lives exist. Whether it is sterile Montreal, drab 1950’s or activist 1960’s Paris, or the broader canvas of post-World War II Europe, the historical settings shape the characters’ lives. The war in Indochina may not be the focus ofThe Other Paris, but it is on the periphery; what happens there deeply affects characters’ lives.

Important as history is, for Gallant it is not a fixed, permanent record of past events, but a shifting account shaped by people who record public events (World War II, the Dreyfus case, the war in Indochina) in their own personal memories. Past events are interpreted as commentaries on the failed present by an older generation intent on giving meaning and consequence to their lives. Even professional historians fail to establish a true history. In “Kingdom Come” (1986), Gallant recounts the fate of a professor who attempts to document the linguistic past of an obscure tribe in a remote location. He is rejected by the tribe and his own children, and his “history” is dismissed by his colleagues.

Gallant demonstrates the complex interplay between characters and history by including journals and letters, which possess a documentary quality, in her fiction; by using multiple points of view, which often are abruptly shifted; and by employing interior monologues and flashbacks. Gallant also sometimes shifts the narrative point of view, for example, from third person limited to the omniscient; it is often difficult to detect the exact point of view, making it impossible to identify how aware a character is. The cyclical nature of many of Gallant’s narratives also poses problems for readers, since some stories are framed by similar stories. This lends a claustrophobic air to the narrative. Some stories begin before a climactic moment, retreat into the past, return to the present, and stop just short of actual resolution. Although the “endings” of these stories are not told, they are implied and are, in a sense, created by the character, who anticipates an ending, reinterprets past action, and imagines a resolution that is at once true and false.

“The Other Paris”

First published: 1956 (collected in The Other Paris, 1956)

Type of work: Short story

In post-World War II Paris, when a young American woman fails to discover her imagined Paris in the real Paris, she reinvents her experiences and returns home.

“The Other Paris,” the title story of Gallant’s first collection of short stories, takes place in the drab Paris of the 1950’s. Carol Frazier, the protagonist, is a young American whose views of Paris, love, and marriage have been shaped by the media and college lectures. The story begins at a dressmaker’s, where Carol and Odile, her French friend, discuss Carol’s impending wedding to Howard Mitchell, a coworker at an American government agency. The recollection of his proposal establishes the conflict between Carol’s imagined Paris, with “the Seine, moonlight, barrows of violets, acacias in flower,” and reality, a proposal at lunch, “over a tuna-fish salad.” The imagined proposal scene, however, is the one Carol “had nearly come to believe . . . herself.” Undaunted by the first disillusionment, Carol undertakes the “business of falling in love.” Gallant’s ironic coupling of “business” and “love” foreshadows the failure of Carol’s undertaking. When she does not fall in love, she attributes it to the rainy weather and the winter season.

Despite her daily observation of “shabby girls,” “men who needed a haircut,” and whining children, Carol retains her belief that her imagined Paris exists, that she only has to find it. She smugly pities Odile, but her meeting with Felix, Odile’s young boyfriend, who is Carol’s age, upsets her preconceived notions, She maintains that she has no interest in Felix, but her actions reveal her fascination with him. Judging him by her standards, his unemployment is inexcusable. She interprets his possession of American cigarettes as a “bad sign.” She, however, fantasizes about him, so much so that at his apartment Carol’s heart “leaped as if he, Felix, had said he loved her.” She corrects herself quickly, denying her real feelings, telling herself that she desires not Felix, but some other man, someone who does not exist.

The meeting at Felix’s apartment follows a series of disappointments. Earlier in the story, Carol convinces Howard to take her to hear singing in the Place Vendôme, an outing that culminates in “acrid smoke,” Howard’s catching a cold, and her realization that “nothing happened.” Another blow comes at a musical debut given by Odile’s sister, who Carol believes will wear Carol’s “green tulle.” The concert is held at a theater where a piece of the ceiling falls and almost hits Howard, Odile’s sister does not wear Carol’s dress, and Odile’s family snubs Carol, a foreigner.

She discovers that her vision of love comes from Felix and Odile, but she must deny her insight, rationalize her decision, and conclude that what she has with Howard is better. She senses that she will reinvent her Paris experiences so that a “coherent picture, accurate but untrue,” will emerge.

The Pegnitz Junction

First published: 1973

Type of work: Novella

As a young woman journeys, literally and metaphorically, she invents stories that are more “real” than her own.

