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…

Velib—One Year Later

It’s been about a year now since I took my first spin on a Velib bike (see Velib Liberates Paris, and Velib–the Sequel), and during that time, the groovy rent-a-bike program has become an integral part of the Parisian landscape. According to the official Velib website, usage goes up as high as 100,000 rentals per day, and in the month of September, total rentals reached somewhere around 2,830,000. There are close to 1,000 stands sprinkled throughout the city, and the site of someone cruising down a major boulevard on a futuristic bike that looks like it escaped from the film Metropolis, is simply no big deal anymore. It is still a great way to get around the city, provided you maneuver well through Parisian traffic and have learned how to avoid those major boulevards (not enough of which have bus or bike lanes).

There are now two types of people in Paris: those who are willing to risk life and limb to whizz around the city on two wheels, and those who think that those in the first category need to have their heads examined. The former, many of whom would never have dreamed of biking through the capital before those wacky-looking Velibs showed up, have thrown themselves into the thick of urban traffic with reckless abandon, or at least what feels like reckless abandon, because after all, simply surviving rush hour gives you a rush. It may be foolhardy, but it feels like freedom. And as some people have pointed out to me, it’s actually safer to be on a bike in Paris than in a lot of other large cities, like say, New York. There are more and more bike lanes, occasional equipped with cement dividers that keep motor traffic out, and there are many bus lanes where you only have to contend with buses, taxis, and drivers on the verge of a nervous breakdown who simply can’t resist the temptation to fly down the relatively uncluttered bus lanes.

Being a parent, and feeling a moral responsibility to return home alive, I have taken to doing something that makes me look like a total nerd, and thus something that hardly any real Parisians ever do: I wear a helmet. I bring it in my backpack just in case I get the urge to Velib. I’m not sure how high this actually raises my safety quotient, but it does make me feel a lot better.

There are things you gotta know to Velib effectively. Among other things:

• always take a map of the city showing where the stands are. Spontaneity is all very well and good, but without a map you risk much cursing and frothing of the mouth when you can’t find a stand to park your bike.

•plan ahead. Look at said map (which hopefully has one-way streets indicated) and figure out the best way to get from point A to B before you get on the bike.

•look at the bike before you hop on and realize the chain is dragging on the ground and the front tire is flat.

And now we get to the $64,000-dollar question: can tourists use the damn thing? While in theory, any credit card with a chip in it will work, in practice people have written to me that they have trouble getting Visas and MasterCards to work, with chip or not. But several bike fans have reported that for some mysterious reason, American Express does work, especially American Express Blue. I’ve even been told that chip-less American Express cards work, though I can’t imagine how. So don’t leave home with out it.

If like me, you’ve never managed to get an American Express card and you don’t have another card that works, don’t despair. Though it’s not as groovy, and you don’t get to use the high-tech stands, there are several places in Paris where you can rent bikes by the hour, 1/2 day or whole day. Try Roue Libre, Paris à Vélo C'est Sympa, or French Connection Bike Tours. The last two also offer nice bike tours.

C'est la Rentrée

We’re back. Vacation is over. In keeping with the spirit of things, the weather has decided to become suitably miserable, and is doing a good imitation of late October. It’s the first day of school, and after several days of intense anxiety, my son has entered primary school. As of lunchtime, all was well. The teacher is nice, the friends all remembered him. The lead-up was intense. During the entire last year of pre-school, everyone keep telling him that the fun days would soon be over, and that “CP (first grade), c’est du sérieux.” You would think he was about to take on a post-doc in nuclear medicine. People get serious about school here. Entirely too serious for some of us frivolous types who went to primary school back in the day when homework was considered hopelessly bourgeois, and my third grade teacher came to school in a miniskirt and a frosted bouffant. My 8th-grade teacher, a long-haired Mr. Kuhl (pronounced, I kid you not, Mr. Cool), had us devote an enormous amount of time to analyzing the lyrics to the song “Bye Bye Miss America Pie.” Our junior high school had flexible scheduling and modular classrooms. And while I freely admit some of this stuff was of limited value, and that we may not have been the most studious of students, I did manage to graduate from high school, go to a good college, and even get a Masters.

