The Ties That Bind

Imagine the scene:  A televised presidential debate between six male and female candidates from the same party.  But here’s the hitch—two of the candidates lived together for 25 years and had four children!  Sounds like a doofy plot for a situation comedy, right?  Well, no, that actually happened last night on French TV (read this article in The Guardian for more).  

How do they do it?  How do François Hollande and Ségolène Royale manage to remain civil to each other during a presidential debate when their very public split up a few years ago is still in the minds of one and all?  And here I thought French politics couldn’t get any weirder after the president divorced his wife and married a pop star one year into his mandate.  Of course, this is all private stuff and nowhere near as pertinent to the country’s future as the current campaign financing scandals or the state of the French economy.  Still, you can’t help but wonder what is going through their minds during the taping…

FRANÇOIS:  Oh God, there she goes again, always getting on her high horse.  Reminds me of the time I left the roast out overnight.  You’d think I’d betrayed the Republic.  Ha, she’s one to talk about betrayals…whose that creep she’s with now, anyway? Damn, she looks good in that suit.  OK, focus now, gotta focus…

SÉGOLÈNE:  OK, keep a straight face…did he just say the word ”fidelity?”  My ass!  Hey, Fifi, it looks like we’ve gone off our diet—isn’t that collar just a little bit tight?  You never could keep away from the camembert.  Time to run back to Dr. Dukan, chubby….Woah there girl, breathe—just breathe and flash that devastating smile….

And then there’s the kids—

THOMAS:  So are you going to watch mom and dad debate tonight?

CLÉMENCE:  Hell no, I had to listen to that all my life.

It boggles the imagination…

French Newspapers—The Space-Time Continuum

When you buy a newspaper in France, you enter a time warp. The laws of physics no longer apply. If up-to-the-minute reporting is what you are after, you may be in for a surprise.

Say you want to buy Le Monde, France’s most prominent national paper, on a Tuesday. You go to the newsstand Tuesday morning, but the only Le Monde available is from Monday. That’s because Le Monde comes out at 3pm. So you wait until 3pm and buy the Tuesday paper, but the news in it is from yesterday. In fact, many of the articles on the front page are news analyses of events that happened earlier in the week.

But that was the easy part. When you look at the paper you bought on Tuesday afternoon, it is dated Wednesday. So in fact, you are reading a paper with news from the past that appears to come from the future.

It gets worse. Let’s say you want to get the weekend edition, which has the magazine in it. You waltz up to your local news vendor Saturday morning, full of optimism. But no, the weekend edition, i.e., the Saturday edition, came out Friday. Now you have to wait until 3pm again (it’s still Saturday, remember) to get….the Monday edition. There is no Sunday paper.

Feeling frustrated, not to mention jet lagged, I tried other papers. Libération comes out on the morning of the day it’s supposed to be, but the articles have all the newsy urgency of a late night discussion over a bottle of wine. France Soir, despite its name, comes out in the morning. I don’t have the courage to try the Journal du Dimanche, for all I know, it comes out on Wednesday.

Which leaves me with Le Parisien, which is the Parisian equivalent of the New York Daily News. It comes out when it’s supposed to, is dated logically, and actually has the latest news. It may not be of the highest journalistic value, it may not have Le Monde caliber writers, but it gets high marks for living in the present.

Actually, the most newsy newspapers are the ones you get for free on the Métro, i.e., Métro and 20 Minutes. Which also seem to be the only newspapers that are thriving in this Great Newspaper Crisis era. But to tell you the truth, I have pretty much given up on the French newspapers for up-to-the-minute events. For that, I either go to the Internet, or more frequently, the radio. That old-fashioned thing with the dials does a great job in France, where there are excellent stations like France Inter and France Info.

So let’s hear it for the radio. It doesn’t cost anything, it doesn’t need to be recycled, and you don’t have to put on your glasses to use it.

On Crêpes and Groundhogs

Tonight I made crêpe batter for the very first time. Up until this point, I have shirked all crêpe-making duties, pleading ignorance. After all, my husband is much more qualified than I am. He grew up in Nantes, which is in Brittany (the Crêpe Capital of the World), and I grew up in Southern California. And while I feel very confident choosing a ripe avocado, when it comes to crêpes, I am daunted. Because in France, everyone has his or her special crêpe batter. Not that it’s all that hard to make, but everyone has a recipe that he or she has inherited from Tante Mimi, or Oncle Marcel, or, in our case, Mamie Georgette.

So it was with great trepidation that I embarked on my crêpe-making journey. I’m delighted to report that so far, I have come out of it unscathed, aside from a lightly grated knuckle, a casualty of the lemon zesting process. I say “so far” because we haven’t made them yet, and who knows what heinous crêpe making crime I will be accused of once the batter hits the pan.

Why am I making crêpes tonight, anyway? Because it is Chandeleur, of course. For reasons that are shrouded in the mists of time, February 2 is French National Crêpe Day. According to Wikipedia, Chandeleur is basically Candelmas, a Christian holiday that celebrates the presentation of Jesus at the temple. The road from Jesus to crêpes is tortured, however: Wikipedia puts forth a theory that Pope Gelasius I offered pilgrims crêpes when they came to celebrate the holiday in Rome. This seems a bit of a stretch and I prefer to believe it is linked to an earlier Celtic holiday that had to do with the “end” of winter, though how anyone in their right mind could believe that February 2 is the end of winter is a mystery to me. Then there’s another bit about bears coming out of their hibernation at this time, which was another subject of a pagan rite.

Which brings me to another fascinating and equally tortured link between this holiday and Punxsutawney Phil. It was only this evening that I realized Chandeleur was in fact, Groundhog Day. And if you look up explanations for Groundhog Day, you come up with the same Celtic festival, Imbolc. So by all rights, Phil and his colleagues should not come out of their burrows and look for their shadow—they should eat a crêpe.

But to get back the batter. It is Wednesday, and my husband doesn’t get home until 7:30, and it seems that the batter absolutely must rest for one hour before it goes into the pan. God forbid we should use tired batter. Hence, I must make the batter before he gets home.

