Yours truly with Julie amid the mob of tourists searching for an authentic Moulin Rouge moment.

I came to revere some of my long dead heroes—Beckett, Colette, Maupassant, Man Ray, Baudelaire, Brancusi, Serge Gainsbourg—but did not expect to feel grief. Not my own, but that of an elderly woman in a sky-blue checked suit, bent over a mossy, concrete tomb, clutching her rosaries, her weeping face hidden in her hands. Though I’d seen a few nontourists filling watering cans, sweeping away moldering leaves, arranging fresh bouquets of flowers, their actions seemed more a ritual than an expression of loss. If I’d been a more courageous photographer, I would have moved closer, filled the frame with her private grief. But I can’t do that anymore, not just because I’ve grown more cowardly, but because the intensity of her grief was so palpable I did not want to risk violating it. It awakened fresh memories of my dead father and how I had not wept for him, hadn’t felt like it. I missed him, despite my complicated relationship with him, but the loss was not inconsolable like this woman’s. Perhaps it was a sister, a child, a husband, a lover that lay in that tomb. Or perhaps she suddenly felt that soon she, too, would be inside that cold box beside the one she grieved for. As dozens of visitors wandered through the grid of graves, cameras and maps in hand, I began to feel the indifference of time. What would be written on my grave? Would anybody really grieve for me? Would there be money to pay for my plot’s upkeep? What’s worth leaving behind? Death is an enormously powerful equalizer.

Beckett and Baudelaire, among many others...

One of the most influential photography books of all time is coming out in a 50th anniversary edition. No doubt about it, Robert Frank had a major influence on me. I view his balance of detachment, social commentary, and poetry nothing short of pure genius. The guy has/had eyes! And he never kept still, always moved on and innovated. The Americans is like Miles Davis’ Kind of Blue, groundbreaking, iconic. Neither artist was foolish enough to rest on his laurels or repeat the past. That’s why they ended up being great.

Some of My Favorite Photos from the Book

He was one of the first to use the flag compositionally, exploiting its graphic form in ways many Americans found offensive and unpatriotic.

He photographed everyone, black, white, latino, rich and poor. Part of Frank’s gift was that he wasn’t dogmatic or biased. He seemed to treat all subjects equally, with dignity and an open mind.

He was a formalist as well as a poet. This picture taken on the East River flashed in my mind when I was writing a couple of scenes in my novel about the ferry and Ellis Island.

This picture is both compositionally and emotionally perfect. The elevator girl’s expression, the blur of the woman in the mink stole, the silhouette of the portly man with glasses, plus the angle of the composition adds movement and tension. The positive and negative spaces are just amazing, an interesting jigsaw puzzle, seemingly reconfigurable.

More on the 50th
For more commentary on Robert Frank and this anniversary, go here, here, and here. 2009 will bring a travelling exposition, starting at the National Gallery.

Lucie Ceccaldi, the 83-year-old mother of Michel Houellebecq, is fighting back. She's tired of being the slut in his books and has decided to trash him in her own memoir, L'Innocente. She dares him to malign her again or "he's going to get hit in the gob with a walking stick and that'll knock all his teeth out, that's for sure." Read about the mother and son here.