Visiting the new Louis Vuitton exhibit “Volez, Voguez, Voyagez”, I was struck by the way the exhibit valorizes Mr. Louis Vuitton, positioning his progress as parallel to many great technological innovations like the car and airplane. Louis Vuitton’s personal history is mythologized at the exhibit in service of the brand, with the story of the…
It is widely known that James Joyce’s novel “Ulysses” was not autobiographical. For one thing, the book’s protagonist Leopold Bloom was Jewish, and Joyce was raised as an Irish Catholic. However, in 1940, when Joyce attempted to flee Vichy France to Switzerland during World War II, the Swiss government thought that he was Jewish. More…
After a long battle with cancer, the French Jewish novelist and essayist Viviane Forrester died in April at the age of 87. Not everyone mourned her death: Neither the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions of France, more commonly known under the acronym CRIF, or the Tribune Juive marked her passing. But most everyone, including her…
Confronted by what it considers the existential threat of communism, convinced that Christianity and nationalism are one and the same, and compelled by self-interest to place social order above political liberty: Welcome to the world of the Catholic Church in Argentina during the “dirty war.” But most French Catholics during the “dark years” of 1940–1944…
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