JIM HAYNES

Sunday suppers: If you're in Paris, you're invited

Carol Pucci, Seattle Times travel writer
The Seattle Times, Friday, April 20, 2007

PARIS — It's Sunday night, and in apartments all over the city, people are sitting down to dinner, perhaps with friends, sharing good food, wine and lively conversation. Wouldn't it be fun to score an invitation? Maybe discover a new neighborhood and see what it's like inside those old buildings with the big wooden doors? Better yet, why not just invite yourself?...>>

The Eternal Optimist

Julie Pecheur, The Paris Times, N.11, Sept 2006

To some people, life is great. Fun. Wonderful. Every day. Every minute. These people read the newspapers and see the same clouds as everyone else, but to them, humans are not selfish, arrogant jerks, but rather a constant source of wonder, an excuse to share, the possibility of love. They admit to a few obstacles along the way, but they think of them as gifts, mere steps to an even better and happier life. Jim Haynes is one of these people. "That's the way I am," he explains, "I've always been optimistic and incredibly happy."...>>

Yes, he'll get by with a little help...

John Lloyd, The Financial Times Weekend January 16/17, 1999

ALWAYS OPEN to every experience and never one to be shamed, Jim Haynes still believes in the Sixties after all these years. John Lloyd reportsJim Haynes is a 1960s man for the connoisseur, for those who saw and see in that period (which lasted to the 1970s) a quite serious and bold venture...>>

Sunday dinners in Paris: just call Jim

Alex Ninian, The Chicago Tribune, Sunday, 2002

PARIS "Get off Metro 4 at Alesia in arrondissement 14eme and head for No. 83, rue de la Tombe Issoire."
Not the directions you'd expect for meeting a man from Louisiana. But here he is. Been here for ages and loved Paris so much that more than 25 years ago he decided to give dinner every Sunday to anyone who wanted to come. I do mean anyone who wanted to come...>>

The Human Factor

Deborah Courtnell, The Guardian (London), August 14, 1993

JIM HAYNES is a seductive bear of a man, a sort of cross between Charles Bronson and Ernest Hemingway, brown jumper tucking neat paunch beneath immaculate cream suit. Not bad for 59. Since he isn't dead, he must be a born-again; a reincarnation from another time when people walked everywhere and talked to each other in the streets. He has roamed across the fractured lands of modern...>>

Alternative arts man

Michale Coveney, Financial Times, March 10, 1984

After he had launched Britain's first paperback bookshop in Edinburgh in 1959, Jim Haynes became a crucial figure in the Performing Arts. He made things happen. He initiated the fringe theatre movement in this country. An ex-member of the U.S. Air Force, he became, along with fellow ex-pats Charles Marowitz and Ed Berman, a key spokesman for...>>

It's weird, it's wonderful - it must be Edinburgh

Andy Lavender, The Times (London), August 2, 1999

With August festival fever about to strike, Andy Lavender looks back at some of the triumphs and disasters that bear the stamp of the world's biggest celebration of the arts.
It may be overcrowded, overpriced and overrated, but if it weren't for the Festival, Edinburgh would still be the slumbering provincial city it was in 1947 - and the world's wannabes, stars and has-beens would have to find somewhere else to...>>

Jim Haynes Sunday Dinners

Taylor Beidler, Frommers.com, March 9, 2006

They happen almost every Sunday night, they've been happening since the 70's, I've been reading articles about it for years and this time to Paris I was able to go to dinner at Jim's!
It all starts with a visit to his website www.jim-haynes.com, click on the "Come to Sunday Dinner!" link, and fill out the form that e-mails Jim a message that you'd like to come. Jim will reply via e-mail welcoming you and asking you to give him a call when you arrive in Paris to confirm. When you call him he'll give you directions and the entry code for the gate, tell you what's for dinner, and have a quick getting to know you chat. In a few...>>

Life is one big party

Raymond Ross, Edinburgh Evening News, August 27, 1992

Raymond Ross meets Jim Haynes, an American in Paris and first chairman of the [Edinburgh] Traverse Theater.

IN THE autumn of 1956 a young man by the name of Jim Haynes from Haynesville, Louisiana, arrived at the US airbase at Kirknewton [outside Edinburgh, Scotland] to do his [US] military service.
Listen to the Russians by night and attending Edinburgh University by day, Jim Haynes was soon to become something...>>

A lust for life

Alan Taylor, Evening News, April 8, 1999

SEX in the city of Edinburgh began in the spring of 1959. We can be so precise about the date because it was at that point that a tall American moseyed into town. His name was Jim Haynes and he inspired a sexual revolution that was to put the ancient, stuffed-shirt Capital at the forefront of the Sixties' counter-culture. Incredible as it may seem...>>

Do your own thing: a call to counter-culture

Mick Brown, The Daily Telegraph, November 6, 1993
Telegraph Magazine:

WHEN Jim Haynes first arrived in Edinburgh from America in 1956, the city was 'dark, dank, cold - everything under yellow smog'. There was one coffee-house. The Edinburgh Festival featured only classical music and the big national theatre companies. 'There was nothing fringe, off-beat, radical or crazy', he remembers. Jim Haynes made up his mind to put it there...>>

A message: please ring Jim Haynes in Paris

Jeremy Atyah, The Independent (London), May 17, 1998

WOULD ANYONE out there like to meet an American called Jim Haynes? I am talking about the Jim Haynes who lives in Atelier A-2, at 83 Rue de la Tombe Issoire in Paris (post code 75014), and whose telephone number is 00 331 4327 1767.
If you're not interested, shame on you. Because Jim Haynes is one of the ...>>

A visit to the home front in Poland

Nicholas Lezard, The Independent, March 22, 1992

THE FRONTIERS of travel are no longer geographical: if you can rustle up a few hundred pounds you can go almost anywhere. The problem is that as a tourist, contact with the locals means a humiliating exchange of incomprehension and distrust with receptionists, guides, bar staff and waiters. In order to combat this, Jim Haynes has compiled Poland: People to People (Canongate Press, pounds 4.95)...>>