How Do You Keep Them Down on the Farm After They’ve Seen Paris?
M.S. Simpson has lived and worked in Paris for years, and has long maintained an apartment in the Marais. Honestly, Parisian friends often tell him that he knows how to get around Paris better than those born and raised there. Paris is an intimate player in this novel about how a young man from West Texas finds himself a sophisticated, urbane adult in Paris, a world far away from his birth.
Loosely based on Henry James’ The Ambassadors, Roberta Martin, a young woman from Lubbock, Texas, is sent to Paris to retrieve her Aunt Helen’s wayward son. Chad left Lubbock and never returned. As young people, the two cousins were particularly close and Roberta and Chad have maintained contact. With the promise of adoption as Helen’s heir should she be successful, Roberta is dispatched on her errand.
Like her progenitor Lambert Strether in Henry James’ The Ambassadors, Roberta discovers the truth about Chad after a period of naiveté: Her cousin Chad is happy in Paris (just as the other Chad in James’ The Ambassadors). He is a sophisticated, urbane teacher. Roberta also discovers that Chad lives with a French Moslem. Needless to say, for Aunt Helen Martin, this represents a real increase in the sinful nature of Chad’s life. To complicate matters, Roberta (as in James’ The Ambassadors,) falls in love for the first time, with an Australian expatriate.
Kabuki in a G-String is a comedy of manners, a sharp commentary on America’s perennial and ubiquitous culture wars. With characters of differing nationality, background, and religious orientation, the novel looks at how urban modernity inevitably clashes with conservatism and tradition.
The novel roams over the various quartiers, streets and boulevards of Paris, from St. Germain to Luxembourg Gardens. If you know Paris at all – or just what to know it better – the novel is practically a guidebook.
If you like to read about Paris, Simpson has written a book you will love.
Because like you, he believes that Paris is a transformative city. It changes those who spend time there and, especially, those who love it. You’ll
understand the effect Paris has on Roberta Martin, whose own discovery of Paris and love, parallels her cousin’s, as well as that of many of us.
If you love Paris, this book is for you.