Right now the batter is resting and I must admit, I’m jealous. It looks so calm and mellow that I’d like to jump in and swim around in it. This was my day “off” (kids don’t go to school on Wednesdays in France) when I get to take my son to soccer, make lunch for him and his squirrely friend, clean the house, fold the laundry, and do the shopping. But I am looking forward to our crêpes tonight. Perhaps we will even throw one on top of the armoire, which my father-in-law insists is traditional, but then he’s Gascon, and they have a tradition of telling tall tales. No other bona fide French person has ever confirmed the existence of this custom, so for all I know he is pulling my leg and chuckling about it with my mother-in-law. (“Can you believe it, Monique? She believed me!”)

Either way, the crêpes will be tasty. That much is sure. I’m looking forward to it. Really.

Parlons Cash

Should I be worried? My very French husband has recently become enthralled with Johnny Cash. So far, he’s not dressing in black, but he is listening to the music all the time, staring off into space and looking soulful. Mr. Cash’s work is virtually unknown in France, and no one even knew who he was until the excellent film, Walk the Line, came to Europe. That’s how my husband heard about him. Like me, he was surprised to find out that the actors actually sang on the soundtrack, and that they weren’t dubbed over with original recordings. Good as they were, he wanted to hear the originals, so he ran to his computer and started downloading ballads like “Sam Hall” and “Damn Your Eyes.” He likes that many of the songs tell simple, often sad stories about regular people; he says that in that way, Cash’s songs remind him of French singer-poets like Georges Brassens.

That made me think. I wonder how many people have ever compared Johnny Cash with Georges Brassens, for one. It also made me think about some of my own biases about country music. Here was someone who didn’t know anything about the genre (virtually unheard of over here), or have any political/ideological associations with the music or the people who generally listen to it—he was just responding to what he was listening to. My associations with Johnny Cash have to do with hazy memories of his old TV show, and cliché notions about the country music scene. Then my husband downloaded a few songs from Cash’s last albums, like “Hurt,” and “When the Man Comes Around,” which pretty much blew me away.

It’s surprising how much you can learn about your own country by living somewhere else, or by seeing it through someone else’s eyes. It’s like seeing a painting from a distance, where you don’t obsess so much about the details but take in the overall composition, the gestalt of the thing. Gets the hairy cobwebs out of one’s eyes. Of course, what you see isn’t always so great. But occasionally it’s a lot better than you thought it was. I guess I shouldn’t worry too much about the Johnny Cash obsession, even if my son and I are getting tired of hearing endless re-runs of “Ring of Fire.” Maybe its time to try Willie Nelson?

Silence is Golden

Today I make a solemn vow: I will no longer get into discussions about the US with my French or other non-American friends. Naturally, I will continue to bitch and moan about various things that are going on back home with friends from the Old Country. But I can no longer stand taking on the highly implausible role of Defender of Old Glory.

For reasons that are beyond my analytical capacities, it seems that many extraordinary, intelligent, and wonderful people over here can only relate to America as a media concept. It is as if the US is not simply across the ocean, but on a different planet. This probably sounds cranky, and it is, but after 10 years of this, I’m tired. I thought it would end with Obama’s election, but no. People still seem to think that life is somehow totally different in America, as if the laws of physics, not to mention common humanity, just don’t apply there.

I suppose I could blame it all on Desperate Housewives. Or Friends. Or any of the dozens of American television series that Europeans tend to confuse with documentaries. “That’s fiction,” I try to point out. “It’s escapist, even for us. Listen, I was a single woman in New York for many years and I can guarantee you, Sex in the City is Fantasy Land.” But they don’t want to believe me. My own French husband was brutally disappointed the first time he came with to New York City (in winter) and most women were wearing…down parkas and sensible shoes.

It all started the other night when the husband of a dear friend informed me that the Deepwater disaster in the Gulf of Mexico was a result of an American penchant for bad risk management. Apparently, he once took a bus from Newark Airport to Manhattan and was traumatized by the sorry state of the Lincoln Tunnel. He is convinced there will be some terrible disaster there before the decade is out. From this experience he deduced that we are a wildly reckless people and that something like the BP disaster was bound to happen. I admit, this was after several rounds of pastis. But still! “Are you implying,” I slurred, “that the Gulf spill is the fault of the American people?” In short, yes he was. The shady dealings on the part of BP and the regulatory agencies involved democratically elected politicians, ergo, it’s the voter’s fault. “That’s cruel!” I gasped. “People on the Louisiana coast are losing their livelihoods, the environment is destroyed, people are suffering.” Then I heard myself say: “Don’t Americans have the right to suffer?!”

I should have stopped there, but I went on to embarrass myself for the umpteenth time, leaving my friend’s place feeling like an idiot. What made me do it? I’m hardly a flag-waving patriot. I griped about the US all the time when I lived there. But I didn’t leave because I hated the place, I just needed to explore my obsession with France and ended up living here. I still love my country, warts and all, and feel the need to defend it from unkind assaults. It’s weird how that happens when you are overseas. I remember seeing Jane Fonda on a French talk show years ago. Knowing that she leans to the left, the host and guests felt free to air their grievances about the US and its inhabitants. At first she laughed politely, but after a while, Jane—yes, Hanoi Jane—got her dander up and started defending the American people. She said something to the effect of “hey, wait a minute, you can criticize the government, but please keep in mind that Americans are generally nice people and don’t mean anyone any harm.” Thanks, Jane.

And so I have decided to stop. From here on, when these kinds of conversations erupt, I will simply nod my head and try to look as vapid as Carrie on Sex in the City. My lips are sealed.

Trick or Treat or Traison?