Christine, a young German woman, is at a junction in her life. Although engaged to a theology student, she travels with her lover, Herbert, and Bert, his son, to Paris for a holiday. She considers the trip a test of how well she and Bert can get along. Most of the novella, which takes place after World War II, occurs not in Paris, but on the train back to Germany. Most of “what happens” is internal, rather than external. Although the narration leads to Christine’s marital decision, which she does not make, The Pegnitz Junction also concerns the creative process, which is capable of inventing a reality more “real” and interesting than reality. As the three travel on the train, Christine’s imagined scenarios regarding other passengers and people she sees make her own story pale in comparison. Gallant uses italics, for the most part, to distinguish Christine’s scripts from her own story.

Christine prefers Herbert to the theology student because she believes Herbert does not create “barriers”—the second thoughts, self-analysis, and talk that paradoxically prevent true communication. Before the end of the story, however, Herbert veers off into analysis, the language people use to control others. Small gestures and details add up; together they imply the dead end that Christine will eventually reach. When the drunken porter verbally abuses them in Paris, Herbert only contemplates action. On the train, he begs her to marry him and vows to put Bert in a boarding school, but later “it was as if nothing had been said.” Herbert, like so many other characters in Gallant’s fiction, is controlled by memories of his past, his failed marriage, and his mother.

Christine, who is bored and annoyed with Herbert, begins to retreat from the present, creating a stream-of-consciousness story which seems to emanate from an elderly woman passenger. That story, involving German immigrants in the United States, is full of envy, resentment, paranoia, greed, and revenge. It culminates in the woman’s petty triumph over relatives. Another invented scenario concerns a family and ends with the violent death of one of the characters. Another passenger remembers his childhood loss of Marie and the flight of his family; Christine believes that he knows that she knows about his memory. Her unspoken question to him, “Why spend a vacation in a dead landscape?” also applies to her own Paris holiday. In fact, all of Christine’s invented stories relate to her situation: the doomed search for love, the plight of the refugee, the violence felt but not expressed. At the end of the novella, Christine’s desire to have “the last word, without interference” reflects her need to take control.

“Across the Bridge”

First published: 1991 (collected in Across the Bridge, 1993)

Type of work: Short story

A young Frenchwoman attempts to create an enchanted romantic world, fails, and then rationalizes her acceptance of a mediocre married life.

“Across the Bridge” concerns Sylvie’s passage from one state to another. The story of a young woman who breaks her engagement because of an infatuation with another man, only to return to her fiancé, “Across the Bridge” also concerns the loss of romance and idealism and the acceptance of mediocrity, an acceptance Sylvie quite deliberately transforms into happiness. Before that transformation occurs, she comes to understand her real relationship to her mother and her real image in the eyes of her father and fiancé.

The story begins on a bridge, with Sylvie telling her mother that she does not love Arnaud, but instead loves Bernard Brunelle, with whom she is only casually acquainted. Her mother’s response, that love takes “patience, like practicing scales,” reflects her opinion of love and marriage, an opinion Sylvie will eventually come to share. She sees her mother and herself like “two sisters who never quarrel,” and interprets her mother’s throwing the wedding invitations into the Seine as a sign that both women have “put something over on life, or on men.” Sylvie does not, however, understand her mother’s real position.

While Sylvie proceeds to invent the details of her projected life with Bernard, her father writes to Bernard’s father, who rejects the proposed marriage. Sylvie must face the reality of knowing that her fantasy will not come true. Her parents respond with passive aggression, giving up their holiday as “penance” for their daughter’s sin. Sylvie’s mother, who was her “sister,” now turns from Sylvie to her husband and metaphorically commands Sylvie to stand aside. Eventually her father says that he forgives her, but his “forgiving” words and his actions belie his ostensible forgiveness. His negative response to Sylvie’s reading a newspaper and his description of her as “washed up” further weaken her.

When Julien, a cousin and marital alternative, is reported missing in the war in Indochina, Sylvie’s mother decides to renew Sylvie’s relationship with Arnaud. Sylvie then recognizes the conspiracy that mothers engage in with the world, letting their daughters receive only as much understanding as they think necessary. The extent of Sylvie’s mother’s control is revealed when Sylvie lets her mother dictate a letter to Arnaud.

Arnaud meets Sylvie, and his discourse with her is not about them but about analogous characters from operas and plays. Sylvie unwittingly reveals her response to Arnaud when she describes him eating the dessert he does not wish to waste: “He must love me. Otherwise it would be disgusting.” So successfully does she internalize this “love” that she begins to shape their future by wondering about weaning him away from his cheap habits. Even though he does not look at her after he boards the train, she, on her walk home, imagines his return journey and a false “true life” that in retrospect makes her “happy.”