Edward Hopper and the American Hotel

 

While visiting relatives in Richmond, Virginia, we used the occasion to pay a return visit to the impressive VMFA (Virginia Museum of Fine Arts), and attempt to take in just a fraction of the many delights on offer there. The featured temporary exhibition currently on display there was  ‘Edward Hopper and the American Hotel; a travel guide.’ This was an opportunity not to be missed.

Hopper is renowned for his depictions of city rooms with one or two persons in them, looking either in or to the outside, reflecting a sense of alienation, of urban anomie (in the Durkheimian sense of the word), and of detachment from human contact. The pictures in the current exhibition, whether by Hopper himself or other artists, all pertain to the subject of ‘hotels, motels, and tourist homes.’ Hopper and his wife Jo travelled extensively through the USA in the 1940s and 1950s, at a time when America was changing as automobile ownership expanded, new and better roads and highways were constantly being built and improved, and travel became an easier and more convenient form of transportation.

The cousin with whom we were staying  said that it brought back memories of the six-week trip his family (father, mother, brother and self) made across America by car in the 1950s, visiting places and encountering people which till then had just been names on a map (no GPS or Waze then).  Knowing my late uncle (my mother’s older brother), I’m sure that the trip was carefully planned and mapped out, the hotels and motels booked in advance, and that nothing was left to chance. Im not so sure that that is the message conveyed by Hopper’s paintings, however.

The characters he depicts find themselves — whether by chance or by design — in anonymous hotel rooms, with their standard furnishings and soulless decor. Their individual stories are a mystery that it is for the viewers to decide for themselves. Is the young woman in a pink slip suffering the pangs of unrequited love or simply relaxing after having travelled for several hours? Is the man standing and looking out of the window simply admiring the view or is he angry with the unkempt woman sitting on the bed behind him? Each painting is an enigma which can be interpreted in a number of ways.

Hopper was commissioned to illustrate the covers of a trade publication for hotels in the 1920s, when the boom in travel and tourism was still in its infancy. This gave him the opportunity and the incentive to go and see for himself, always accompanied by his wife Jo, what hotel and motel rooms had to offer, and it is his interpretation of this that we find in his pictures. It is this combination of ambivalence, and his unique mystical aesthetic, together with consummate skill in depicting figures and interiors, that gives Edward Hopper’s paintings their enduring fascination.

Hitches, Glitches, Delays and Ultimate Success!

In a stunning display of arrogance and stupidity, I ventured out into the wild and woolly world of self-publishing on Amazon’s KDP platform. I’ve done it before, five times in fact, twice with the help of outside agencies, and three times by myself. It’s been a little more than a year since I published my last book, ‘All Quiet on the Midwestern Plains,’ and apart from help from my designer and computer-whizz son Eitan with the cover of the paperback version, I managed it pretty well by myself.

So I was taken aback when all did not go smoothly with my new book, ‘A Ruffled Calm, (affectionately known by my typo-riddled version, ‘A Ruggled Clam’). The first hitch was when I was unable to even access my KDP account, where my previous five books were published and are listed. I struggled and stumbled, appealed to KDP, and was delighted to receive a prompt reply. Yes, silly me (or is it senile me?) had forgotten that I have two email accounts and had been using the wrong address.

But that was not the end of my troubles. In my haste (and more stupidity?), I had somehow managed to delete my last novel while uploading the new one. Good golly, Miss Molly! How on earth did I manage that? The usual st-p-d-ty, I suppose. Another appeal gets sent to KDP, to which I receive two different replies (each from a different person, and each to a different address). One of them (a woman) kindly tells me that she will merge my two accounts and restore my deleted novel. The other (a male) tells me that I will have to go through the whole lengthy process of uploading the deleted book all over again.

I had to follow both courses of advice.

Having finally at last managed to get the text of my new book uploaded, the next hurdle was the cover. I am not the world’s best artist, but to date I have managed to use a painting of mine as the cover for each of my novels, so that I regard it as almost part of my signature as an author. For several weeks I have been trying to paint a picture of a woman sitting in an armchair, in keeping with the subject-matter of the book. It sounds a simple enough task, but my efforts were invariably unsatisfactory. Arms too long, legs too short, or vice versa. The colors weren’t right or the armchair was all crooked. I wanted the woman to be holding a cup, but it seems I’m unable to paint even that. An artist friend, with whom I am in correspondence, suggested that I use a smaller brush, and upon doing so I found that the result was much improved. Thanks, Michele.

