My IFP Paris visit this year was a really busy one, offering lectures for three separate academic programs: Petroleum Economics & Management (PEM, primarily for international students); Energie et Marchés (ENM, for French students); and the joint IFP School-BI Oslo Executive Masters (EMME, for mid-career business executives). It also gave me a chance to pick up a copy of the IFP School Alumni Mag No. 267, which contained a brief note I contributed about the IFP School’s ‘ecosystem.’

Of course, such a visit also offered a wonderful excuse for other Paris explorations…. & this year had two such targets:

A couple of years ago, I had visited Saltpêtrière, whose name gives it away as the site of a former munitions factory — and noted then that my Pollution Markets book described the perilous gunpowder situation facing American colonists during the Revolutionary War. The Americans did not have much success making it (and supplies were blockaded by the British) – but were ultimately saved by “the timely and generous contributions of the French.” I didn’t know exactly how the French had managed to do so, however, until reading Improbable Patriot, by Harlow Giles Unger – the fascinating story of the polymath Pierre-Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais.

Beaumarchais

Initially a clock-maker like his father, Beaumarchais – while still a teenager — invented a new escapement mechanism that allowed the development of a small wrist watch, which became the hit of the Louis XV court; subsequently became a famous paramour and ladies-man at that court; became a playwright & wrote dramas later adapted by famous musicians: The Marriage of Figaro by Mozart, and the Barber of Seville by Rossini; had various adventures as a businessman, diplomat and spy; and, yes, on top of all that, became a gunner-runner, supplying Americans with weapons & critically needed gunpowder.

Quite a story! — & so on this visit, I strolled along Boulevard Beaumarchais, the site of his former estate located near Place de la Bastille, and also visited his statue located immediately nearby (and shown in the adjacent photo).

The second target was another illustrious Frenchman, with an equally exciting life. After my Montparnasse/“existentialist” Paris visit a couple of years ago, I had picked up a copy of a book entitled Brave Genius, by the molecular biologist Sean B. Carroll [note: not the astrophysicist Sean M. Carroll, who wrote the book The Big Picture mentioned in my August, 2016 posting]. Brave Genius tells the story of two heroes of the French resistance in WWII – both of whom went on to win the Nobel Prize: Albert Camus for Literature, and Jacques Monod for Medicine. They were good friends, and the NY Times obit for Monod notes that his own values were based upon the existential ethics of his friend Camus: “an ethics based on free choice.” Carroll manages to deftly tell their remarkable story, delving into their resistance activities during the war, Camus’ existentialist thinking, and — with the author’s scientific background – even a clear discussion of Monod’s medical breakthroughs as well.

Carroll’s work sent me even deeper into Camus’ writing, including The Stranger – which critics aptly described as “Hemingway doing Kafka.” And a very special guide for that was Alice Kaplan’s recent book Looking for The Stranger, which she describes as a ‘biography’ of Camus’ most well-known text. I’ve been a big Alice Kaplan fan ever since reading her book French Lessons: A Memoir more than twenty years ago. Unfortunately, I’ve never had her gift for language….. but that book made such an impression on me that I even gave one away as a Christmas gift.

In addition to her ‘Stranger’ book, Kaplan wrote ‘Paris from Camus’s Notebooks’ in The Paris Review which includes a list of ‘Places to visit’….. & of course, I took the opportunity on this Paris trip to visit many of those sites. These included a stop at 100, rue Réaumur (upper right in photo), the site where Camus edited Combat, the resistance publication, in 1944 [Kaplan’s article shows that same building during the German occupation]; the art-deco publication site of Paris-Soir (and later Le Figaro) at 37 rue du Louvre (on the left); and also the Madison Hotel on the Blvd St.-Germain, where Camus worked on his book, & watched the French flee during the German invasion. I found that part of the tour particularly relevant, because I too had stayed at the Madison…. every year, for almost twenty years, during my early IFP visits. Eventually, though, it simply became too expensive for academic types like me – a point Kaplan hints at in her tour comments.

Camus landmarks