{"product_id":"occupation-journal-isbn-9781939810564","title":"Occupation Journal","description":"\u003cb\u003eA captivating literary and historical record, Jean Giono's \u003ci\u003eOccupation Journal\u003c\/i\u003e offers a glimpse into life in collaborationist France during the Second World War, as seen through the eyes and thoughts of one of France's greatest and most independent writers.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWritten during the years of France's occupation by the Nazis, Jean Giono's \u003ci\u003eOccupation Journal\u003c\/i\u003e reveals the inner workings of one of France's great literary minds during one of the country's darkest hours. A renowned writer and committed pacifist throughout the 1930s--a conviction that resulted in his imprisonment before and after the Occupation--Giono spent the war in the village of Contadour in Provence, where he wrote, corresponded with other writers, and cared for his consumptive daughter. This journal records his musings on art and literature, his observations of life, his interactions with the machinery of the collaborationist Vichy regime, as well as his forceful political convictions. Giono recounts the details of his life with fierce independence of thought and novelistic attention to character and dialogue. \u003ci\u003eOccupation Journal\u003c\/i\u003e is a fascinating historical document as well as a unique window into one of French literature's most voracious and critical minds.\"For Giono, literature and reality overlap the way that waves sweep over the shore, one ceaselessly refreshing the other and, in certain wondrous moments, giving it a glassy clearness.\"--\u003cb\u003eRyu Spaeth, \u003ci\u003eThe New Republic\u003c\/i\u003e \u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Giono's voice is the voice of the realist; his accents are the accents of simplicity, power and a passionate feeling for a land and a people that he must love as well as understand.\"--\u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eThe New York Times \u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"The journal gives a vivid sense of the French countryside during the war years, the physical beauty of Provence moving through the seasons, contrasted with the fears and unease of occupation. Giono himself, erudite, questioning, refusing to allow himself to be buffeted by the opinions of others or steered off a course he personally felt to be morally right, comes across as courageous and decent, a writer who fell just on the wrong side of the enduring French debate about \u003ci\u003eles années noires\u003c\/i\u003e, but who lived to see himself recognized as one of the finest writers on the natural world.\" —\u003cb\u003e Caroline Moorehead,\u003ci\u003e Times Literary Supplement\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Jean Giono’s \u003ci\u003eOccupation Journal\u003c\/i\u003e is a fascinating record of life under Nazi occupation in France, and an insight into the daily reading and writing practices of a dedicated author...To a timely effect, many of Giono’s reflections also tackle the problem of isolation, of drawing upon inner resources, and of the consolation of literature...The journals in their entirety compose a captivating account of a sensitive, dedicated writer’s quotidian life, and an insight into how he faced both the exterior and interior struggles of his time.\" \u003cb\u003e— Sarah Moore, \u003ci\u003eAsymptote\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"The importance of this volume is the depiction of the time with difficulties, unpleasantness and compromises often shown in minute detail . . . visceral and personal, it will raise questions in readers' minds as to how they would or could react in similar circumstances.\"\u003cb\u003e -- \u003ci\u003eNB Magazine\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e \"Curious and wide-ranging, his entries . . .  invite delight and interest, covering a broad range of topics at a pace that begs to be savored . . . \u003ci\u003eOccupation Journal\u003c\/i\u003e is a gem of a historical memoir that includes blasts of beauty, art, and human observation.\" \u003cb\u003e-- Susan Waggoner, \u003ci\u003eForeword Reviews\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Elegantly translated by Jody Gladding, the book is a fascinating account of ordinary life during extraordinary times...As diary entries offering a captivating portrait of an artist at work, a man under pressure, and a country in turmoil, \u003ci\u003eOccupation Journal \u003c\/i\u003eis a compelling read.