FYI France: a "City of Books" in France
I hear tales of a "City of Books", in France -- "Montolieu,
Village du Livre et des Arts Graphiques" -- organized along lines
similar to those of Hay - on - Wye in England.
The idea appears to be to create a "safe haven" for books and for
the lovers of books. In this tiny French village (current
permanent population 786), located in a picturesque spot, people
who really like to read and who enjoy printed books for doing
their reading can go for a weekend, a week, or a more extended
visit, and eat some good food, stay in quaint inns, browse
bookstores, take walks in the country, enjoy picnics, read...
Montolieu has a museum of the history of the book:
The Muse'e Michel Braibant
"The Museum of the Arts and Crafts of the book was
created at the initiative of Michel Braibant, bookbinder
and fervent bibliophile, who in the realisation of his
project gave generously from his notable personal
collection of graphic arts. Per the wishes of the donor
the Museum aims to be a living place, in which the
history of writing and of its different media, and of the
printing press, may be retraced, and where the teaching
activity so dear to Michel Braibant may be pursued.
The museum is composed of several parts:
* The Earliest Writings and Their Media
(clay, papyrus, parchment or paper)
* Typography, and Different Modes of Composition
* The Various Printing Machines
(monotype, linotype, handpress, pedalpress,
automatic and cylinder presses)
* Lithography
* The Tools of Bookbinders and Engravers"
a welcome addition to Lyon's excellent Muse'e de l'Imprimerie --
http://www.bm-lyon.fr/musee/imprimerie.htm -- France needs more.
And there are places to stay in Montolieu --
"Chambre d'ho^tes
Le Bousquet - Jacqueline et Rene' AGASSE
Le Bousquet - Emma et Gilles BOYER
La Manufacture Royale - Marc Guillet
Le Cafe' du livre - Lucia Stuart
La Grange - Mme Burtet
Gi^tes
Les Marronniers - Mme Bernou
La Manufacture Royale - Marc Guillet
Peyremale - Annie et Jean Pierre Pautou"
and to camp --
"Camping des oliviers - M. Lons"
plus more in surrounding villages -- and Carcassonne and
Castelnaudary and even Toulouse are not all that far away,
depending on whether you figure driving speeds in Languedoc -
Roussillon or California styles (Toulouse is 90km, or not much
over 1/2 hour on the autoroute if your driver is French).
And you can eat --
"A Montolieu
Le flore'al : Place de l'e'glise
Cafe' du livre : Rue de la Mairie
Cafe' du Commerce : Place des Tilleuls
A Pezens
Le Re'verbe`re : Route de Toulouse
A Saint Denis
Le Vieux Panier
A Brousses et Villaret
La Cascade
A Villepinte
Aux Deux Acacias : RN113..."
and eating should be no problem anyway, in this part of the world
-- as a Guide Michelin Rouge tour for the Toulouse - Carcassonne
stretch will take many visits to work through -- see,
http://www2.michelin-travel.com/eng/sommaire.cgi?Flash=Oui
(Now you can get your Guide Michelin on your Palm Pilot, or maybe
somehow on your bright new car computer if you are navigating
with one of those -- see URL above.)
There even is a hand paper mill near Montolieu -- any "art of the
book" purist will insist that you _must_ know about the paper...
Moulin a` Papier de Brousses
11390 Brousses et Villaret
"Un peu d'histoire.
En 1674, le versant sud de la montagne noire figurait
parmi les centres papetiers les plus fameux de la
province du Languedoc. En 1845, Brousses comptait encore
une dizaine de moulins en activite'.
Aujourd'hui.
Le moulin a` papier de Brousses perpe'tue l'activite'
papetie`re en un lieu qu'elle occupe depuis 4 sie`cles.
C'est un muse'e vivant qui met en valeur les techniques
anciennes et les moteurs hydrauliques.
Visites tous les jours (dure'e 1 heure)
Programme.
Visite commente'e :
* Histoire du papier et de sa fabrication.
* De'couverte de machines anciennes (meuleton,
pile hollandaises identiques a` celles des
planches des encyclope'distes) et de syste`mes
hydrauliques (turbine et roue a` aubes).
* De'monstration de fabrication de papier a` la
forme a` main."
And Montolieu has _bookshops_ ! -- this is a town with a total
population only a little larger than a famille nombreuse --
Les Librairies
* Aline'a: Rue du 8 mai 1945
http://www.alinealivres.com,
http://perso.wanadoo.fr/alinea.bouquiniste/
* Galerie des bouquinistes: Impasse de la Manufacture
http://www.lachouette.com
* Des Livres et Vous: Rue Saint Andre'
* Booth Books: Place Jean Gue'henno
* Le Bateau Ivre: Place des Tilleuls
http://www.montagnenoire.com/bateau-ivre.html
* Le Tournefeuille: Rue des Remparts
http://www.livre-rare-book.com/Matieres/tournefeuille.htm
* Le Dilettante: Impasse du Ferradou
http://www.multimania.com/dilettante
* L'Ile Lettre'e: Rue Saint Andre'
* Ode au livres: Rue de la Mairie
* Aathon-l'Oiseau Livre: Rue du 8 Mai 1945
http://pro.wanadoo.fr/l.oiseau.livre/
* The English Bookshop: Rue de la Mairie
http://www.abebooks.com/home/EnglishBookShop
* Clio: Rue de la Mairie
* Voyelles: Rue Nationale
(more...)
