Scan barcode
abbie_'s review
The premise is nice, a ‘nano-autobiography’ about French author Julia Kerninon’s passion for reading and writing, looking back to where it all started and how it progressed through her life. But there was some parts that jumped out as insensitive that left a bad taste, such as the author casually mentioning ‘violently punching’ her boyfriend and calling a love of order ‘slightly autistic’.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Domestic abuse
Minor: Ableism
arirang's review
4.0
In my family, no one had ever earned enough money to have any faith in it, so they didn’t believe in money, they believed in travel, poetry, material simplicity, they believed that literature was a respectable occupation.
A Respectable Occupation is the translation by Ruth Diver of French novelist Julia Kerninon’s une activité respectable (2017). It is the 13th books from the wonderful publisher Les Fugitives “an independent literary press that publishes contemporary francophone writers of fiction, non-fiction and everything in between, with an emphasis on first English translations of works by authors previously unpublished in the UK.” My reviews of all 13 can be found here: https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/3250759-paul-fulcher?ref=nav_mybooks&shelf=les-fugitives&sort=position
In her foreword to this English edition Lauren Elkin writes:
Kerninon published the book when she was aged 30 and a couple of years after her first novel, Buvard.
This is a slim (only 57 page) love letter to reading (in the shower, through the streaming water, I would out all the printed words, read the shampoo labels) and to writing books, and a non-linear biography of how she became an author. It begins with a childhood visit to one of the most famous, and magical, bookships in the world with her mother, both her parents schoolteachers:
At the age of five and a half, I struck a deal with my father. In the first of a long and lucrative series of contracts, I agreed to stop sucking my thumb in exchange for a return trip to the capital. And yet it was my mother who took me — in my memory anyway, it was just the two of us there when she stopped suddenly in front of a building not far from Notre-Dame and made me read out the sign of Shakespeare and Company.
This isn’t a guide to particular books, although Kerninon did provide six key texts to the website Albertine (https://www.albertine.com/bookshelf/julia-kerninon/), starting with Birthday Letters by Ted Hughesm which does feature in the text, but also featuring one of my favourite authors,the 3rd part of Thomas Bernhard's autobiography Der Keller. Eine Entziehung:
"Bernhard taught me everything: how to work, to leave, to endure, to hate, to immerse myself into art, to be a mother."
Kerninon concludes her account here:
I spend my life reading books to put things back in place, to unfold myself, its like softly singing into my own ear to wake myself up.
Recommended
Interview with the author:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8N2rUYLS-Os&feature=youtu.be
Reading from the translator:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cRtsF8kZaf8
A Respectable Occupation is the translation by Ruth Diver of French novelist Julia Kerninon’s une activité respectable (2017). It is the 13th books from the wonderful publisher Les Fugitives “an independent literary press that publishes contemporary francophone writers of fiction, non-fiction and everything in between, with an emphasis on first English translations of works by authors previously unpublished in the UK.” My reviews of all 13 can be found here: https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/3250759-paul-fulcher?ref=nav_mybooks&shelf=les-fugitives&sort=position
In her foreword to this English edition Lauren Elkin writes:
‘The greatest writers are also the greatest readers. Virginia Woolf, Roland Barthes, Jeanette Winterson – they all read, as Woolf put it, “to refresh and exercise [their] own creative powers.” They can’t stop themselves from writing about reading. They have origin stories of how reading and writing became as necessary as breathing. Julia Kerninon’s A Respectable Occupation joins the shelves of these biblioautobiographies.
Kerninon published the book when she was aged 30 and a couple of years after her first novel, Buvard.
This is a slim (only 57 page) love letter to reading (in the shower, through the streaming water, I would out all the printed words, read the shampoo labels) and to writing books, and a non-linear biography of how she became an author. It begins with a childhood visit to one of the most famous, and magical, bookships in the world with her mother, both her parents schoolteachers:
At the age of five and a half, I struck a deal with my father. In the first of a long and lucrative series of contracts, I agreed to stop sucking my thumb in exchange for a return trip to the capital. And yet it was my mother who took me — in my memory anyway, it was just the two of us there when she stopped suddenly in front of a building not far from Notre-Dame and made me read out the sign of Shakespeare and Company.
This isn’t a guide to particular books, although Kerninon did provide six key texts to the website Albertine (https://www.albertine.com/bookshelf/julia-kerninon/), starting with Birthday Letters by Ted Hughesm which does feature in the text, but also featuring one of my favourite authors,the 3rd part of Thomas Bernhard's autobiography Der Keller. Eine Entziehung:
"Bernhard taught me everything: how to work, to leave, to endure, to hate, to immerse myself into art, to be a mother."
Kerninon concludes her account here:
I spend my life reading books to put things back in place, to unfold myself, its like softly singing into my own ear to wake myself up.
Recommended
Interview with the author:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8N2rUYLS-Os&feature=youtu.be
Reading from the translator:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cRtsF8kZaf8
More...