Halloween is having a hard time in France. It only showed up a few years ago, and already it seems that the thrill is gone. It just never really clicked. At first, it was perceived as simply another attempt at American cultural imperialism. “It’s all about making money!” was the complaint I heard most frequently. I tried to point out that there wasn’t a whole lot of money to be made on Halloween, unless you were selling candy, but nobody wanted to listen. Although it's true, at first it certainly seemed that the decorations manufacturers of the world were cleaning up on this one. Even though nobody here seemed to have any idea what Halloween was really about, everyone rushed to decorate their stores, particularly bakers, who slopped orange and black icing on every cake in sight.

But this year, there is not even one pumpkin-shaped Halloween cookie at my local boulangerie. What happened? One friend gave a socio-political explanation: Halloween appeared in France during the Bush administration, which made it a symbol of Bush-ism, and that’s why it was rejected. Now that Obama’s in, Halloween is out. That seems like a bit of a stretch to me. I think it has more to do with the fact that it’s just not a French holiday, and now that the novelty has worn off, nobody cares. Maybe they’re waiting for the next American import. Thanksgiving? Columbus Day?

Living in a bourgeois Parisian suburb, I’ve been informed that there is yet another reason: religion. Practicing Catholics here are grossed out by the paganism of the holiday. All those ghouls and goblins making fun of death on the night before All Saint’s Day! I try to explain that yes, in fact, that’s the whole point, that it is an archaic holiday that is directly linked to All Saint’s Day. According to Wikipedia, Halloween has its origins in an ancient Celtic festival having to do with spirits passing from one world to the next. No one seems to appreciate this explanation. “We don’t celebrate pagan holidays in France,” one neighbor primly informed me. “We celebrate Catholic ones.” So much for the separation of church and state. “What about May 1?” I asked. “Oh, well, that’s different.”

Personally, I much prefer that pagan holidays be celebrated nationally than religious ones. Pagan holidays have the great advantage of being open to one and all and taken seriously by no one. Halloween is fun, after all, and is basically about kids dressing up and eating candy. I mean, come on—what’s not to like?

Eating and Selling and Cooking

If there is one good reason to learn French, it’s so that you can go to the farmer’s markets here and learn how to cook from the vendors. Never knew what to do with watercress? Unsure of how to cook a roast? Perplexed by Swiss chard? Ask the person selling it and chances or he or she will divulge their secrets with relish. Any recipes offered have to be easy, otherwise the vendor wouldn’t have the patience to tell you, and you would never be able to remember them. Vendors put the main ingredient at the forefront, where it should be, instead of being upstaged by reduced balsamic vinegar or star anise. They introduce you foods you would usually never consider (black radishes? Dandelion greens?), and others you might be too shy to get to know (fresh oysters, sea scallops, guinea hen, rabbit).

It’s easy to bond with a good vendor. I spent three years in Avignon, and the only person I really miss is Guy, the Gay Grocer. I mention his sexual orientation not only because I have a weakness for an easy alliteration, but also because he upended any stereotypes about Provençals that I might have still been carrying around. Provençals are supposed to be rough and rugged country people who are wary and suspicious of outsiders, unless it they are looking to relieve them of any extraneous euros they happen to be carrying around. A stocky sort, sporting a long mane of black hair, many gold chains, and an earring, Guy was a Good Will ambassador for the vegetable kingdom, a maven of All Things Produce, and a talk show host, all rolled into one. When I looked mystified before a display of 12 different kinds of asparagus, Guy was there to guide me. When I admitted my ignorance regarding purple artichokes, he gently suggested an aioli. When I gaped, horrified, before Trumpets of Death (a kind of wild mushroom), he pointed me towards girolles, a kinder, gentler fungus. He may have had a pronounced lisp, but he was Provençal through and through. He loved his pays, he told me he would never leave, he even enjoyed the Mistral wind, which drove me insane. I still can’t forgive myself for not writing down his recipe for pistou, a garlicky, basil-rich sort of Provençal minestrone so good it almost makes up for the Mistral.

So be good to your vendor. Maybe he’s just the butcher in the meat section of the supermarket, but he may be harboring some secret knowledge that you might otherwise have to watch endless shows on the Food Channel to learn about.

Ah, Summer in the Country

Back from three weeks with the in-laws in the Southwest. Doing the summer thang, French style. Which, if you are married, generally consists of going out into some idyllic French countryside where inevitably there is an old house that once belonged to great-great-uncle Gaston’s cousin’s niece. Up until somewhere in the 20th century, the French population was overwhelmingly rural, as the economy ran on agriculture. This means that if you scratch your average Parisian, and he or she will shed farmer blood. I was once at a dinner party with some friends and we started talking roots and it turned out every person at the table came from farming or winemaking families. And then there was me with my grampa Meyer, the hat-maker from Kiev.

I don’t know if this is really the reason why so many French people seem to gather at an ancestor’s house in the country, but it seems like there must be some good reason why otherwise intelligent people would subject themselves to long, juicy stretches of summer vacation filled with endless visits with psychotic cousins, screaming kids, grumpy grandfathers, and dubious family friends. Naturally, there’s an up side: you get to eat long, leisurely meals of good old-fashioned food, which in France is no small thing. There is always a quorum of at least 10 around the dinner table, which makes for a festive atmosphere, particularly if there are several bottles of good wine on the table, which is usually the case.

“But who makes all that food?” you ask. Now, that’s a very interesting question. In general, if you happen to have two X chromosomes, you are on 24-hour call for kitchen duty. Mami might plan the menus and hand out the recipes, but she is much too old to actually do all the cooking and cleaning, and who can blame her, you’d have to be Superwoman to be able to handle feeding 10+ hungry mouths morning, noon, and night for weeks on end. So you help. You chop, you simmer, you set the table, you take the clean stuff out of the dishwasher. The least you can do, no? After all, you are not even picking up the bill. And then there are all those kids. Your own, the crazy cousin’s, the friends. Who’s going to watch them in the pool? Suddenly, everyone is busy doing other things (sleeping off lunch, primarily). Anyone with any sense has delicately left the scene because they know what is about to ensue. That leaves the idiotic American daughter-in-law who has read all those articles about pool safety.

