{"id":5659,"date":"2014-11-23T18:23:40","date_gmt":"2014-11-24T02:23:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/?p=5659"},"modified":"2014-11-24T21:04:22","modified_gmt":"2014-11-25T05:04:22","slug":"trip-2-pantheon-in-paris","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/2014\/11\/23\/trip-2-pantheon-in-paris\/","title":{"rendered":"Trip #2: Jim and the Flims. Transreal. Paris."},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Now that I’m back home, I’m working on my writing biz again. To start with, I published my novel Jim and the Flims <\/em> in ebook and paperback via my Transreal Books. You might call it transreal magic realism\u2014it\u2019s about a Santa Cruz guy who travels to the afterworld in hopes of resurrecting his wife.<\/p>\n

More info is on the book\u2019s page<\/a>. <\/p>\n

Long story short, you can now get my Jim and the Flims <\/em> ebook on Amazon<\/a>, or on my Transreal Books <\/a>page. (A Transreal Books purchase gives you two files: MOBI format for Kindle and EPUB format for all other e-readers.)<\/p>\n

And the Jim and the Flims <\/em> paperback is available via Amazon<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Night Shade Books published Jim and the Flims <\/em> book in hardback in 2011, by the way, and a few copies of that edition are still kicking around as well. <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Another note from the writing biz. By way of leading into it, dig this mural of St. Denis in the Pantheon in Paris. St. D\u2019s head as been chopped off, but the dude is using his halo <\/em>to think. He\u2019s picking up his head, and he\u2019s gonna plug it back in. Can’t bust him, can’t shut him down.<\/p>\n

A symbolic representation of an author, against all odds, keeping his shit together? Art imitating life imitating art? Transreal, dude. One of my preferred modes of literary creation. I am <\/em>Jim, facing the flims.<\/p>\n

I first described transrealism in my 1983 essay, \u201cA Transrealist Manifesto<\/a>.\u201d\u009d Philip K. Dick was definitely a precursor of transrealism, but for a number of years, I was the only self-avowed transrealist writer around. The style finally seems to be catching on.<\/p>\n

In an October 24, 2014, essay in the British newspaper, The Guardian<\/em>, critic Damien Walter proposes \u201cTransrealism: the first major literary movement of the 21st century?\u201d\u009d<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

Yeah, baby!<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Oh, one more writing thing, Tor.com published a story by Terry Bisson and me, \u201cWhere the Lost Things Are<\/a>.\u201d\u009d With this great illo by Chris Buelli.<\/p>\n

Transreally enough, the book is about two aging friends who can\u2019t keep track of their stuff\u2026<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Back to my travel notes. We moved on from Geneva\/Nyon to Paris for a week. Lovely to be in Paris, my favorite city, along with San Francisco, New York, Vienna, and Lisbon.
\nYou see these great iron business signs here and there in Europe. Everything\u2019s so old.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Sylvia and I went out to a far corner of Paris to see a little Monet museum. On the way we passed this amazing carousel in a little park. The thing had about six or eight horses hanging from a rotating center, and it was powered by\u2026a man pushing the ride around in circles. The kids had wands for spearing rings, and the carousel-man helped them. And then he\u2019d put the rings back into the rickety feeder.<\/p>\n

The younger kids didn\u2019t try and spear rings\u2026they were in that Eden before you know <\/em>there are reward rings that you\u2019re supposed to be gathering.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

The museum was someone\u2019s old mansion, I forget whose. Great wrought iron railing here, a yin-yang Zhabotinsky kind of thing. <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

My feet aren\u2019t what they used to be, and after about ten days in Europe, I\u2019m slowing down.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

We stayed in a hotel on the square holding the Pantheon monument\u2026it\u2019s a giant domed building with pillars around it, and with famous dead intellectuals in tombs in the cellar. Weird statue on the main floor\u2026some French revolutionaries hailing a bad-ass goddess of Liberty. \u201cLive Free or Die\u201d\u009d it says on her plinth.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

The philosopher and author Jean Jacques Rousseau was one of the people in the cellar. Great respect for thinkers over there.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Over the years, I\u2019ve been in the Pantheon a number of times. I love the huge, empty, vaulted spaces within. And more than once I\u2019ve dreamed of floating off the floor and flying around in there.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

A woman outside striking a sexy pose for her photo.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

All over the place in Paris, you\u2019ll just see a random marble statue. Like these ladies on a roof.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

An antiquarian bookshop specializing in old books about flying machines. Dig the deluxe seats for this balloon.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

For sure we hit the Eiffel tower. Staggering how big the thing is, I always forget unless I\u2019m actually there. Like I\u2019m a rat under the Golden Gate bridge. Didn\u2019t go up in it, lines too long\u2026lines like you\u2019d see at the pearly gates on Judgment Day.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

I love to look at water flowing, the great gnarly undulations in a liquid sheet.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s a nice composition with a statue and a building near the Louvre. More pix from Paris still to come.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5659","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5659","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5659"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5659\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5672,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5659\/revisions\/5672"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5659"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5659"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5659"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}