Uploading the cover wasn’t all plain sailing either. At first I could get the image to appear as the cover, but without the title or my name. I tried a few times, but couldn’t get the desired result, so I stopped and waited for help from Eitan. Life intervened, however, and I was unable to get to my computer for a couple of days. When I returned to it, lo and behold, there was my cover, with the title and my name in place. I tried to rearrange the text and coloring to my satisfaction, and although it’s not perfect, it will do for the ebook.

So now I’ve completed the process, I think. The ebook is now up on Amazon, and can be purchased for just $2.99. However, from the 11^th to the 13^th of November it can be downloaded for free. So if anyone is interested in finding out how an eccentric visitor turns an ordinary family’s life upside-down, they’re invited to take a look at ‘A Ruffled Calm.’ It’s a relatively short book, and should make for easy reading. I’d recommend it for anyone looking for something to read during a flight.

Hopefully the paperback version will be available in the not-too-distant future. But that process inevitably takes a little longer to complete. The main thing as far as I’m concerned is that the ebook is up and running, and I’m looking forward to hearing from anyone who reads it what they think of it, or better still, to reading a kind review of it on Amazon.

‘Village of Secrets’ by Caroline Moorehead

 

Based on extensive historical research, personal interviews and visits to the places concerned, Caroline Moorehead has produced an astounding account of life on a remote, mountainous plateau perched on France’s Massif Central, where the residents of villages, hamlets and isolated farms worked together in Nazi-controlled France to rescue hundreds if not thousands of people, mainly Jewish children and members of the Resistance.

The largely rural Vivarais-Lignon plateau enjoys a climate considered to be healthy during the summer months, resulting in the existence there of several hotels, children’s homes and convalescent centres for visiting tourists. In the winter, however, it was more or less cut off from the rest of the country by deep, long-lasting snow and its mountainous terrain. These conditions enabled the villagers to provide sanctuary for people – and especially children – seeking to evade capture and deportation to concentration camps.

Most of the inhabitants of the region were devout Protestants, many of them descendants of the Huguenots who had themselves been persecuted in sixteenth-century France. Some of them belonged to obscure Christian sects, such as the Darbyists and the Ravenists, which were in various ways akin to the Quakers and Amish, with special clothing and an austere life style. Led by pacifist pastors, the inhabitants of the local villages, Chambon sur Lignon, Mazet sur Voy, Riou as well as hamlets and individual farms, took in and cared for dozens of Jewish children brought to the region, whether by individuals or by the Jewish and Christian organisations (OSE and Cimade) involved in their rescue.

The author describes in harrowing detail the conditions in the various detention camps in France, such as Gurs at the foot of the Pyrenees, Drancy near Paris and Venisseux near Lyons, from where trains full of Jews were sent to the concentration camps.. Despite assurances to the contrary, after 1942 Jews were hunted down with as much rigour in the part of France controlled by the Vichy collaborationist government, as in Nazi-controlled northern France.

The systematic deportation of France’s Jewish population, starting with the ‘foreign Jews,’ who had fled from other parts of Europe, and continuing with the ‘French Jews,’ persisted till the end of the war. Those individuals and groups who had managed to make their way to the plateau were taken in by institutions and families. In some cases their names and identities were changed while in others they were hidden in basements, barns and lofts, or enabled to find shelter in the nearby forests. Eventually many of them were helped to cross the border into Switzerland, a journey which involved considerable danger for the victims and their helpers. Moore describes one such escape in which a girl’s long hair was caught in the barbed-wire fence. The teenager who stayed behind to help disentangle her hair became her husband manyyears later.

When the Germans required able-bodied French men to enlist for work in Germany many of them fled to the plateau. Among the Jews in hiding were expert forgers who were able to produce false identity papers and medical certificates, enabling both Jews and non-Jews to evade capture. Members of the Maquis also found shelter there. The individuals who sheltered the Jews were inspired by the pacifist sermons preached by the local pastors, some of whom paid dearly for their refusal to cooperate with the occupying forces. At a time when food was scarce and rationing prevailed throughout France, the farmers of the region supplied extra food to the homes where Jewish children were being sheltered.

After liberation the work began of restoring the names and identities of theJewish children, many of whom had little or no recollection of their original families. A large number of them were now orphans, and the work of returning them to their surviving relatives was often problematic. Some of the older children preferred to join the Jews in what was then Palestine in order to help establish a Jewish state.

There is no doubt that France’s record during its occupation by the Germans is far from glorious, but here and there there were small rays of light, among them the people of the Vivarais-Lignon plateau. In fact, the village of Chambon-sur-Lignon is one of only two villages worldwide to be awarded the title of Righteous Among the Narions. by Yad Vashem.