And so, the afternoon drones on, with the delightful screeching of young voices bouncing off the water and into your ears. Slowly, the others come out of hiding, stretching and yawning, looking for a good game of scrabble. By this time, the Pool Watcher is so stressed out she’s ready to bite someone’s head off, especially when one of the Nappers starts going on about how peaceful it is here in the country and how nice it is to catch up on their sleep. But all things come to and end. The crazy cousin, as usual, storms off after someone inadvertently insults her, taking her noisy offspring with her. The kids’ lips start turning blue and after much coaxing, come out of the pool. The Pool Watcher finally has a chance to soak up some sun in a lounge chair.

But by then its almost time for dinner.

Now I’m not complaining (OK, a little). I know that most of my American friends would kill for a week in some lovely stone house in the French countryside. Or two. But definitely not three. Oh, no—definitely not three.

Is a Kiss Just a Kiss?

My husband goes to work each morning and kisses several women. This isn’t because we have an open relationship, but because he is French, and when you work in a French office, this is what you do. You don’t just hunker down and work, first you do the rounds and say hello to everyone, and if you are male and they are female, you do the bise or kiss each other on the cheek 2, 3, or 4 times, depending on what region you are in. If it’s a guy you shake hands. If you are female, you are out of luck, you have to kiss everyone. There are ways of avoiding this, of course, you can rush in and sort of wave and just kiss the people you work with who sit near you.

I’m a freelancer, and at the moment I work at an international organization, so I rarely have to deal with kissing people in work situations. I’ve often thought, however, that there’s a lot to be said for this custom. I’ve wondered what it would be like if people in offices in New York were required to kiss each other every morning. I daresay, things would be different. Instead of gritting ones teeth and plowing through the office to one’s desk, one would have to interact with one’s co-workers. One would have to be cordial, at least for a brief moment. You can’t possibly kiss someone with grit teeth. One would have to say at least “hey, how are ya?” before one got down to the mean business of doing business.

A little while after the requisite bonjours, kisses, and handshaking are done, there is the morning coffee break. This is when everyone gathers around the coffee machine and there are more, at least superficially cordial interactions. I’ve never seen a study done correlating productivity with cordial coffee breaks, but something tells me this is not a bad thing.

The bise happens under all sorts of non-work circumstances too, particularly social occasions. This can be daunting, particularly if you are invited to a get together where you don’t know many people. You may find yourself going around a room serial kissing dozens of strangers. The same is required when leaving said get together, which can get tricky when everyone is leaving at the same time. I remember watching in amazement one evening after I first moved here, as a group of about a half a dozen people on a street huddled in a circle and started kissing each other goodbye. As I watched their heads bobbing about I wondered how they managed not to clonk craniums.

Now try to imagine such a kissy country facing up to the challenge of swine flu. According to the papers here, we are all going to die come October. Or at least get the flu. We are not supposed to sneeze in public or shake hands, and the bise is off limits. So far, I have not seen any sign compliance with these rules, or the flu, for that matter. But if things do get funky in the fall, will the bise really fall by the wayside? It seems impossible, but you never know...

Speaking Frankly

I like to listen to the radio station France Inter as I attempt to wake up in the morning, and this morning there were two items that actually got me to stop and think (no small feat for me before 10am). The first was a short segment on a new tendency amongst politicians to “parler cash.” I had to ask my husband (who is French), what that could possibly mean. Were they speaking about money? No, apparently this is the new slang for straight talk, plain speaking. This tendency will be welcomed with open arms by most ex-pat North Americans, who for years have had to cope with the French way of verbally attacking even the simplest of matters, that is, sideways. Though I love the French language and am in a state of continual awe at how French people use it with such elegance and style, their abhorrence of just saying what’s on their mind can really complicate your life. Direct speaking is generally frowned upon here, and those who choose that path are considered borderline barbarians. For example, in the early years of my marriage, when I would foolishly ask for the butter dish by saying: “pass me the butter dish,” my usually kind and mellow husband would go ballistic because I had not used the conditional tense.

So I was fascinated to hear that politicians like president Nicolas Sarkozy and Ségolène Royal would go so far as to “parler cash.” As the commentator pointed out, French politicians traditionally speak in a language so florid that even French people have a hard time figuring out what they are talking about, using unbearable tenses like the imperfect of the subjunctive. But he then went on to make the case that in fact, “parler cash” wasn’t as great as all that. That there was something vaguely sinister about it, and that while these politicians were daring to tell reporters how they felt about an issue, they were using this new way of talking to avoid saying what they might actually do about an issue. As if this new trend, which admittedly has an American tang, goes so against the cultural grain that it could only be a political subterfuge meant to confuse your average citoyen.

The other item was a hilarious riff by France Inter’s resident humorist Stéphane Guillon (photo above). At least, I thought it was pretty funny, I can’t imagine what a devout Catholic would think of it. Guillon, to put it mildly, took the Pope to task. In case you are not aware, Pope Benedict has been on a tear lately, not only re-instating four excommunicated bishops (including one that denies that the Holocaust happened), not only excommunicating a mother who obtained an abortion for her 9-year-old daughter who had been raped, but also declaring during his visit to Africa, a continent ravaged by AIDS, that condoms were not beneficial and even made the problem worse. I can’t recall all the highlights of Guillon’s rant, but neither he nor the radio station censored his detailed descriptions of condom use, nor his suggestion that the real problem was that the Pope, being chaste, was in need of sex ed, specifically on how a condom works, and even more specifically that the use of a certain type of vibrating ring is guaranteed to make lovers believe in the existence of God. Keep in mind that France Inter is basically government owned. Whatever prudishness French people may have about the use of the conditional, they are clearly way ahead of us when it comes to being direct and frank about sexual matters. Can anyone even begin to imagine NPR serving up a similar dish?

