Journalist comes from Paris with a new book
GREENWICH — From North America to Austria, powerful rivers, the light and color they emit and the life they sustain are a universal current running under famous books, songs and paintings.
Novelist Mark Twain memorialized life on the Mississippi, while artist Thomas Cole depicted the Hudson and founded the Hudson River School. Austrian composer Johann Strauss dedicated a waltz to the Danube.
Author and former Paris bureau chief for the New York Times Elaine Sciolino dedicated her newest book to the Seine in Paris.
“The Seine: The River That Made Paris” begins with how she fell in love with the iconic river and how it gave her life meaning, and becomes a journey from its source in eastern France to where it merges with the sea 777 kilometers to the west.
Sciolino is coming to Greenwich on Wednesday as part of a twomonth road trip of the U.S., a feat she admitted makes no sense. She will be discussing her book in an event presented by the Greenwich Alliance Française at the Greenwich Arts Council.
The discussion begins at 7 p.m. and is followed by a book signing and wine tasting. The cost for members is $35 and $50 for nonmembers, and includes a signed hardcover of the book.
“I’m literally going any place where I have family and friends, at my expense, because I so believe in this book and want to share the joy with anyone who is interested,” she said.
In a world of tragedy and sadness, Sciolino said that with this book, she wants to spread a little bonheur, a little happiness that she has gleaned from her chance encounters, countless interviews and years of research for “The Seine.”
Readers will meet a pilot who drives a bateaux mouche, or river boat, a houseboat dweller, a champagne producer with vineyards bordering the Seine, the Woody Allen filmmaker who filmed “Midnight in Paris,” and booksellers, all of whom are connected to the mighty river flowing through Paris.
“You think you know Paris? You think you know France?” Sciolino said. “Hold my hand on this journey and I will show you a cruise on this river that will reveal many secrets.”
“The Seine” is a labor of love that took almost three years to research and write, compared with her other five books, which took between one and oneandahalf years. At this point, Sciolino can safely say she owns every book that has been written about the Seine.
While these are in abundance, few cover the entire Seine, from its little springs that bubble up from the surface to the river that sustains oceangoing vessels. Whole books are dedicated to its bridges, or to how Claude Monet painted the Seine.
“It has many identities — that made it more challenging,” she said. “It truly was an intense, intense research endeavor.”
It is also intensely personal. “The Seine” begins when the life Sciolino had built with a husband fell apart. They divorced after five years, divvying up the BMW, the Wedgwood china, the antique brass bed frame and the furniture, and she moved to Paris from Chicago to write for Newsweek’s Paris bureau.
It was a fresh start, but not one without bumps and bouts of loneliness. Her daily walk home became a source of respite from anxiety and loneliness, a time to stop along the Pont d’Alma to take in the Seine’s steady course, the lives connected to the river, its energy and light.
“The Seine became part of my survival,” she said.
Sciolino’s love affair with the Seine bubbles up when she talks about the river, the power it has to draw people together for a kiss or a dance along its banks. But she knows its salvific and romantic power can also be dangerous and sad, as the river has been a final resting place for people who committed suicide.
“It’s largely a very exciting, but very happy river,” she said. “But there are people over time who have committed suicide. It does happen. It is a part of the narrative: There is tragedy as well as joy.”
By the end of the book, Sciolino said people will want to jump on a plane and fly to France. There, they may find she only scratched the surface.
The ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus said, “You can never step in the same river twice, for it is not the same river and you are not the same person.”
For Sciolino, this line holds the secret of the Seine.
“It is forever changing — widening, deepening, reflecting, twisting, shriveling from too little rain, overflowing its banks,” she writes in the last pages of her books. “But it always moves forward.”