Summer in Paris – Cambridge Writers' Workshop

David Shields

Charles Recoursé

Shakespeare & Co.

The Cambridge Writers’ Workshop is proud to announce that we will be hosting Guggenheim Fellowship and two time NEA fellowship recipient David Shields for a reading at Shakespeare and Company Bookstore in Paris. The reading will take place as part of our Summer in Paris Writing Retreat on Thursday July 23, 2015 from 7 p.m. – 8 p.m. Rita Banerjee will introduce and moderate the event, which will feature David Shields and his French translator, Charles Recoursé, performing the dialogue of Shields and Caleb Powell from I Think You’re Totally Wrong: A Quarrel. The performance will be followed by a discussion of collage and the literary essay by Shields and Recoursé, followed by a Q&A portion, which will be lead by Diana Norma Szokoloyai.

David Shields is the internationally bestselling author of twenty books, including Reality Hunger (named one of the best books of 2010 by more than thirty publications), The Thing About Life Is That One Day You’ll Be Dead (New York Times bestseller), and Black Planet (finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award). Forthcoming are War Is Beautiful (powerHouse, November 2015), Flip-Side (powerHouse, March 2016) and Other People (Knopf, 2017). The recipient of Guggenheim and NEA fellowships, Shields has published essays and stories in the New York Times Magazine, Harper’s, Esquire, Yale Review, Village Voice, Salon, Slate, McSweeney’s, and Believer. His work has been translated into twenty languages.

Shakespeare and Company became the “literary culture in bohemian Paris” after it was opened by George Whitman in 1951. The English-language bookstore was frequented by many Beat Generation poets like Allen Ginsberg and William S. Burroughs, as well as other writers like Anaïs Nin and Henry Miller. The bookstore regularly hosts poetry readings and houses young writers.

To apply for the Summer in Paris Writing Retreat (July 22-30, 2015), visit cww.submittable.com and send an application by May 25, 2015.

Author David Shields (guest curator from DOXA 2012 and Cambridge Writers’ Workshop’s Summer in Paris Writing Retreat Instructor) returns with a cinematic adaptation of his new book from director James Franco. What could possibly go wrong, you may ask? Well, almost from the start, just about everything. Shields and his collaborator and fellow-combatant, Caleb Powell, decide to up the ante by spending four days together in a cabin in the Cascades. The men barely make it down the driveway before an argument breaks out. On the drive to the cabin, things degenerate even further, as they variously debate the idea of life versus art. Powell, a father of three girls and a stay-at-home dad, has chosen to devote himself to family, while Shields, author of five new books in the coming year alone, is the champion of the arts.

On the first day of shooting, an actual fight breaks out over what and who can be talked about in the course of the film. Namely, whether Powell will or won’t be willing to invite his friend, a former stripper, to participate in the film. The director gets dragged into the mix. As the three men, and their respective egos, circle and jab at each other, you wait for someone to get punched in the face. The gladiatorial aspects of the film are only a beginning, as the weekend continues, something altogether more surprising happens — genuine and real communication. More than a deconstruction of the buddy film, I Think You’re Totally Wrong assails the divisions between reality and fiction, documentary and life, with subversive glee. -DW

James Franco is an actor, director, screenwriter, producer, teacher and author. He began his career on Freaks And Geeks and received a Golden Globe Award for his performance in the biographical film James Dean. Notable film credits include Oz The Great and Powerful, Spring Breakers, “Harry Osborn” in the Spider-Man trilogy, Milk and 127 Hours for which he received Academy Award, SAG and Golden Globe nominations for Best Actor. He has directed, wrote and produced several features and has been published several times in magazines and through his own books. He is currently teaching college courses at UCLA, USC and Cal Arts and acting classes at Studio 4 and will make his Broadway debut in Of Mice & Men this spring.

Cambridge Writers' Workshop

Tag Archives: Summer in Paris

Cambridge Writers’ Workshop teams up with Shakespeare & Company, Paris (July 23, 2015)

James Franco’s Adaptation of David Shields’s I Think You’re Totally Wrong: A Quarrel Premieres May 3, 2015 at Vancouver’s DOXA Festival