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Willmoore Kendall In Meudon
Jeffrey Hart has published a memoir of Willmoore Kendall in the New Criterion. He mentions the Willmoore Kendall Memorial Couch, and the flagrant delight from which it derives its name. He also writes this:
"I managed to find his address in Meudon-Bellevue, a working-class suburb in what is known as the Communist “Red Belt” around Paris. This was not exactly a slum, but close. What answered the bell was a tall, gray-haired man in a sleeveless T-shirt, dirty khakis, and sneakers without socks."
To write "not exactly a slum, but close" is wildly off the mark. I lived in Meudon for a year, and was in Bellevue often; the towns are one stop apart on the same rail line into Paris. Meudon was the site of the Paris Observatory; it was not, when I, or when Willmoore Kendall, was there, a "working-class suburb." Bellevue was less expensive, but still was nothing like a slum. I don't know why Hart wrote that. Possibly it added to the how-far-has-he-fallen account of Willmoore Kendall.