Movies in Paris, Paris in Movies

Let’s say that it’s a cloudy, rainy day (for a change) in Paris, and you don’t know what to do. I say, go to the Forum des Images, the massive film archive in the bowels of the Forum des Halles where for five euros you can watch films until your eyes go buggy. I usually avoid the Forum des Halles at all costs—riding the escalator down into that claustrophobic underground shopping center generally feels like a descent into the lower reaches of Hell. But out in one of the outer tunnels of this giant ant farm there is a stretch of cine-mania that merits braving the depths of this 1970s architectural nightmare.

First there is your conventional movie multiplex, offering recent films. Then there is the new François Truffaut library, where Parisians can check out books and DVDs and other less fortunate mortals can peruse mountains of material on-site. And then there is the Forum des Images, which recently reopened in groovy shades of pink and white and black. The initial mission of this archive was the “preservation of the audiovisual memory of the city of Paris,” whereby any film that made any reference to the capital was stored in its ample database. This translates into 5,500 films, documentaries, shorts, and even newsreels and advertisements. Gone With the Wind made it in because at one point Rhett brings Scarlett a hat from Paris. The Forum then decided to branch out and include another thousand or so films from other specialized collections. Chances are, you’ll find something you like, which you and a friend can then watch on an individual screen (with headphones) in the high-tech, orange and pink (it’s not as bad as it sounds) collections area. If you are into group viewing, you can rent a small screening room for 15 euros. Or you can simply plonk yourself down in one of the five movie theaters which show samples from the collection, or themed series (right now it’s New York), or kid’s films or heaven knows what else. True film junkies can take master classes with directors like Claude Chabrol or James Gray, or take in movie “concerts” where silent films are accompanied by live musicians.

What’s amazing is that as far as I know, there is nothing like this in either New York or Los Angeles, and God knows both cities are swarming with film fans. The Forum des Images is the brainchild of the Paris city hall, who is it’s primary source of funds. Now there’s an interesting concept to pitch to Hollywood….

The Glory of Squalor?

Roger Cohen lamented in the New York Times yesterday that Paris has lost “the glory of its squalor”:

Gone was the acrid Gitane-Gauloise pall of any self-respecting café. Gone was the garlic whiff of the early-morning Metro to the Place d’Italie. Gone were the mineral mid-morning Sauvignons Blancs downed bar-side by red-eyed men.

Gone were the horse butchers and the tripe restaurants in the 12th arrondissement. Gone (replaced by bad English) was the laconic snarl of Parisian greeting. Gone were the bad teeth, the yellowing moustaches, the hammering of artisans, the middle-aged prostitutes in doorways, the seat-less toilets on the stairs, and an entire group of people called the working class.

While I’ll agree that much of Paris has become frighteningly exclusive, and that the very word “parigot” has been all but forgotten, I think Cohen is in dangerous territory when he starts to get all misty-eyed about squalor. Of course, for the tourist, squalor can be colorful, exotic, and even exciting. It can make great photos and induce us to think plenty of deep thoughts. But I’d venture to guess that for the people in those photos, it’s a different kettle of fish (if, indeed, there are any fish in the kettle).

Interestingly, Cohen starts his piece with observations on his recent visit to Havana. Yes, it’s true, there is something to be learned from a society that has completely missed the Internet revolution, and is not inundated with crass commercialism. Perhaps the lack of high tech in Havana has preserved the Cubans living there from the constant buzz of cyber-connection and the headaches that go with it. But it’s also what has kept Cubans living in poverty while the rest of the world lurches ahead. I’m no hard-core capitalist, mind you, but I’m sure that most Havanites would be willing to live with a few billboards if it meant that they could feed their children properly and occasionally buy them a new pair of shoes.

There is no glory in squalor. Ask anyone living in it. Parisians, just like New Yorkers, have the right to clean teeth and clean lungs, as well as decent jobs and toilet seats. There is a danger in tourism whereby instead of learning from what we are seeing, we objectify it, and make it into a neat decoration for our scrap books. That the working class has been all but banished from the French capital is clearly a tragedy. But the fact that the standard of living has risen dramatically in France over the last twenty or thirty years is most certainly not.

Bandes Dessinées—Comics and Then Some

Who would have though that the French would be obsessed with comic books? Certainly not me, until I moved here and noticed that in any town of any noticeable size, there was at least one bookstore entirely dedicated to bandes dessinées, or BDs as they are called for short. Aside from noticing the crowds in the BD section at just about any Fnac bookstore, I never really followed up on this observation until just recently, when I wrote an article on the subject for a magazine. After having spent a few weeks boning up on Corto Maltese, Monsieur Jean, and Isaac the Pirate, I can now report that I have been converted to the cause. Because this peculiar literary form, when put in the right hands, can produce true works of art—or at the very least, excellent entertainment. We’re not talking superheros here. Nor are we really talking graphic novels, which are getting a lot of attention in the US, but seem a lot grimmer than their French BD cousins. American graphic novels also tend to be longer than BDs, which are large hardbound “albums” of about 50 pages. Then there’s the subject matter, which covers, well, just about everything. While there is a large volume of adventure series—ranging from the legendary Tintin, which is aimed at kids, to Largo Winch, which most definitely isn’t—there is also humor, history, science fiction, pornography, heroic fantasy, journalism, biography and even a BD version of the Bible.

And then there’s a whole bunch beautifully written and drawn stories that I don’t know how to classify except to say that they are part of a more recent, more thoughtful approach towards what they call here “the 9th art.” The most well-known of this bunch would probably be Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis, which was recently made into a movie, but there are dozens, if not hundreds of other good writers (my personal fave for the moment is Joann Sfar, the author of The Rabbi’s Cat and Vampire Loves) out there who deserve international attention.

