Thomas Riggs and Company

January 28, 2010. Like many people in France last week, I went to the opening of Gainsbourg (vie héroïque), a film about Serge Gainsbourg (1928-91), the French songwriter, provocateur, and cultural icon. It’s hard to imagine the American equivalent of Gainsbourg, who is as famous in his own country as Elvis Presley is in the United States. To describe his personality and public presence, I thought about combining Bob Dylan, Abby Hoffman, and Charles Bukowski, but any mélange of American personalities would lack the French sensibility of Gainsbourg and the French culture that he both embodied and challenged.

That Gainsbourg, an inventive and disturbing cultural force, was virtually unknown in the United States even during his lifetime reflects the cocooning effect of language. Gainsbourg sang literary and sometimes shocking lyrics and provoked traditional French citizens into a fury, but Americans, deaf to the French language, were left undisturbed and unaffected.</P

The French book blog Cafebook has a good review of the film from a French perspective. When the film finally makes its way to the United States, Americans will get a chance to see a bit of why he was one of the strongest cultural forces in France during the second half of the twentieth century (and will not see anything from his last decade, when he was older and often drunk and sometimes less than impressive). Americans will also understand how he is now summarized: representing a strain of French Jewish identity after Nazi-controlled France; leading a dissolute life of drinking and smoking that eventually killed him; dating among the most beautiful women of his era, including Brigitte Bardot; and writing songs with sophisticated lyrics (often interpreted by other French singers), some of which trespassed the accepted borders of French society. When in 1979 Gainsbourg recorded a reggae version of “La Marseillaise,” the French national anthem, he provoked a riot.

Although Gainsbourg had relations with many women, he is best known for his marriage to Jane Birkin, who, despite being British, sang and continues to sing in French. Their daughter, Charlotte Gainsbourg, is an actor and singer whose most recent album, IRM, was reviewed last week in the New York Times.

Thomas Riggs

Thomas Riggs & Company

Missoula, Montana; Nice, France

From Thomas Riggs & Co. Blog: www.thomasriggs.net/blog

Ebooks and the Loss of Identity

Just when I thought I already had a full catalog of woes to consider, I had the pleasure of reading James Wolcott’s essay “What’s a Culture Snob to Do” in Vanity Fair. In considering the death of the physical book, I usually think about such mundane issues as the survival of publishing or the pleasure of print on paper. But Wolcott gives me something more existential to fear: the loss of personal artifacts essential to my identity. He writes,

Books not only furnish a room, to paraphrase the title of an Anthony Powell novel, but also accessorize our outfits. They help brand our identities. At the rate technology is progressing, however, we may eventually be traipsing around culturally nude in an urban rain forest, androids seamlessly integrated with our devices.

He also imagines degraded moments of nostalgia.

Reading will forfeit the tactile dimension where memories insinuate themselves, reminding us of where and when D. H. Lawrence entered our lives that meaningful summer. “Darling, remember when we downloaded Sons and Lovers in Napa Valley?” doesn’t have quite the same ring to it.

Wolcott seems concerned that, by using an e-reader, we won’t be able to show strangers on a train or in a coffee shop that we’re reading Nietzsche and not Danielle Steel. Or vice versa.

But not everyone wants to use books for creating an identity. Or at least not the books they’re actually reading. Some people prefer the anonymity of the Kindle. And for those wanting to hide certain embarrassing titles from people snooping on their Kindle, here’s a tip from CNET.

Thomas Riggs
Thomas Riggs & Company
Missoula, Montana

From Thomas Riggs & Co. Blog: www.thomasriggs.net/blog

Mission Statement

Thomas Riggs & Co., founded in 1995, is a book developer and literary publisher based in Missoula, Montana. We focus on publishing projects in the humanities, such as literary criticism, biographies of writers, and study guides of literary works.

As a book developer, we have collaborated with such publishers as Gale (Cengage Learning) and Chadwyck-Healey (ProQuest) to create widely distributed academic and reference works. Our first book, published with St. James Press in 1995, was Contemporary Poets, a collection of essays on writers throughout the world. As a publisher, we began planning a new line of books, both prose and poetry, in 2009.

Although based in Missoula, Montana, Thomas Riggs & Co. now conducts its day-to-day work though a virtual office on the Internet. Our employees and network of editors, researchers, and writers live throughout North America and Europe. By working in a virtual office, we are better able to pursue our business and ethical goals.

• To create books and other publishing products of exceptional quality.
• To hire the most talented people available for our staff regardless of location—and regardless of age, sex, ethnicity, disability, religion, or sexual orientation—and to provide our staff with the best means of organization and collaboration.
• To work within emerging technology that is driving the future of publishing.
• To create the best possible working conditions for our employees and contractors.
• To minimize our environmental impact by reducing the need for paper, additional structures, commuting, and travel.

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