Dark Paris Novel Pdf

[Aline Braunbeck]

Inthe studio: (left to right) Laurence Courtois, Makita Samba, Tony Harrisson, Cyril Guei, and Assane Timbo

Dorli Lamar

Viper's Dream is a 10-episode radio drama penned by writer Jake Lamar. "Viper" was a slang term used for marijuana smokers in 1920s and 1930s Harlem and "Viper's Dream" is the name of a tune written by jazz saxophonist and composer Fletcher Allen and recorded by jazz guitarist Django Reinhardt. I had the pleasure of interviewing Lamar about his latest literary achievement a few days ago. Read the interview below.

JL: Viper's Dream was inspired by a confluence of interests and enthusiasms. I first outlined it as a novel in 2012. I had just finished writing Brothers in Exile and was reading a lot of Chester Himes, so the crime milieu in Harlem intrigued me.

I've loved jazz all my life and I had recently read of how the jazz baroness, Pannonica de Koenigswarter, had asked her guests at the Cathouse what their three wishes were. And finally, there's that mysterious aspect of fiction writing: the way characters just appear in your imagination and you feel compelled to bring them to life.

JL: I could go on for many pages about this. But let me just take one aspect. Writing for the radio is like someone whispering to you in the dark. I wrote the radio play dialogue with that sense of intimacy in mind. I wrote with a different sort of sensitivity than I do when writing dialogue in a novel, where it is up to the reader to "hear" the voice of a character. And it was different from writing for the stage, where one can see an actor or actress as they deliver the lines. Writing for the radio feels uniquely intimate. Someone you do not see but are free to visualize is speaking to you. That's why I think of whispers in the dark.

JL: I so enjoyed working with Laurence Courtois on the radio adaptation of Brothers in Exile that in 2015, I decided to take my outline for the novel of Viper's Dream and transform it into a radio script. I was greatly motivated by the idea that France Culture has the right to play practically any song you can name. Since the story is set in the jazz milieu of Harlem between 1936 and 1961, I thought the possibilities for using the music of that era as part of the narrative texture would make for a unique creative experience.

JL: I didn't seek a grant to write this piece. When I told Laurence my idea, she introduced me to Emmanuelle Chevrire, the producer of Le Feuilleton, the nightly radio fiction series, at France Culture. The producer told me to write a short synopsis, then the first episode, the "pilot" so to speak, of the 10-episode series. After a very long wait, I was informed that France Culture would buy the project, so I wrote the nine subsequent episodes on commission. It took a year and a half to write the script, which, at 223 pages, has the heft of a novel.

JL: I knew from the start that no episode could be longer than about 22 pages. It presented an exciting challenge. It required creative discipline, an imposed structure, like writing a sonnet.

JL: I was not involved in the casting process. This is very much considered the director's domain, not the writer's. But I was excited to learn that actors I had worked with before would be among the cast.

Assane Timbo, who played Chester Himes in the radio adaptation of Brothers in Exile, plays Peewee (or Piwi, in French). Mexianou Medenou, who played James Baldwin in the radio version of Brothers in Exile, plays Pretty Paul Baxter in Viper's Dream. Cyril Guei, who read Baldwin onstage at the Thtre du Rond Point, plays Pork Chop Bradley.

I also discovered Ludmilla Dabo, an astonishingly gifted actress and singer, who plays Yolanda "Yo-Yo" DeVray. Ludmilla recently portrayed Nina Simone at the Thtre de la Ville, among all the other roles she is currently taking on in her blossoming career.

There are several black actors familiar from French television and cinema cast in key roles: Edouard Montoute as Buttercup Jones, Jean-Michel Martial as Gentleman Jack, Eric Ebouaney as the Preacher. The black French actress and author who goes by the name Viktor Lazlo plays Matilda.

JL: I think their interest was sparked by the quality of the roles. They don't often see scripts with that many complex roles written for that many black interpreters. The fact that I'm an African-American author writing about a black-American milieu---the jazz world of Harlem---added to their enthusiasm. But I think it's mainly the juiciness of the parts that inspired them.

JL: We recorded the series over 13 ten-hour days in October 2018. I was there almost the entire time, advising the actors on any questions they had regarding their characters, cultural references, historical fine points, etc.