Many of these authors got their start at Le Festival International de la Bande Dessinée, a gigantic comics festival that takes place every January in Angoulême. Feeling intrigued, but don’t read French? Check out the English translations at NBM Publishing, Pantheon Graphic Novels, and Drawn & Quarterly, for starters…

Drinking (coffee) Again

I was in Southern California last week, and it occurred to me that you could do a comparative culture study based on what goes on in a café. It was also interesting to note how your mind can get warped one way or another depending on what side of the Atlantic you live on. As I entered a Peet’s Coffee in Irvine with my brother, I had a difficult time suppressing the urge to scoff, loudly, at what passes for a café in SoCal. “Harumph!” I wanted to snort, “you call this a place to enjoy coffee, you heathens? Putain, everyone is drinking out of paper cups! How can you possibly enjoy a good cup of coffee in a paper cup!” Ah me, it was only a short few years ago, that I too, marched triumphantly through the streets of New York with my paper cup in hand, sipping out of a hole in the plastic top, feeling at one with rush hour. Of course I didn’t have time to sit down and drink my coffee, I was BUSY. Being busy is an end unto itself in New York City, and nothing quite says Working Girl like that paper cup. But wait, there I was in Southern California and not only was I not busy, but neither were the people in Peet’s. In fact, it was the weekend and they were all sitting down drinking out of…paper cups. With plastic tops. Now this used to make sense to me, or rather, I just didn’t worry about it. But now that I'm coming from another place, literally, it makes no sense at all. Let’s think about this. You are inside, not moving. What’s with the plastic tops? Are people really so sloppy that they risk spilling their doppio pumpkin frappucino on the carpet? And without getting too militant here, isn’t all that plastic and paper a little, well…wasteful?? Oops, I forgot, I was in Southern California, the epicenter of non-sustainable living. As I glanced around the parking lot filled with monstrous SUVs I remembered that this was The Good Life, the one that will be obsolete in about 50 years when there’s no more cheap fuel. What will the folks in Orange County be doing then? Jogging to work? But that is a subject for a different post, on a different website, preferably one like Grist.

But let me get back to Peet’s. I like Peet’s. Heck, I went to U.C. Berkeley, just up the street from the orignal Peet’s. I remember the delicious smell of the beans roasting and the line around the block every morning. And if the company has gone commercial and is now a chain, Peet’s in Irvine still serves a good cup of coffee, even if it is in a paper cup. And at Peet’s in Irvine I learned a remarkable thing: if you ask, they will actually serve your coffee in a ceramic demi-tasse! I felt so…well, Euro when I did this (I’m sure my brother was cringing), but I have to admit, it made me happy. And as I looked around at my fellow coffee drinkers, I saw that, in fact, they seemed like a pretty happy lot. Maybe I missed the unique atmosphere that reigns in a French café, where your waiter could most often be mistaken for Lurch and everyone seems to be in the midst of a deep, but thoughtful, depression. But I had to admire the seemingly boundless energy that oozes from Southern Californites, even on a weekend morning. People were bouncy, chatty, and dressed in workout clothes—you wouldn’t have been surprised if an impromptu aerobics class erupted between the tables. Even if I would be hard pressed to call most of the drinks they were sipping “coffee” (espresso drenched with syrup and soymilk? Eww!), and even if I still think waiting in line and having your name screamed out by someone you don’t know takes the romance out of things, I’ll admit there is something compelling about the experience. I’m not sure what, but there is definitely something.

On Symbols and Elections

One of the less fun things about living overseas is that you often find yourself becoming a symbolic representative of your home country. Suddenly, regardless of what you may think of the political situation back home, people around you hold you personally responsible for the current administration’s shenanigans. Having moved to France in 2000, right at the beginning of the Bush regime, I have experienced more than my share of barely suppressed sneers, wary looks, and borderline hostility when I happen to mention that I am American. It was particularly ugly around the beginning of the war in Iraq; in recent years, with Bush’s popularity sinking to ever new lows, the mood changed and lately I’ve been allowed a second chance despite the color of my passport.

It really did get old after a while. At first you'd get all fired up and work up a good 10-minute speech whenever someone gave you that accusing look, including lots of phrases like “hey, I didn’t vote for him” and “you mustn’t believe that all Americans are behind that idiot.” But then you just got weary. You'd see the entire conversation coming a mile off and all you really wanted to do is go home and eat some Oreos (if you could find them). It all seems so silly. How can any halfway intelligent person really believe that you represent 260 million people? And yet they do. America is so much more than a country to people overseas. It’s a myth. It’s really hard to convince people that it is, in fact, populated by real human beings and not characters in an action film. A friend of mine who has been living here for some 20 years got so sick of this conversation that when people asked her what she thought of Bush, she just gave them a devilish look and responded “I think his ears are really sexy.” I’m not sure what this did for her social life, but it certainly stopped the conversation cold.

Thank God, Buddha, Vishnu and who ever else is up there, Bush is gone and Obama is, miraculously, moving into the White House in January. Aside from being stunned that we managed to elect a inspiring leader who seems to really care about regular folk, Obama’s election comes as a huge relief to me: not only can I finally feel proud to be an American again, but I also no longer feel pressure to apologize or explain every time I mention my nationality. It’s barely been a week since the elections, and already I sense an attitude change over here; now everyone who knows I’m American wants to congratulate and celebrate with me. This is really nice and a welcome change, but it does make you wonder…after all, I’m still the same person I was before November 4. For that matter so are 260 million other Americans. But now that there is a good guy in the White House, suddenly we are all good guys. Does this really make sense? I know this election was all about change, but have we as people really changed? Now there’s a question that I can’t even begin to answer, and that is best reserved for more qualified political observers, like Frank Rich, who wrote a great column on the subject (and the election in general)in the New York Times, "It Still Felt Good the Morning After."

Is Credit Credible?

In the wake of the ongoing financial disaster that has washed up on both sides of the Atlantic, people have been talking a lot about credit, and the culture thereof. Before I go too far, I would like to point out that I understand virtually nothing about high finance, or even low finance, and the reason that I am not rushing to find out so that I can protect my assets is that I don’t have any.

