Going Ashore

Going Ashore

Mavis Gallant

McClelland & Stewart

Among the ques­tions that inevitably fol­low a sat­is­fy­ing first day in Paris, accord­ing to the Revised Guide to that city included in Mavis Gallant’s new book, Going Ashore (McClelland & Stewart), are: “How can I get on the Anglo-American vol­ley­ball team?” and “When are the Ana­baptist Church sing­ alongs held?” The same book con­tains the full text of the Republic of France Toothbrush Tax Form, and the fol­low­ing won­der­ful pas­sage from a lit­er­ary mem­oir: “I decided to sell the inkpot to H.G. Wells. Many young writ­ers were doing this.” Other excurses com­posed by Gallant in the 1980s and col­lected for the first time in Going Ashore include a note on General Achille Stifflet, who, hav­ing sub­ju­gated America, observed that “a lit­tle crenel­la­tion won’t hurt them now,” a remark that con­fused some of the women, who, “not know­ing what crenel­la­tion was for, wore it in their hair.” A pas­sage from Sieg­fried’s Memoirs pro­vides the tem­plate for windy mem­oiristes of all times: “For a long time I used to go to bed early won­der­ing if Siegfried von Handelskammern would ever com­plete his long-awaited mem­oirs of Saint-Germain-des-Prés, where from June, 1940, when he made his first, much remarked appear­ance in Café Flore, until August, 1944, when he departed with­out hav­ing fin­ished his glass of fine (patiently dis­tilled from sal­vaged boot tops), he was the hub of an unpar­al­leled intel­lec­tual revival.”