And Montolieu has Websites --
http://www.montolieu.net/http://fr.news.yahoo.com/quid/m_8364.htmlhttp://www.atelierdulivre.net/ (for kids!)
http://www.audetourisme.com/pagesR/index.htmhttp://perso.wanadoo.fr/chambrehotes.bousquet/http://www.lachouette.com/
I haven't been to Montolieu myself -- I would like very much to
hear more from those who have -- but I do know the area:
Montolieu (see also Montoulieu?) appears to be a tiny town /
hamlet in the hills of the Aude, in the valley of the Garonne,
sort of midway between Carcassone and Castelnaudary and on the
route up to Toulouse -- the Languedoc - Roussillon. According to
the "City of Books" main Website,
"Montolieu s'accroche sur un e'peron rocheux entre deux
rivie`res, l'Alzeau et la Dure, au pied de la montagne
noire, versant sud, dans un petit terroir appelle' le
Cabarde`s. Le village se situe a` 17 km au Nord Ouest de
Carcassonne, a` 90 km de Toulouse, a` 70 km de la mer
Me'diterrane'e, et a` 100 km des Pyre'ne'es."
This is the land of the Cathars -- Le Roy Ladurie's
"Montaillou" is over on the other side of the valley. Yahoo.fr
(URL above) says that Montolieu offers,
"Fondation de l'abbaye be'ne'dictine de Saint-Jean de
Valsiger en l'an 800, ba^tie a` proximite' du cha^teau de
Mallast. S'appelait a` l'origine "Villa Siguarii", devenu
par la suite Valsiger (la valle'e su^re); prit le nom
actuel en 1146 parce qu'il marquait la limite de la
culture de l'olivier. Bourg fortifie'. Important centre
industriel au 17e`me; comptait pre`s de 4,000 habitants. "
So Montolieu has been a "safe haven" before: the Cathars, the
Benedictines, and the Visigoths as well I imagine, a "bourg
fortifie'", a population reduction at some point of nearly 4000
people -- "la valle'e su^re" indeed.
Travel in France is filled with this sort of history of
insecurity, for a comfortable Californian: how these warm people
stay so friendly, in hard little villages perched on hilltops and
surrounded by strong doors and thick walls -- is endlessly
fascinating, particularly for someone raised in sprawling cities
laid out on suburban grids which have no horizon. Even if the
supply of electric power _is_ more "secure", at the moment, in
Montolieu than it is in San Francisco...
You get a sense of why this human warmth continues in the
springtime, in the south of France. Few places are colder than a
small, stone, European town in the winter: visit Pe'rouges, a
little fortified place in the Ain near Lyon, and you'll see how
forbidding a French village can be in a cold winter rain -- but
when the little allotment gardens near the town wall began to
bloom in the Pe'rouges spring, and roses start to creep around
corners and blossom by surprise in front of windows, and
wildflowers come up through the cobblestones -- and crocuses --
you begin to get the idea. The same "warming" effect simply can't
be had in a land of perpetual springtime like California.
The atmosphere in which one shops for a book used to be
important. "Telegraph Avenue", "The Village", "Whalley Avenue and
Broadway", "Blackwell's", "Charing Cross Road" and "Foyles", "the
Boulevard St. Michel"... each of us has a place where we teethed
on printed books -- places all somehow inevitably equipped with
nearby cafes, stationery stores for pens and pencils and
notebooks for that irrepressible thought, little parks, long
walking routes, and happy memories.
The recollection of the later shock which most of us confronted,
shortly after this earliest blissful period, trying to read a
book in an uncongenial milieu, still grates with some -- no way
you can browse through poetry or read a short story in a traffic
jam, or changing a diaper, or grocery shopping, or waiting for a
tense business meeting -- no way you can read a book in a bank.
Digital information is learning this lesson slowly. Even for the
bits and the bytes the presentation is important, the Internet is
finding: whether this is called "interface design" or
"ergonomics" -- or "architecture", or Steve Jobs' latest flavor
in IMac colors -- the "place" where human - machine interaction
occurs, in the new digital world, is becoming as critical as the
digits in it.
The computer world's and the Internet's earliest "command line" /
"any color so long as it's black" approach has yielded -- at best
reluctantly, and for the most part kicking and screaming -- to a
preoccupation with "user - friendliness", reminiscent less of
technology and engineering departments than it is, now, more of
techniques used to sell cars and perfume, and the movies.