But one thing I do understand is credit cards, and it has recently come to my attention that a French credit card is really only a distant cousin to an American credit card, and that it is much more closely related to the American debit card. In other words, American-style credit cards, where you basically take out a loan from a bank (and not necessarily the one where you have your account) and pay it back with interest, do not exist here. This came as a shock to me. Somehow, after living here for eight years, I never fully absorbed this information. “You mean, people here actually save up their money before they spend it?!” We red-blooded American types charge out and spend on our credit cards and then worry about saving up to pay off the bill. Then the race is on to see if we can pay off the bill before we end up paying horrendous amounts of interest. This behavior, which seems utterly normal to me, strikes my French friends as irresponsible and reckless. “Who, me?” I ask, dumbfounded. Here I always thought I was a pretty prudent spender who was very careful with what little money I possessed.

Suddenly, I was forced to face the fact that I am indeed a willing participant in the very Culture of Credit that it seems is menacing the financial planet with death and destruction. Don’t get me wrong: I don’t run up huge credit card bills (yes, I kept my US cards when I moved here) and then pay tons of interest. But I do rely on them for buying things I can’t exactly afford and then paying them back when I can. I usually pay them off within six months, often much sooner. Does that mean I am afflicted with that dreaded Credit Mentality that the European press says affects 99.9% of Americans? I never thought so, but when you look at French people (and Europeans in general), I have to admit that unlike them, I look at credit as a Friendly Helper, and not as the Dark Lord of Financial Instability, like they do.

From what I’ve gathered, credit is considered unseemly here, something that only fools and scoundrels engage in. French people may have cards marked Visa or MasterCard, but when they use those cards, the money is debited directly from their bank accounts. At most, you can get a 30-day deferral. You can find some American-style cards that offer credit in an alliance of stores, but these cards are frowned upon by the general public. I was discussing this phenomenon with my dad, who is over 80, and he remarked that when he was young, in the pre-Visa/MasterCard era, the very same anti-credit attitude existed in the States.

Upon reflection, I have to admit that there is something to be said for actually taking responsibility for your bank account and buying things according to your present reality, rather than your misty future. On the other hand, if I think of all the things I couldn’t have done without one, I still feel grateful to my credit card for giving me a chance to take that Flamenco workshop in Spain, or having that holiday in the Greek islands. I know it’s not responsible, and I know it’s not sensible. But it’s just so much fun. I’m beginning to think I’m a lot more American than I ever realized…

Let's Hear it for Enthusiasm

I feel the need to clarify something in my last post. I know it is not particularly edifying to know that many French people seem to feel that the American tendency to smile a lot is a sign of their limited intellectual capacities, but try not to take it too personally. I mean, look at it this way: if you were visiting an isolated tribe in Borneo, and your guide told you that smiling a lot was considered a sign of lunacy, you wouldn’t be offended, you would just do your best to be culturally aware when visiting their village. And of course, this perception is not universal, there are plenty of French people out there who appreciate the American willingness to be upbeat, even when presented with strong evidence that the situation is anything but. Which brings me to a thought that has occurred to me recently.

It’s funny the things you miss about your home country when you’ve been living away from it for several years. There are some things I do not miss at all. I don’t, for example, at all miss the kind of enforced cheeriness that runs rampant in Southern California, e.g., the inanely jolly waitress who hovers over your table crooning “Hi, I’m Gloria, and how can I help you today?” Nor the phony exuberance of sales people and gym teachers. But I do miss something that I never really appreciated until I moved overseas and saw my country from a distance: the very American sense of curiosity, of wonder, and enthusiasm. Americans aren’t afraid to ask questions, and don’t feel constrained by appearances the way many French people are. If they are interested in something, they’ll try to find out about it, and if they like (or don’t like) what they find, they’ll show it. I hate to sound like a pom pom girl, but I truly believe that this quality is part of what makes the US great, in the best sense of the word. If this kind of enthusiasm results in some people on this side of the pond thinking we’re idiots, so be it. I, for one, get a kick out of being taken for an optimist, something that would have never occurred to me in my previous life.

I think it is possible to detect a hint of jealousy behind those who look down their noses at Americans and pronounce them hopelessly childish and ignorant. It’s very hard for French people to break through the cultural and social boundaries that keep them from aspiring to the same kind of crazy fantasies that Americans seem to. So let’s hear it for goofy grins and wild ideas. They certainly could use a good dose over here.

Smile, You're in Paris

As I was listening to a song on the radio the other day whose refrain went “I don’t like going to sleep at night because I’m afraid I’ll wake up dead,” it occurred to me that one thing I like about living in France is that while in the US I’ve often been scolded for being too gloomy, here I am considered a cockeyed optimist. As a child living in southern California, I was regularly assaulted in the street by strangers who ordered me to smile. Looking pensive in Laguna Beach was a crime on a par with spitting on the flag or making fun of the high school pep squad. Things improved when I left town, but while my outlook on life has brightened considerably, I have never been accused of being intensely upbeat.

That is, until I moved to Paris. Here, the fact that I smile at all pegs me as happy-go-lucky and possibly missing a few synapses. The American tendency to grin from ear-to-ear when at a loss for something to say has long been interpreted here as an indication of mental deficiency—which in turn is used as an explanation for odd behavior and questionable foreign policy choices. While I can’t be sure of my neighbors’ assessment of my mental capacities, I can say that they seem to find me a little giddy and strangely cheerful. Even small children think I am unusually silly, which may be true, but I wonder if it isn’t because French parents pay a lot more attention to decorum when hanging out in the park with their kids. I would hazard to guess that I am one of the only parents on my block willing to play monster and chase my 6-year-old son and his friend back to school after lunch. This doesn’t seem like a very big deal to me, but my son’s friends seem to think its license to play me for a fool whenever the opportunity arises.

Have I turned into a goof-ball since I’ve moved to France, or have I just fallen into another cultural reality gap? Am I now rebelling against the norm by being stubbornly smiley in a place where outward expressions of joy and enthusiasm are usually reserved for weddings and soccer victories? I have to admit, I’m generally pretty happy about living here, which might be making me unduly jovial. I’ll bet that would make the Smile Nazis back in Laguna happy. Or would it?

