine while they're here, so he was telling us fashion world gossip and stuff that I guess I'd better not repeat, but it involved Kate Moss, Rhianna, Chanel, and some other famous types. My agent and I talked about my novel, and he was strategizing about how to get it ink and all that stuff like agents do. Then it got kind of late, so I came back here via the metro and pretty much crashed. That was my day. I'll go see what today is, and you tell me what today was. ** Misanthrope, I like that joke. I'll tell it to Jonathan Capdevielle, who's just about the world's biggest Lady Gaga fan. Oops, about the sleep pattern relapse. Get back on the regular horse, man. Get back on there and ride. Yeah, I liked the tallest building thing, I just hate everything Trump stands for, no surprise. That 'LA as the rudest city' thing -- I read that too -- is such complete and utter bullshit that I can barely deem to address that ridiculous accusation. That's just bogus. As is Paris' rude reputation. Nonsense. ** Daphne, Hi, sorry. I'll try to get that to you in the next day or so. I won't space out this time. Sorry. ** Oscar B, 5 am? Oops. Whoa, you finished that mysterious project? You have to tell me more and all about that later or something. Everyone, the distinguished artist, d.l., and my neighbor Oscar B has 'recently finished a project I'd been working on for 2 years, and I say more about it on my blog, so I wanted to share here on DC's, if you like.' I'm going to take a wild guess and guess that you do like. You certainly should. Oscar rules! Click that once, now, and firmly please. I'll call you in just a bit. ** Jeff, It made total sense to me. I didn't even need to blink. Gracias. Well, I'd be interested to hear the background stuff, of course. I don't think you get too antagonistic here. Maybe in some the posts that get deleted before I see them? You're just forthright in my opinion, and there's absolutely nothing wrong with that. ** Postitbreakup, Hey. Oh, LHotB is going just fine, thank you. Two new titles will be out any second. The future is a bit more cloudy, but it should be less cloudy soon. 'Userlands' is still in print, yes. All of the 'LHotB' books are in print. That is definitely a story that would stick with one forever. Its remake in your story has certainly stuck with me through what there is of eternity so far. ** Bollo, Hey. 'Big city'. Cool that it's a 'big city' to you now. Or seemingly cool. Charming at the very least. Which DFW short fiction collection did you buy? I'm going on a Walshe hunt today, so I'll let you know if I come up empty. Nice about the new bill pieces. Would love to get a glimpse when the time is right. ** Okay, this isn't showing up too, too late, I guess. The post: Well, Carco is yet another really interesting writer and figure whom most of you may not have heard of before and whom I would like you to become aware of. That's the long and short of it, basically, I guess. Give him a look and a read please. Until tomorrow, fare thee well.
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