Hussey, Andrew 1963-

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Hussey, Andrew 1963-

PERSONAL: Born in 1963, in Liverpool, England.

ADDRESSES: Office— Department of French and Comparative Studies, University of London Institute in Paris, 9-11 Rue de Constantine, Cedex 97, Paris 75340, France. E-mail— [email protected].

CAREER: Historian and author. University of Wales, Aberystwyth, lecturer in politics and French literature; University of London Institute, Paris, France, head of French and comparative studies. British Council, Morocco, began as writer-in-residence, 2002, became director of Trans-Mahgreb Creative Writing Project; Abdemaalik University, Tetouan, Morocco, visitng professor of intercultural studies.

AWARDS, HONORS: British Council writer-in-residence for Morocco, 2004-05.

WRITINGS

The Inner Scar: The Mysticism of Georges Bataille (religious studies), Rodopi (Atlanta, GA), 2000.

The Game of War: The Life and Death of Guy Debord (biography), J. Cape (London, England), 2001.

(Editor) The Beast at Heaven’s Gate: Georges Bataille and the Art of Transgression, Rodopi (New York, NY), 2006.

Paris: The Secret History, Bloomsbury (New York, NY), 2007.

Author of weekly column for New Statesman. Contributor to periodicals, including the Observer.

SIDELIGHTS: Andrew Hussey’s Paris: The Secret History examines the hidden life of the City of Light throughout the two thousand years of its existence. Instead of concentrating on major figures of the city’s history, however, he looks at “Paris from the perspective of the city’s marginal and subversive elements— insurrectionists, criminals, immigrants and sexual outsiders,” explained a Publishers Weekly contributor. “He guides us through important French poetry, novels, films, music—but also along the rivers of blood running in the streets in just about every century,” said a Kirkus Reviews contributor. “On every page,” critic Tim Martin wrote in the Independent, “fragments of sinister trivia and captivating alternative histories bob up with the regularity of the corpses that have thronged the Seine since the time of the Parisii.” “Paris may be the world’s favorite city,” Donald Morrison reported in Time International, “but few of the 25 million annual visitors realize that its handsome streets are paved with blood and merde.”

Many critics—and Hussey himself—have compared Paris to Peter Ackroyd’s London: The Biography, another history that examines a major world city through the lives of colorful characters and criminal elements. Through much of the city’s history, Hussey reports, Paris was ruled directly by the kings of France. Personalities—like Charles VI, who labored under the impression that he was made of glass and wore clothes interwoven with iron bars to prevent breakage, and Henri III, who threw his jester into prison for telling him that poor people lived in Paris—play a prominent role in Hussey’s story. Like Ackroyd’s volume, Martin wrote, Paris“brims with rubbernecker’s trouvailles. Breaking off from an erudite passage on the Templars, for example, he moves seamlessly to a description of the present-day Bar-Tabac des Templiers, where members of the Milice du Christ rub shoulders with Dan Brown dilettantes to debate the mysteries of the Order.”

“Hussey’s sympathies lie far more with the working class, the drunkards, bohemians, decadents and flâneurs of Paris than with the clichéd and commodified picture-postcard city,” Ian Pindar wrote in the Guardian.“He is more interested in Belleville or Les Halles than in the ‘sterile grandeur’ of Versailles. He is also a sympathetic guide to les événements of May 1968 and reminds us that the first major student unrest in Paris took place in 1229, so it’s a venerable tradition.” “Paris teems with characters straight out of a novel by Honore de Balzac, Victor Hugo or Emile Zola,” Morrison stated, “who are themselves among the book’s colorful players.” Hussey comes to the conclusion, Marie Marmo Mullaney explained in the Library Journal, that in the final analysis the “‘typical’ Parisian” was a myth, “and that for its first 1000 years Paris was not a great or beautiful city.” “This book,” concluded New York Times contributor Alan Riding, “is a lengthy reminder that urban history is about artisans, criminals, conspirators, prostitutes, priests, immigrants, students and intellectuals no less than emperors, kings and presidents.”

Hussey told CA:“I’ve always been keen on French writers—the novels that had an impact on me as a teenager were by Albert Camus and then Louis-Ferdinand Céline. It’s hard to say why this was so. I grew up in the suburbs of Liverpool and in cultural and political terms couldn’t have been further from Paris or North Africa, where my career has taken me. I suppose it was intellectual curiosity and a desire to go beyond my immediate surroundings that drove me on—a familiar scenario for any writer I think. I am also an admirer of Georges Bataille who, apart from being known as a dedicated erotomane, was obsessed by the idea of transcendence in writing—to some extent that is what drives me on, pretentious as it may sound. These days I am a big fan of the Spanish writer Juan Goytisolo, whose work crosses boundaries all the time, and the Scottish singer and writer Momus, who always manages to be perverse, tender, and clever all at once. I think the best poet currently at work in English is Mark E Smith.”

When asked to state the most surprising thing he has learned as a writer, Hussey said: “The sheer hard work is no surprise. The big business of publishing is really no surprise either. The fickle pace of change in journalism is also well known. But the pettiness and jealousy of other writers can come as a shock. I was also surprised by how nerve-wracking and exhausting the whole business of publication and promotion can be. Like most writers, I want to be read and known but find self-promotion vaguely unsettling.”

When asked what effect he hopes his books will have, Hussey said: “Pleasure. People seem to think that any entertaining book is either cheap or rubbish or intellectually insignificant; I’d like to prove that the opposite is the case.”