Christmas Stuffing

It’s been a while…I think excessive eating over the Christmas holidays has had a negative effect on my writing skills. As usual, we celebrated in typical French style: non-stop eating between Christmas and New Years. In France, this means pulling out all the stops. Forget roast turkey. Baked ham? Please. Here, Christmas means oysters, lobster, caviar, and foie gras—and that might all be part of the same meal. Chocolates and champagne are de rigeur—vintage cognac and eau-de-vie soaked sour cherries are normal finishing touches. It’s enough to send one’s soul—and one’s cholesterol levels—soaring aloft. But then, as everyone keeps reminding themselves, it only happens once a year. What’s a few thousand calories between friends?

The French Christmas menu item that is probably the most typical is also the most difficult for Americans to swallow, namely foie gras. The reasons for the current foie gras uproar in the US remain mysterious to me: after all, we are talking about a country where the delicacy is virtually non-existent. I would be willing to bet that a vast majority Americans have never even heard of foie gras (at least until the uproar) and that the percentage of people who have actually tasted it is infinitesimal. I know, I know, it sounds gross. Ducks and geese are force-fed until their liver becomes enlarged, and then once they are killed, the over-sized organ is sold at a high price to slavering food fiends. But let’s take a step back for a minute. Foie gras is an artisanal product: the good stuff is always made on a small scale, on farms where the ducks and geese live healthy lives running around real barnyards and eating real grains and greens. Can we say the same about that flaccid supermarket chicken that is sold all over the US? Is there anything even vaguely humane about poultry farming on an industrial scale? Or for that matter, about any industrial meat or fish farming? Hmm, if I was a farm animal that was eventually going to be slaughtered one way or another, would I rather spend my days outdoors on a small farm in the country, or penned up with hundreds, if not thousands of other miserable animals in an closed factory farm? If it meant my last days would include force-feeding, I think I’d still opt for the small farm.

I admit I have a certain bias in all this. My husband’s family comes from southwest France, which is arguably the foie gras capital of the world. While there are certain food historians who insist that the idea was first dreamed up in Alsace and then drifted southward, any true south-westerner will swear that foie gras emerged fully formed—like Venus on the half shell—from the dark waters of the Dordogne River. At our family gatherings the buttery substance is reverently served as a first course with a glass of silky Sauternes and some fresh bread. Being from the area, my in-laws have the inside scoop on where to get the goods. In a tiny town lost in the forest of the Landes, there is a foie gras maker who knows how to turn chopped liver into gold. It’s a word of mouth sort of thing, and believe me, they do a land-office business.

I’ve also met people who raise their own ducks and do their own force-feeding. When you mention that the city of Chicago and the state of California have outlawed foie-gras due to cruelty to animals (and now it looks like New York may do the same), they just look at you with incomprehension as if you are too stupid to realize that farm animals eventually die so we can eat them. While it is true that thousands, perhaps millions of ducks and geese sacrifice their livers every year at Christmas time, it’s also true that you can’t claim that you are being kind to animals when you bite into a Big Mac.

I think a lot of French people think that the foie gras bans are just another version of the Roquefort boycott or Freedom Fries, i.e., another case of Americans taking pot-shots at the French. I don’t know if this is really true; I’d wager foie gras bans have more to do with vote-getting and moral grandstanding. In any case, foie gras is prohibitively expensive in the US, so the price will keep more people away then the ban. C’est la vie.

To Latke, or not to Latke?

This week was Hannuka and though I’m not a particularly religious Jew, I do like a good latke. Brown and crispy around the edges, smothered with applesauce and dabbed with sour cream. I’m not a big stickler for tradition, my needs are few: A couple crispy latkes around the dinning room table, some candles in the menora, a few turns of the dredel and I’ve done my Hannuka thing. I know it’s not a major holiday, I know its hopelessly lackluster next to the blinding glare of Christmas, but I’ve always liked the holiday and I am doing what I can to pass along some Jewish heritage to my son, which isn’t always easy when you are married to a Catholic (albeit non-practicing) and living in a Catholic (also mostly non-practicing) country.

I’ve discovered that Jewish heritage is a relative concept. For one thing, the majority of Jews in France are Sephardic, which is interpreted here as meaning from the North African countries of Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia, where there have been substantial Jewish populations for many centuries. When the French finally left North Africa, most North African Jews left too, and many came to France. At first I was fascinated. Here was a entire community of Jews who actually knew how to cook! Who knew Jews ate couscous?! And here’s another amazing thought: here are thousands of Jews who never experienced the Holocaust and up until recently lived in relative harmony with their Arab neighbors. Ergo, Jews without a victim complex. What a concept!

But when Hannuka comes around, well…like I was saying, I get this yen for latkes. What can you say to a Jew who doesn’t even know what a latke is? Suddenly, I am no longer charmed by Sephardic melodies, I want to hear a Yiddish fiddle. I want to hear wry, sardonic jokes. I want to hear somebody, somewhere, say “oy gevalt” and mean it. I want to go to the Lower East Side and eat something heavy and leaden that my stomach will remember for days. But I’m in Paris. There is no Lower East Side. In fact, as near as I can make out, there is not a latke in sight—I’m not even sure the Ashkenaz make them here. So what’s a girl to do? Hit the Internet recipe sights, of course. There’s a great recipe for Maxine’s Latke’s on epicurious.com.

I am happy with my latkes. They are light and minimally greasy. I proudly serve them to my family. My husband is utterly unimpressed. My son was under the impression I was going to make the sweet doughnuts that the Sepharads make. He refuses to eat them. I get miffed. He won’t even taste one! The scene degenerates and at the end I find myself drying my son’s tears and telling him “it’s OK honey, you’re still a good Jew even if you don’t like latkes.” I feel like a Bad Mother. We all talk about something else. We move on. But I did stubbornly serve them to my in-laws the next night, who were polite but far from enthusiastic. It seems latkes just can’t quite hurdle ethnic boundaries. Oh well. I guess for cultural communion I’ll just have to wait for my next trip to New York.