Kiss Me Again, Paris A Memoir - Softcover

Stendhal, Renate

4.53

34 ratings by Goodreads

9780985977382: Kiss Me Again, Paris A Memoir

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0985977388 ISBN 13: 9780985977382

Publisher: IF SF Publishing, 2017

View all copies of this ISBN edition:

Award-Winner in the LGBTQ: Non-Fiction category of the 2018 International Book Awards
NOMINATED for a 2018 LAMBDA LITERARY AWARD in the LESBIAN MEMOIR category.
Finalist for 2018 Best Book Awards in the LGTBQ Non-Fiction category

With 130 evocative vintage photographs
Winner of a 2016 WNBA Award, juried by Deirdre Bair.
From Paris's famous opera house to its gossip-rich salons,KISS ME AGAIN, PARIS celebrates youth at the end of the 1970s, when women werein fashion and every woman, gay or straight, fell in love with women.

Author Renate Stendhal ekes out a living as a culturaljournalist in Europe's most cultured city. She walks Paris at night dressed asa boy, has friends and lovers among artists and writers, and falls under the spellof the mercurial actress Claude, who has all of Paris talking. At the sametime, she finds herself in the crosshairs of an alluring stranger who seems toappear everywhere and nowhere at once. There are mysteries with and withoutclues. Is sexual obsession a way to avoid the risk of love?

Filled with sensuality, style, romance, and suspense,Stendhal plays with the concept of memoir as a genre and transports the readerto another time and place. No matter what age you are, you'll be young and inlove again when you reach the last page.

Includes 130 vintage photographs.

"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.

About the Author:

Renate Stendhal is the award-winning author of the photo biography Gertrude Stein: In Words and Pictures. After growing up in Berlin and Hamburg, she lived in Paris for almost two decades, pursuing ballet and underground theater, translating American women authors and writing cultural reviews for the German radio and press. Stendhal has published several books in Germany and in the United States, three of them co-authored with her life companion Kim Chernin. Her articles and essays have appeared internationally. She has a passion for country living with Kim, two dogs, and a small orchard, and she still loves to opine about opera and ballet, reviewing culture for diverse magazines.

Review:

"Renate Stendhal's daring new book throbs with the pulse of Paris in the 1970s. Written with verve, this book captures the sense of erotic excitement that Paris continues to inspire."--Marilyn Yalom, author of How the French Invented Love and The Social Sex

"Most memories fade to smoldering embers. Renate Stendhal's recollections have remained a bonfire. The tapestry of her remembrances had their genesis in her rejection of a former life and the embrace of a new authentic one. Details of her years living in Paris during the '70s are carved into her psyche. She takes us with her to the cafes where the fragrance of a passing woman would turn heads. We hear the murmur of the Seine. We see the dark shadows under a bridge and the glow of a cigarette as a rouged mouth draws on it. There's an old adage that says memories worth remembering are remembered. Whoever coined this must have had Renate Stendhal in mind."--Anna Hamilton Phelan, screenwriter of Mask, Gorillas in the Mist, and Girl, Interrupted

"The thing about Renate Stendhal, for the reader of this book, is that she feels Paris in every fiber of her being. And she is able to carry the reader with her into all these delicious places, some well known and some known to few. The great thing is to relax and let her take you. It is a memorable journey."--Hugh Van Dusen, executive editor (for 60 years), HarperCollins

"Never has a memoir enraptured me as completely as Kiss Me Again, Paris... Every intricate detail [the author] dives into came alive before my eyes, not just through her masterful prose, but through the gorgeous pictures scattered throughout the memoir... The specificity in the detail is astounding, and the decadence in the language will leave you begging to read more." --Lesbrary

"[Stendhal's] memoir is notable for a variety of reasons: it's a window into the gay female melee of the moment, and she has a particular way of recalling her encounters with luminaries. Some she names outright, like Meret Oppenheim and Pina Bausch; others' identities she keeps under wraps. It's a tactic that places the book in a category Stendhal playfully refers to as memoir � clef, a twist on the roman � clef: a novel with 'keys' to uncovering the real in the fictional."--Autostraddle

"Kiss Me Again, Paris is a walk down the dark alleys you always wanted to explore. Stendhal serves up a banquet of the machinations and inner lives of artists in a city that loves and reveres its creatives, a city that while high minded always seems to make room for the struggling. Stendhal shows us what it feels like to reinvent not simply one's career, but one's identity, nationality, shifting loyalties. With her, we explore a sexuality that, at turns, supports, taunts, inspires, intrigues and beleaguers. As a risk taking dancer and an art critic, Stendhal's exploration of her own creative process and of the egos, motivations and manipulations of the artists around her gives us a view of Paris few have seen.
With beautiful and inspired prose, we follow her down those dark alleys, into those bedrooms, art openings, wild parties, bars and cafes to not just 'see' but to feel what it was to live an artist's life in the city of our imagination and dreams. It's not all roses but it's deep! Bravo! to this already known and brilliant author!" - GoodReads

"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.