#TT – Writing Across Genres

“Look me up whenever you come to Paris.”

That’s what famed author Edmund White said to me when we met at an awards banquet in D.C. in the late 80s. I was frazzled in the 90-degree heat that weekend and not prepared to meet an author I admired so much. He was the very first person I saw as I walked into the banquet and I probably gushed when I told him how much I admired his work.

White surprised me with his very specific praise for a story I’d contributed to the anthology Men on Men 2, a story that would become the title piece of my first collection a year later. Both the story and the collection would help get me national recognition, earn me scores of reviews, and start a series of book tours that ultimately led to readings on three different continents.

White meant what he said. My spouse and I did look him up a few years later on a trip to France. We were taking advantage of a great exchange rate and basing ourselves in Paris for three weeks, planning day trips. When we asked White at dinner what we should make a point of seeing that tourists tended to miss, he didn’t hesitate: Vaux-le-Vicomte, whose official website is here.

I had never heard of this chateau only an hour’s drive from Paris. The team of artistic geniuses involved in building it for Louis XIV’s superintendent of finances, Nicolas Foucquet, was the same trio who later designed and built Versailles and its gardens. White assured us of two things. Versailles was mammoth and would be teeming with busloads of loud and cranky tourists (he wasn’t exaggerating). Vaux was more jewel-like and he’d be surprised if we would find more than a few dozen people touring the chateau and its exquisite grounds.

He was right. The day we visited was sunny, and like Charles Ryder in Brideshead Revisited, we were “drowning in honey” as we moved from one amazing room filled with gorgeous paintings, sculptures, furnishings to another–and then out into the gardens to enjoy elegant vistas that seemed almost too perfect to be real.

That day and White’s advice came back to this week when I read the biography above of Foucquet, who was tried on a trumped-up charge of treason and for various financial crimes by the young king. Louis XIV wasn’t just jealous that Foucquet had the most beautiful dwelling in France, he was out to flex his muscles and show other rulers who was in charge in France. He was also moved by people scheming against Foucquet for complicated reasons that would make for a great miniseries. Foucquet’s long imprisonment in a remote fortress reads like chapters from The Count of Monte Cristo.

But despite his ignominious last years, he left behind a monument of architecture, painting, and landscape gardening that some call the most beautiful building in France. Even rooms with a less-than-august purpose were magnificent: Vaux was one of the first chateaux to have a dining room.

©Sylvia Davis

Like millions of other Americans, I’ve had cabin fever for weeks now, but this biography opened up an unforgettable day for me, one that happened thirty years ago. It sent me to a closet where I keep my travel photo albums—remember those? I hadn’t thought of them in years and realized now that each one is a doorway to another life, another time, and a very welcome escape.

Lev Raphael is the prize-winning author author of 27 books in genres from memoir to mystery. He offers individualized writing workshops and manuscript editing at writewithoutborders.com.

Twitter Vive la France! photo below: (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

Bruges and Ghent were never on my radar until my first trip to Paris when I came across a travel magazine with a big section on Bruges and the amazing canals had me spellbound. I didn’t get there as soon as I hoped (author book tours in Germany sidetracked me), but when I did, it outshone my fantasies. My timing made it possible to see the famous Holy Blood Procession that had been going on there since medieval times.

In Bruges, my wonderful B&B host and I discussed other cities in Flanders and she dismissed Ghent as not up to the standard of Bruges. She thought that it was worth—at the very most—a day trip. That was also apparently what her other guests told her after visiting Ghent.

Having spent a week there myself, I don’t agree. Bruges is magnificent, thanks to its death in the 14th century as a port city and to being relatively untouched by war through the centuries. The core of the city is beautifully preserved, and the further you get from the crowds, the more tranquil you find it. But it’s definitely “preserved” and in many ways feels like a giant museum.

Ghent on the other hand is a very dynamic city. It has its fair share of canals and gorgeous buildings, as well as ancient churches and beautiful art. Bruges has the Michelangelo Madonna and Child, Ghent has the Van Eyck altarpiece. I think it’s a draw there, and the same goes for the food. I ate just as well in each city, savoring Flemish/Belgian specialties like waterzooi, carbonnade, vol-au-vent, moules-frites, stoemp, and of course made only a tiny dent in the amazing variety of amazing beers (there are apparently over 1,000).

Where Ghent outweighs Bruges for me is the fact that it’s a university town that’s friendly, entertaining, and alive. Ghentians call their home “The City of Trust and Love” and I found that attitude in people of all ages.

There’s a reason Belgian novelist Georges Rodenbach wrote a book called Bruges-la-Morte (Dead Bruges). Bruges might be more picturesque, but Ghent is livelier and, perhaps best of all, attracts fewer tourists. Not surprisingly, it’s widely called one of Europe’s hidden gems.

Lev Raphael is the author of two dozen books in genres from memoir to mystery, and is currently working on a novel set in Ghent.