The forty-three lovingly crafted vignettes within The Difficulty of Being a Dog dig elegantly to the center of a long, mysterious, and often intense relationship: that between human beings and dogs. In doing so, Roger Grenier introduces us to dogs real and literary, famous and reviled—from Ulysses's Argos to Freud's Lün to the hundreds of dogs exiled from Constantinople in 1910 and deposited on a desert island—and gives us a sense of what makes our relationships with them so meaningful.

The Difficulty of Being a Dog

Crafts, Hobbies & Home

Grenier, Roger

Pets & Animal Care

University of Chicago Press

Most attempts to generalize about photography as a medium run up against our experience of the photographs themselves. We live with photos and cameras every day, and philosophies of the photographic image do little to shake our intimate sense of how we produce photographs and what they mean to us. In this book that is equal parts memoir and intellectual and cultural history, French writer Roger Grenier contemplates the ways that photography can change the course of a life, reflecting along the way on the history of photography and its practitioners. Unfolding in brief, charming vignettes, A Box of Photographs evokes Grenier’s childhood in Pau, his war years, and his working life at the Gallimard publishing house in Paris. Throughout these personal stories, Grenier subtly weaves the story of a lifetime of practicing and thinking about photography and its heroes—Henri Cartier-Bresson, Weegee, Alfred Eisenstaedt, George Brassaï, Inge Morath, and others. Adding their own insights about photography to the narrative are a striking range of writers, thinkers, and artists, from Lewis Carroll, Albert Camus, and Arthur Schopenhauer to Susan Sontag, Edgar Degas, and Eugène Delacroix. Even cameras themselves come to life and take on personalities: an Agfa accompanies Grenier on grueling military duty in Algeria, a Voigtlander almost gets him killed by German soldiers during the liberation of Paris, and an ill-fated Olympus drowns in a boating accident. Throughout, Grenier draws us into the private life of photographs, seeking the secrets they hold for him and for us. A valedictory salute to a lost world of darkrooms, proofs, and the gummed paper corners of old photo albums, A Box of Photographs is a warm look at the most honest of life’s mirrors.

A Box of Photographs

Arts & Photography

Photography & Video

For decades, French writer, editor, and publisher Roger Grenier has been enticing readers with compact, erudite books that draw elegant connections between the art of living and the work of art. Under Grenier’s wry gaze, clichés crumble, and offbeat anecdotes build to powerful insights. With Palace of Books, he invites us to explore the domain of literature, its sweeping vistas and hidden recesses. Engaging such fundamental questions as why people feel the need to write, or what is involved in putting one’s self on the page, or how a writer knows she’s written her last sentence, Grenier marshals apposite passages from his favorite writers: Chekhov, Baudelaire, Proust, James, Kafka, Mansfield and many others. Those writers mingle companionably with tales from Grenier’s half-century as an editor and friend to countless legendary figures, including Albert Camus, Romain Gary, Milan Kundera, and Brassai,. Grenier offers here a series of observations and quotations that feel as spontaneous as good conversation, yet carry the lasting insights of a lifetime of reading and thinking. Palace of Books is rich with pleasures and surprises, the perfect accompaniment to old literary favorites, and the perfect introduction to new ones.

Palace of Books

Biographies & Memoirs

Arts & Literature

For decades, French writer, editor, and publisher Roger Grenier has been enticing readers with compact, erudite books that draw elegant connections between the art of living and the work of art. Under Grenier’s wry gaze, clichés crumble, and offbeat anecdotes build to powerful insights. With Palace of Books, he invites us to explore the domain of literature, its sweeping vistas and hidden recesses. Engaging such fundamental questions as why people feel the need to write, or what is involved in putting one’s self on the page, or how a writer knows she’s written her last sentence, Grenier marshals apposite passages from his favorite writers: Chekhov, Baudelaire, Proust, James, Kafka, Mansfield and many others. Those writers mingle companionably with tales from Grenier’s half-century as an editor and friend to countless legendary figures, including Albert Camus, Romain Gary, Milan Kundera, and Brassai,. Grenier offers here a series of observations and quotations that feel as spontaneous as good conversation, yet carry the lasting insights of a lifetime of reading and thinking. Palace of Books is rich with pleasures and surprises, the perfect accompaniment to old literary favorites, and the perfect introduction to new ones.

Piano Music for Four Hands

Piano Music for Four Hands is a novel about music and love set against three generations of French history. At its center is a charming but melancholy pianist named Michel Mailhoc. Having survived a series of bungled love affairs and professional disappointments, he retreats to his family house in the Pyrenees. The bright spot in his life is his grandniece Emma, who becomes his prizewinning student. Struggling with his fervent desire for her success and the fear of losing her, Michel sends Emma into the world of international musical stardom that he has renounced for himself. The Mailhoc family saga, stretching from World War I to the turbulent 1960s, is full of sorrow, but the underlying melody remains tender and humorous. From the first sentence we feel curiously at home in Roger Grenier's intimate, precise, and musical writing.

Literature & Fiction

Contemporary

University Of Nebraska Press

Piano Music for Four Hands is a novel about music and love set against three generations of French history. At its center is a charming but melancholy pianist named Michel Mailhoc. Having survived a series of bungled love affairs and professional disappointments, he retreats to his family house in the Pyrenees. The bright spot in his life is his grandniece Emma, who becomes his prizewinning student. Struggling with his fervent desire for her success and the fear of losing her, Michel sends Emma into the world of international musical stardom that he has renounced for himself. The Mailhoc family saga, stretching from World War I to the turbulent 1960s, is full of sorrow, but the underlying melody remains tender and humorous. From the first sentence we feel curiously at home in Roger Grenier's intimate, precise, and musical writing.

Bison Books

326 Pages of illustrations, photographs, and text.

Album Camus: Iconographie choisie et commentee par Roger Grenier

Gallimard / pleiade

Le palais des livres

Essays & Correspondence

Gallimard]

Albert Camus soleil et ombre: Une biographie intellectuelle

Genre Fiction

Фоліо

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Grenier, Roger. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Grenier, Roger

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Grenier, Roger. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

The Difficulty of Being a Dog

The Difficulty of Being a Dog

A Box of Photographs

Palace of Books

Palace of Books

Piano Music for Four Hands

Piano Music for Four Hands

Album Camus: Iconographie choisie et commentee par Roger Grenier

Le palais des livres

Albert Camus soleil et ombre: Une biographie intellectuelle