What is it about this generation that is so panicked about diplomas that they are ready to sit on a six-year-old’s head and tell him he’d better get to work now or he’ll never get a decent job? From what I understand, this isn’t just a French obsession: even back in the States, parents are flogging their children with educational videos when they are still in diapers and looking at elementary schools under a microscope before they will agree to let their child set foot inside.

It must be said, however, that in France this tendency is taken to a level of mass insanity. And not without reason—the French school system is so demanding, so onerous, and so hard to get through that it’s a miracle that anyone gets out alive, let alone finds a job. I don’t have the time or the resources right now to set out rational arguments to support such a loaded statement, but personally I am convinced that the weight of this outdated school system is close to crushing all that is hopeful, dynamic and creative in French youth.

But enough rash statements and snap judgments. Do I sound like a nervous parent? I am. I’m worried that the daily homework assignments that my son will receive this year will snowball over time into a huge burden that he will have to lug around in addition to his overstuffed book bag. I fret when I see his older cousins spending a good chunk of every vacation working on homework, and when I kids going through the dreary process of deciding what they want to do with their lives when they are only 15 because that’s when you have to decide which kind of university entry exams you are going to take.

And what does all this stress accomplish in the long run? Are the French schools the best in Europe? No. Are French students the best prepared for the working world? More importantly, are there any jobs out there once they’ve gone through their academic ordeal? These are the questions that irk me, though to be honest, I don’t yet really have any reason to be irked. For the moment, my son seems to like school a lot. Today they drew seahorses and soon they will start learning to read. For the moment, all is well. Let’s hope it lasts.

Les Grandes Vacances

OK, here it is—The vacation post.

It's July, and life is slowly seeping out of my suburban neighborhood. Not exactly a bubbling cauldron of activity at any time of the year, in July what little buzz there is fades out and an alarming silence sweeps through the streets. There are no kids screaming in the park, there are hardly any old ladies rolling their caddies down the sidewalk, and the stores on the one "busy" street are closing down one after an other. It's as if the entire neighborhood is entering into a state of deep hibernation. By August, all will be still and the urban pulse will have slowed to a couple of beats per minute.

It's peaceful here, I'll admit. It's peaceful knowing that you are still safe and sound in your apartment while almost all of your neighbors are stuck somewhere south on the autoroute in a horrific traffic jam. You could get rather smug about it, but you know that soon it will be your turn—soon you too will be battling overstuffed freeway on-ramps or fighting through the crowds at the train station. Despite the bother, you are kind of looking forward to it. Despite the illogic of everyone going on vacation at the same time, and the knowledge that there will be crowds in every sunny spot on the continent, and the firm conviction that we would all be better off if more people traveled off season, you don't like feeling left out of the party. You too want to be able to flaunt your tan in September at the rentrée (literally, re-entry), when everyone will be swapping vacation stories and moaning about going back to work. You too want to be part of the smiling hoard of vacationers invading normally tranquil places and wondering why there is so much noise. You too want to roast, at least for a little while, in the sun after endless months of clouds and rain.

I used to be convinced that my husband's desperate need to go to the family holiday cottage every year at the same time (August) was based on some deep-rooted insecurity or ancient childhood trauma. The idea of voluntarily spending time with one's parents and relatives over vacation seemed highly suspicious to me, particularly when it meant three weeks in an isolated house in the middle of the woods. That was before I had been seduced by the pure air, the relative calm, and the abundant supply of fabulous foodstuffs available in that particular corner of the southwest. For better or worse, I've adapted. This year, to make sure that I get my share of noise, pollution, and madness, I've tacked on a week in New York at the end of my trip. As any ex-New Yorker knows, ya gotta tank up every once in a while.

So this is a long way of saying that I've succumbed—you probably won't be hearing from me until September. Bonnes vacances—on se verra à la rentrée!