JL: The birth of characters is one of the most mysterious aspects of fiction writing. Clyde arrived mysteriously in my imagination along with all the other fictional characters in the piece.

One thing that fascinates me about Clyde is that he has a sort of moral code. He is a principled marijuana dealer at war with unprincipled heroin dealers. He is genuinely in love with Yolanda. He is devoted to encouraging the evolution of jazz and wants to protect its artists from the scourge of heroin. He is also a cold-blooded killer.

I think I've always been intrigued by the image of the complicated gangster: Vito and Michael Corleone, Tony Soprano, Frank White in King of New York, Walter White in Breaking Bad, Stringer Bell in The Wire. Viper Morton is a criminal protagonist in that tradition.

JL: One of my ambitions in Viper's Dream was to capture the evolution of jazz between 1936 and 1961, which includes the explosion of bebop and the wave of black musicians who enlivened the Saint Germain scene in the late 1940s and '50s. Yo-Yo going to Paris fit into that vision.

JL: Since I was writing for radio, I approached Viper's Dream almost like a jazz opera. In the script, I was very precise about the music I wanted behind each scene. And since Radio France has the rights to just about everything, I could be specific in my suggestions.

But ultimately, the musical selections fall in the director's domain. I was not invited into the editing and sound mixing sessions. So I will only know when the series airs which of my musical propositions made it into the final cut.

JL: This is another subject I could go on about for several pages. Let me just cite my single favorite sound effect. There are many party and nightclub scenes in Viper's Dream. When recording these big, busy crowd scenes, one inevitable sound would be the clink of ice cubes in cocktails. Recording over hours, it would be impossible to provide enough ice, which has a habit of melting. The brilliant sound technicians at Radio France use empty escargot shells in a glass of water to replicate the sound of ice cubes rattling in a cocktail. They sound exactly the same. Who knew?!

JL: Right now, Viper's Dream has only been recorded in French. But my agent in New York has given the script to producers at Amazon's Audible Originals podcast enterprise. Fingers crossed.

Viper's Dream was translated into French by Dorli Lamar. It will air on France Culture's Le Feuilleton program Monday through Friday, March 4 - March 15, 2019 from 8:30 PM to 8:55 PM Paris time. Replays will be available on France Culture's Web site after each episode airs. Click HERE to access them.

In Occupied France, the Resistance trembles on the brink of destruction. Its operatives, its secrets, its plans, all will be revealed. One of its leaders, wealthy aristocrat Baron Paul de Rocheford, has been killed in a raid and the surviving members of his cell, including his wife the elegant Baronness Lillian de Rocheford, have been arrested and transported to Germany for interrogation and, inevitably, execution.

Max is in Paris, currently living under a cover identity as a show business impresario whose star attraction is Genevieve Dumont. Young, beautiful Genevieve is the toast of Europe, an icon of the glittering entertainment world that the Nazis celebrate so that the arts can be seen to be thriving in the occupied territories under their rule.

It all hinges on a command performance that Genevieve is to give for a Gestapo General in the Bavarian town where her mother and the others are imprisoned. While Genevieve sings and the show goes on, a daring rescue is underway that involves terrible danger, heartbreaking choices, and the realization that some ties, like the love between a mother and her daughters and between sisters, are forever.

History buffs will love Robards attention to details and the depth this WWII story takes. It is filled with so many emotions. Fear, suspense, love, and romance, fill the pages causing them to flip faster at times and slower at others. I definitely slowed to take in the descriptions of what was happening in and around the streets. And for me, a few times I had to stop and take a breather because of the harshness inflicted by the Nazis.

Karen Robards is the New York Times, USA TODAY and Publishers Weekly bestselling author of more than fifty novels and one novella. She is the winner of six Silver Pen awards and numerous other awards.

It was just after 10:00 p.m. Until the siren had ripped it apart, the silence blanketing the city had been close to absolute. Thanks to the strictly enforced blackout, the streets were as dark and mysterious as the nearby Seine. It had rained earlier in the day, and before the siren the big Citron had been the noisiest thing around, splashing through puddles as they headed back to the Ritz, where she was staying for the duration of her Paris run.

A flash of light in the darkness caught her eye. Her head turned as she sought the source. Looking through the iron bars of the garden gate, she discovered a side door in the building that was slowly, stealthily opening.

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