This trend is better seen in Europe than it is in the US, where
omnipresent "computers" can inhabit any cluttered and unsanitary
"office" or "den" or "bedroom" or "briefcase" or "workplace": in
Europe, where they still have far fewer "pcs", a good Internet
Cafe' in London or Paris or Lyon does its utmost to present the
very latest in shocking / exciting architecture and interior
design, with all the creature comforts of elegant lounge chairs,
coffee and drinks and even food service, "ambient" music and
lighting -- "the Internet experience", versus "just pounding on
the computer" as in the US.
And yes there may be more of this, rather than less as has been
predicted. Computer "penetration" numbers for the European market
still are increasing. But, as rapidly, the paradigm for what
constitutes "a computer" in digital information is changing,
everywhere. The Europeans and the Asians have fallen in love with
handheld telephones, for example, far more than Americans have.
Its current "market downturn" troubles notwithstanding, the
handheld -- an extremely fashion - oriented, faddish, fungible -
commodity - phenomenon very unlike the utilitarian "computer" in
the US -- may become the medium of choice for much of digital
information, at least in Europe and Asia.
And then there is the "Infotainment" industry, which currently
seems to be swallowing the Internet whole, in the US as well as
elsewhere: the new AOL Time Warner already is flooding the
world's DSL hookups with "content" presented very differently
from anything which the old "command line ASCII" ever could have
accommodated or even imagined -- try fitting today's Lara Croft /
Tomb Raider / Angelina Jolie movie trailer, or a Christina
Aguilera "bump 'n grind" video, into the old "acceptable use
restrictions" mindset...
Or, simply for book - buying, consider the loving care and
attention to detail lavished upon the leading Websites in the
retail book industry alone -- La FNAC online, and Amazon - dot -
whatever, and the rest -- these people pay a great amount of
attention, now, within the limits of their medium, to
"atmosphere" and "milieu". The minutely exact positioning of more
than just banner ads, plus the extreme details of fonts and
colors and layout and general graphic design, are as much the
interest of Web designers nowadays as they ever were of the early
printers -- more, perhaps -- Yahoo!'s confraternity with Aldus
Manutius extends to more than simply the attempt to organize all
the world's knowledge, now, as the presentation of that knowledge
has become an overriding concern.
So the atmosphere in which one reads is important -- reading
requires a receptive mind. Think of the times when you have had
to read a thing again, then still again over and over, never
understanding or even seeing the text which you have read --
words, words, words... -- and all that time you instead were
thinking about your date for that evening, or your basketball
game, or whether global warming really will melt the planet, or
you just weren't thinking...
Some of us (I am one) fall asleep in libraries, others can read
nothing in a crowded cafe', still others (me again) need the
background "white noise" of a cafe' in order to focus clearly on
a difficult text -- whole generations of New Yorkers absorbed
chemistry, and Proust, riding in to class on the very noisy "el"
subways -- and still others need to lie beneath an apple tree to
read a book, while some of us just snooze there. The ambiance
makes a difference.
Whether the ambiance of a picturesque little village in southern
France is the best for appreciating, browsing, selecting,
savoring the printed book seems to me a highly - personal
decision -- I myself favor noisy boulevards and cafes in big
cities, others may prefer quiet libraries, still others that
legendary "sunny day beneath an apple tree".
For digital information, well, "computer" screens -- even the
"non - glare" kind -- tend to reflect glare when you try to use
them beneath sunny day apple trees, and so I imagine do the
screens on ebook readers and handheld telephones; and just try
bringing your handheld into a library sometime, where "shh" isn't
the only reaction you'll get if one of its melodies goes off in
the "reading" room; and while noisy cafe's are pretty good, and
certainly are used, for most "laptops" and "handhelds" -- cafe'
noise being greatly the result of the latter, nowadays -- there
must be better places.
The point here being, generally, that "place" matters -- for
digital information as much as for the printed book. These people
in Montolieu are working hard to create a "place" for printed
books, as people in the Internet cafe's are working hard to
create a "place" for digital information: and the newest and
latest libraries, for example the one residing in the BnF's new
structure at Tolbiac, arguably are "places" for both -- an
atmosphere / milieu in which the minds of users will be most
receptive to both the information presented on a screen and / or
that presented on a printed page.
It is questionable, I think myself, whether this "sense of place"
problem really has been well thought out, in any of these areas
-- especially considering the great variety of information users,
and the vast range of "place" alternatives which they find most
congenial.
But at least Montolieu appears to present one finely - worked
alternative for "reading", as perhaps the BnF with its cavernous
reading rooms at Tolbiac presents another. When they also
integrate into reading's "sense of place" that noisy cafe' at the
corner of the Boul' Mich, on the quai looking out over the Seine,
they will have made everybody happy.
--oOo--
FYI France (sm)(tm) e-journal ISSN 1071 - 5916
*
| FYI France (sm)(tm) is a monthly electronic
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| personal experiment, in the creation of large-
| scale "information overload", by Jack Kessler.
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all rights reserved except as indicated above.
--hjlm--