Clearly I need to learn to edit and stop feeling the need to write something about every day I’ve been here. Here are some highlights from the past week:

Tuesday afternoon I went to the BNF and got my reader card. My interview was with a laconic male librarian, tall and thin with red hair. I had printed out a brief description of my dissertation in French, as well as a bibliography. He gave me access to the Arsenal, the Opéra collection, and the Richelieu Arts du Spectacle collection. I started reading that afternoon in Salle V, the French Literature room. I quickly discovered that I really need to go to Salle Y, the Rare Book room. But there’s also plenty I can do in Salle V, so that’s good. That night I went to an audition for a student production of An Ideal Husband in English. P. had told me about it. I emailed the director, who scheduled me to audition with P. We had fun.

In seminar on Wednesday, we finished discussing the foreword of Politics of Friendship and started to talk about chapter one.

Thursday evening I went to a lecture on Diderot at the Collège International de Philosophie. It was excellent. I had trouble figuring out how to get into the building, but one of the security guards pointed me in the right direction. A scholar named Annie Ibrahim spoke on Diderot to a very collegial audience of about 15. It seemed like mostly everyone else knew her. I was one of the youngest people in the room; I would guess that there were three other grad students there and the rest were professors. The lecture was scheduled to last two hours, and she spoke almost the whole time, with about ten minutes at the end for questions. One interesting thing was that she discussed Diderot’s Letter to Madame Riccoboni as dripping with sarcasm. I’ve only read that letter through the eyes of Riccoboni scholars. When Diderot tells Madame Riccoboni that she is a bad actress because she is such a sensitive person, they place the emphasis on her being a sensitive person. Ibrahim was placing the emphasis on “bad actress.” She also called Mme Riccoboni a bad novelist, which I didn’t think was completely fair, especially given how much Diderot loves Richardson. Anyway, I had such a great time at this lecture. Afterward I figured out that the reason I enjoyed it so much was a question of language. In the past ten years, most of my opportunities to speak French have been in academic settings. So I’m really comfortable talking about literature, history, philosophy, theology, and eighteenth-century dirty words, but buying a stamp at the post office makes me feel like an idiot.

Saturday morning I intended to go to a conference at the Sorbonne, but it took longer to get there than I had anticipated. And I could see a bunch of stuffy old men in suits in the back row of a room on the main floor, but I couldn’t figure out how to get into the building. Then I thought that since this conference was not really my period, and I was so close to the Jardin du Luxembourg, I might as well skip it and read some Diderot in the Jardin du Luxembourg. Especially since I’ve taught French using French in Action, and Mireille is constantly reading in the Jardin du Luxembourg. Unfortunately, the Jardin du Luxembourg was crawling with schoolchildren because it was “La Fête de la Science” or something. So I didn’t get much reading done there. I wandered over to the Jardin des Plantes, near Rue Buffon. Buffon was a natural scientist who did lots of experiments during the eighteenth century. We read parts of his Histoire Naturelle in one of my graduate seminars. I was shocked and appalled by this one experiment where he tried to make newborn puppies amphibious by having them birthed into milk and then taking them out of the milk for awhile and then submerging them in the milk again. Of course all the puppies drowned. My professor was amused/annoyed that I was upset about the puppies when the French were doing such awful things to other human beings at the same time. Anyway, after the Jardin des Plantes I walked over to the BNF, where I resumed my reading in Salle V. I finished reading the erotic novel I had started on Tuesday. It was full of references to theatre, so it will be very useful for chapter one of my dissertation.

Katie’s party on Saturday night was a lot of fun. She has a French roommate, and most of the guests were his friends. I spent a lot of time talking to newlyweds Florian and Caroline, mainly about things I used to watch on French television in Angers that are no longer on the air.

On Sunday I booked a train ticket to Montpellier for a conference on Theatre Spectatorship in sevententh- and eighteenth-century France that is taking place this Friday and Saturday. I’m really lucky I found out about it in time to go. I don’t have a hotel reservation yet, but I’m sure I can work that out tomorrow, or even when I get there.