Robert (Robin) Gajdusek passed away last year. He was a noted Hemingway scholar and wrote several books and articles about Hemingway. He also published a kind of pictoral guide to Paris and all of the photos in it were taken by him. It can be purchased inexpensively at any of the on-line book sellers.
Robin and I were friends so if you buy a copy or have one at home, I came across something Robin sent...
ADDENDA
December 8, 2001
From Robert Gajdusek (Robin) :
Since you have the book close beside you, I owe you a few insider%26#39;s notes to a few of the secrets of the book%26#39;s lay-out and photography.
On pages 30 and 31 you have the two-page whole spread photo of the girl in the cafe in the %26quot;good cafe that (EH] knew on the Place St.-Michel%26quot; plus the %26quot;A Moveable Feast%26quot; text for it that concludes: %26quot;I%26#39;ve seen you, beauty, and you belong to me now, whoever you are waiting for and if I never see you again, I thought. You belong to me and all Paris belongs to me and I belong to this notebook and this pencil.%26quot;
Naturally, I use my scholarship and Hemingway for self expression, to expand the heart and the world—therefore, I can tell you the photo is of my wife Linda placed as was %26quot;the girl%26quot; for Hemingway, so she can watch %26quot;the street and the entry.%26quot; There is one real problem with the photo, and that is that if she is waiting for a someone yet to arrive, why are there TWO coffee cups on the small round table before her (certifying my intrusive if invisible presiding presence, already established as the POV of my eyes that are onlooking and taking the shot.) The words I feel I am truly saying are said (written) by the writer Hemingway. Both of us are pretty possessive—of her, of all of Paris, of the act of writing itself. She deserves to be there, and WAS so there throughout the work on the book, for you may have noted the Dedication of the book (on page 5) %26quot;For my wife, Linda, with whom I dine sumptuously at the moveable feast.%26quot;
Similarly, my very young son Karl is anonymous among those playing in the Luxembourg gardens (p.88), or searching with his mother at the bookstalls—p.69— and I myself am sitting reading MSS—p.83—(Where EH went to read them) on the quai just below Bill Bird%26#39;s Three Mountains Press at 29 Quai d%26#39;Anjou; and, at the end of the book, it is I (on page 172) who studies the Cezannes, my eyes resting on the paint of the paintings that he studied, hoping to see what he saw.
The shot of Natalie Barney%26#39;s Temple A L%26#39;AMITIE (at 20, rue Jacob)—p. 85—was taken just as it was about to be torn down, and my shot of the Club Danse, (as in SAR) just beneath EH%26#39;s apartment at 74 rue du Cardinal Lemoine, may be the last shot of it before it went its way through many subsequent metamorphoses.
The pictures taken of and in and from the attic room—pp 56-57—where Hemingway went each morning to teach himself to write, at 39 rue Descartes (where Paul Verlaine had died), were taken after I had, way back in the early 70s, verified it and gotten permission to clear it and make it able to be entered, and to write and work there each day as I worked on %26quot;Hemingway%26#39;s Paris.%26quot; To work happily there %26quot;where he did his writing, and from it could...see the roofs and chimney pots and all the hills of Paris%26quot; (%26quot;Snows of Kilamanjaro%26quot;), was a great incomparable gift.
That%26#39;s just a little bit of the play behind the games behind the
scholarship. But, of course, it is much deeper than just that intrusion and that collapsing of time. There is an aesthetics behind the book that brings me back ever and again to it and the discoveries it led me to and the mysteries it unlocked.
Best wishes,
Robin
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I hadn%26#39;t heard of this book until your post and now I am really wanting to read it. I will be looking for a copy, thanks.
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