\" —\u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003e The National \u003c\/i\u003e(UAE)\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"There are certain books you feel you’ve needed without even knowing whether they exist; and when finally you read such a book, it becomes indispensable to comprehending the most haunting insistences of human experience. I’m speaking here of \u003ci\u003eOccupation Journal\u003c\/i\u003e by Jean Giono, brilliantly translated by Jody Gladding. This journal is full of harrowing wartime incident, an almost desperate reliance on literature, the severest lyricism Giono needed to chronicle thinking and feeling deeply in a world gone mad.\" — \u003cb\u003eHoward Norman\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e \u003cbr\u003e \"Giono's \u003ci\u003eOccupation Journal\u003c\/i\u003e is a fascinating book. It juxtaposes the intense moral and ethical dramas of a world at war, replete with violence and surrounded by danger, with the inanity of the every day. Despite the war, grandiose dramas play out – scheming and petty neighbours trying to pull one over each other; lovesick servants and farm workers entangled in romantic triangles. All of the everyday comedy and drama of the small French village play out while bombs fall overhead and collaborationist priests are gunned down in their chapels...Translator Jody Gladding does a superb job of it, retaining Giono's nuanced sarcasm and sense of humour.\" — \u003cb\u003eHans Rollmann, \u003ci\u003ePop Matters\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003eJody   Gladding has beautifully rendered Giono’s inner voice, in all its moods and   registers, lyrical, cynical, and reflective.\u003cbr\u003e — Paul Eprile\u003cbr\u003e There are certain books you feel you’ve needed without even knowing whether   they exist; and when finally you read such a book, it becomes indispensable   to comprehending the most haunting insistences of human experience. I’m   speaking here of Occupation Journal by Jean Giono, brilliantly   translated by Jody Gladding. This journal is full of harrowing wartime   incident, an almost desperate reliance on literature, the severest lyricism   Giono needed to chronicle thinking and feeling deeply in a world gone   mad.\u003cbr\u003e — Howard NormanJean Giono (1895-1970) was a novelist, essayist, and playwright, and one of the most prolific and respected French writers of the 20th Century. Born to a modest family in Provence, he was conscripted to the French Army in the First World War, and the horrors he experienced cemented his lifelong commitment to pacifism. His first major literary success came with \u003ci\u003eColline\u003c\/i\u003e (1929) which won him the Prix Brentano. He continued to publish novels and political writings during the 1930s, and his strict pacifism led him to be briefly imprisoned for collaboration before and after the Nazi occupation of France. After the Second World War Giono continued to gain success as a novelist, and many of his books were adapted into films. He received the Prince Rainier of Monaco Prize for lifetime achievement in 1953, was elected to the Academie Goncourt in 1954, and became a member of the Literary Council of Monaco in 1963. \u003cb\u003eAbout the translator:\u003c\/b\u003e  Jody Gladding is a translator and poet. She has published four poetry collections, \u003ci\u003eTranslations from Bark Beetle\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eRooms and Their Airs\u003c\/i\u003e, and \u003ci\u003eStone Crop\u003c\/i\u003e, which was the winner of the 1992 Yale Series of Younger Poets competition. Her translations from the French include Jean Giono's \u003ci\u003eSerpent of Stars\u003c\/i\u003e and Pierre Michon's \u003ci\u003eThe Eleven\u003c\/i\u003e.1943\u003cbr\u003e September 20\u003cbr\u003e  There is such confusion in people’s minds that, even among the best of\u003cbr\u003e my acquaintances, no one knows how to conduct himself according to\u003cbr\u003e the simple rules of nobility and grandeur anymore. In the fellowship of\u003cbr\u003e the Contadour, R.B. was a comrade who seemed to me capable of understanding\u003cbr\u003e and applying those rules on all occasions. He was clear-sighted\u003cbr\u003e and bright, and if it worried me knowing that he regularly spent time with\u003cbr\u003e reserve officers, I imagined that his social position demanded it (teaching\u003cbr\u003e at the teachers’ college). His convictions, if he was expressing them honestly,\u003cbr\u003e were pacifist and humane. He could not retain his integrity in the\u003cbr\u003e tangle of propaganda. It’s hard for me to imagine that this is the same\u003cbr\u003e man now mixed up in arms drops, who runs off and distributes machine\u003cbr\u003e guns to young men hidden in his county. I know—if I take into account\u003cbr\u003e the terrible worries eating at his heart—(his love for M., his crazy son)\u003cbr\u003e there are certainly excuses for his desire to escape at any cost his life’s\u003cbr\u003e inconceivable misery. All the same, I was hoping he would escape in the\u003cbr\u003e direction of nobility.\u003cbr\u003e In our modern mechanical world, it’s clearly very tempting to embrace\u003cbr\u003e the cause of a religious war. It must give one the impression, despite\u003cbr\u003e everything, that he is a thinking being. And, after the fate dealt to\u003cbr\u003e man in 1930–1940, it must suddenly be so invigorating that it’s difficult\u003cbr\u003e to resist. But the quest for the Grail made the knights-errant gallop in a\u003cbr\u003e straight line. Even Don Quixote walks straight. Today it seems as though\u003cbr\u003e the Grail has shattered and they are chasing all the scattered bits of it in\u003cbr\u003e every direction. They charge blindly, noses in the air, radios behind them\u003cbr\u003e in the saddle, newspaper helmets fastened securely on their skulls. Those\u003cbr\u003e who have donned secret papers, clandestine publications, think they are\u003cbr\u003e wearing the most magical helmets of all. Not a single head remains bare.\u003cbr\u003e For my part, I consider it important above all not to be duped. That’s what\u003cbr\u003e I peacefully strive for. I know the deep wretchedness of our generation\u003cbr\u003e and the ones that follow, and I have tried, with what means I have, to\u003cbr\u003e provide a small cure. I recognize that I can do nothing. Lacking either\u003cbr\u003e enough intelligence for problems that are too great or enough simplicity\u003cbr\u003e for problems that are so hugely simple they defy mathematics, I would\u003cbr\u003e  nevertheless reserve the right to laugh and comfort myself with scorn,\u003cbr\u003e precisely  applied. English generosity; American civilization.\u003cbr\u003e Last week, there was an assassination attempt here against the head\u003cbr\u003e of the militia. He was returning from the cinema with his family when\u003cbr\u003e an armed stranger shot at him. Ch. shot back and killed his assailant. At\u003cbr\u003e which point a sort of impromptu legend started. The assailant, who had\u003cbr\u003e come from Marseille to kill Ch. (it seems he confessed before dying), was\u003cbr\u003e a miner from the north of France, his children had been killed in a bombardment,\u003cbr\u003e and his wife, I don’t know what, something terrible, I dare\u003cbr\u003e say, no doubt raped by the Uhlans. He became the hero. Almost everyone\u003cbr\u003e attended his funeral, Dr. G. and his wife prominently at the head of the\u003cbr\u003e line. Dr. G. is a perfect and pure careerist, an opportunist, an ambitious\u003cbr\u003e man who dreams of a seat on the district council. That’s clear to everyone\u003cbr\u003e here. But he was much admired behind the hearse. Of course Dr. G. is\u003cbr\u003e not a Communist, he made two or three million in a few years (he arrived\u003cbr\u003e here very poor), and is an admirable specimen of the ordinary materialist.\u003cbr\u003e He’s only trying to position himself for the next wave of “honors.” That’s\u003cbr\u003e nothing. It’s only that no one thought to explain this in a simple way. The\u003cbr\u003e man from Marseille was really only a paid assassin. Because why—even as\u003cbr\u003e martyr and hero—especially as hero—why come to assassinate Ch.? The\u003cbr\u003e back wheel of the wagon. Ch. is not exactly anyone important. At present,\u003cbr\u003e it’s simply personal accounts being settled. And personal business being\u003cbr\u003e conducted (Dr. G.). All that is fine, I’m not asking Dr. G. or the assassin\u003cbr\u003e  or Ch. to be Lancelot of the Lake or Percival, I only ask that no one tries\u003cbr\u003e to make me believe they are.\u003cbr\u003e Wonderful weather, exhilarating wind coming from the sheep plateaus.\u003cbr\u003e Cool and crisp, and those earth tones and bruised sky that announce autumn.\u003cbr\u003e The sound of the bell that rings at noon undulates in the wind like\u003cbr\u003e a cracked whip. The air is delicious to breathe. I am going to start writing\u003cbr\u003e again. These days. I need a serious discipline for mind and body.\u003cbr\u003e Plans for Fragments d’un Paradis . Never forgetting that after Don\u003cbr\u003e Quixote  (I must begin the discussion with myself on this book. In Doré’s\u003cbr\u003e illustrations, Don Quixote resembles my beloved father, but embittered.\u003cbr\u003e My father was good and gentle, clearly readable in his entire body), never\u003cbr\u003e forgetting that Cervantes finished his life writing the The Trials of Persiles\u003cbr\u003e and Sigismunda . I am anxious for Jacinto G. to send me this book in Spanish;\u003cbr\u003e I’m going to try to learn enough Spanish to read it.\u003cbr\u003e Fragments  must be an adieu to the poetic (as Don Quixote  is an adieu to\u003cbr\u003e grandeur —and not a satire on chivalry. What pettiness! Imagine Cervantes\u003cbr\u003e wanting to mock chivalry! And he would finish his life writing (with the\u003cbr\u003e most careful attention to the form and spirit of it) a novel of Chivalry! No,\u003cbr\u003e he wanted to say a melancholy farewell (hence Don Quixote’s madness)\u003cbr\u003e to grandeur). Fragments  must say farewell to the poetic, to lyricism, to the\u003cbr\u003e “lie” without which there is no art, by which I mean the subjective. Goodbye\u003cbr\u003e to romanticism, on the threshold of 1616, when truth, exactitude, the\u003cbr\u003e slice of life will be extolled (you’ll see) (but Maupassant was lying (was\u003cbr\u003e  interpreting), but Gide lies (happily), but Eugène Dabit suffered and died\u003cbr\u003e for not knowing how to lie, that is, for not having the strength (first of all,\u003cbr\u003e the physical strength) to stomach “spectacles” in order to express them in\u003cbr\u003e the end as Van Gogh expresses a wheat field and a cypress. Because they\u003cbr\u003e know and he knew (E.D.) what it is that interests me, which is not the cypress\u003cbr\u003e or the wheat field. It is the cypress + Van Gogh and the wheat field+\u003cbr\u003e Van Gogh. The mark. To leave his mark). Because how could he have been\u003cbr\u003e in step with Communist times?\u003cbr\u003e Finishing the third act of Voyage  without proving anything. Having\u003cbr\u003e wanted to demonstrate a slowing of the action in the second part of Act 1,\u003cbr\u003e an act I am not at all happy with.\u003cbr\u003e Writing the text for Virgil  that Corrêa wants and immediately afterwards\u003cbr\u003e (before the end of the year if possible), I hope to begin Fragments .\u003cbr\u003e Because if I wrote Le Voyage  for the theater, it’s so that I might finally have\u003cbr\u003e a little peace financially (I must speak a little about my legend one of these\u003cbr\u003e days, and in particular about my “wealth” (in 1940, living on 20,000 for\u003cbr\u003e the whole year, nine people, and actually giving the figures) because what\u003cbr\u003e Vlaminck says about me he says relying on legend alone, journalistic and\u003cbr\u003e cinematographic legend). (I am not suspicious enough of visitors. Too\u003cbr\u003e nice.) Tino Rossi aside, of course. Because he’s not completely wrong.\u003cbr\u003e There is a little of that. But I believe (I may be wrong. I don’t dispute it) I\u003cbr\u003e believe that’s all there is. Writing Fragments  for my own pleasure, as I like,\u003cbr\u003e at my own pace (which is slow), taking the most pleasure possible in the\u003cbr\u003e writing.\u003cbr\u003e  Yesterday evening, Uncle did not return. Believed it to be the usual fit of\u003cbr\u003e drunkenness and expected to hear the doorbell during the night. This\u003cbr\u003e morning I realized that he had still not come home. It was Charles I\u003cbr\u003e heard having coffee. I wondered if Uncle might be dead in the pavilion, a\u003cbr\u003e stroke or from hanging himself. Suicide is a possibility with this hideous,\u003cbr\u003e horrible, arrogant, worthless but sensitive man who has turned everyone\u003cbr\u003e against him. Has made everyone detest him, even his own daughters, and\u003cbr\u003e yet, sometimes, a burst of grandeur, I thought to myself… this morning I\u003cbr\u003e went to see, to have a look in the pavilion with its door left open. I looked\u003cbr\u003e in the linden tree. Charles had the same thought. My mother, too. Charles\u003cbr\u003e went to look out the windows. He was not there, he told me. Then, later,\u003cbr\u003e while I was writing, I heard him coughing and clearing his throat below\u003cbr\u003e in the garden. He’d only gone on his usual binge. Too often (always) I\u003cbr\u003e judge others according to myself. I believe that’s what happened over the\u003cbr\u003e twenty years with Lucien Jacques as well.","brand":"Archipelago","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46304409747685,"sku":"NP9781939810564","price":18.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9781939810564.jpg?v=1767733989","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/products\/occupation-journal-isbn-9781939810564","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}