Last month I was invited to participate in a public debate at the new high-tech campus of Paris VIII in Montreuil. The subject, believe it or not, was formulated as the following question: “Internet: Faut-il brûler ou le développer?” Much more interesting than the sluggish volley of comments was the question itself. Discussing whether the Internet and its spectacular Web should be destroyed or developed revealed a lot not only about the French ambivalence toward the Net, but also about the larger difference between French and American societies in terms of control.
Paris Rentree… Back to Grey Paris
People tend to complain bitterly about the rentrée in Paris because the long-awaited vacation is over and the drudgery of daily work kicks in. It takes a good six weeks to catch up on the backlog of mail and phone messages, faxes and e-mail and to get the sand out of your loafers and ticks off your Wallabies. It takes another two weeks to find a place to hide your suitcases for another year in your crowded apartment. For many of us, there are the intense and illogical arguments to battle out at the local post office, tracking down the registered letters and packages that were returned to unknown senders. All par for the autumn course.
We’ll Always Have Paris…
It’s summer and you’re here for the first time. Or maybe you’re back again. If you hadn’t noticed, take a look around: you’re not alone. In fact, over five million Americans flit over to France each year and another whopping 19 million francophiles cross over or tunnel under the Channel, making the “Hexagon” the number one destination of choice for anglophones.
Chilling Out in Paris
Funny how a country with such great markets can be so prehistoric in its marketing mentality. That the French have had to borrow the term from l’américaine is no accident. Americans breathe marketing, whereas the French have to learn it.
Bilan for the New Year
Commentary, February 1996
A year – the unit of time – in France is seamless. And, aptly, February is both a time to finish up farewells to the past calendar and begin to think about the new year’s “grand vacances,” only six months down the road, at the foothills of “la rentrée.” Christmas will be on us again in a wink. Oysters and foie gras and salmon fumé, blinis, Champagne. In February you eat the last of these things to close down the season, to squeeze out the last traces of “fête,” like skiing those last runs in the late late spring. “Adieu” collides into “bienvenue.” Continue reading “Bilan for the New Year”
les vacances…an unalienable legal right
France commentary, September 1995
Vacationing in France…sounds like a wonderful thing, right? Idyllic, like “a year in Provence” or winning the lottery. Well, almost. The concept could stand a reality check. Continue reading “les vacances…an unalienable legal right”
Mary Holden, Paris to Black Mountain
Don’t you recognize Mary Holden? An American. Age 36. Twelve years in Paris. Three years back in North Carolina during which she has come back four times. Long-distance marriage to French animation artist, Jean-Luc. Two bi-cultural daughters. A half dozen odd jobs of varying levels of interest and pay. A succession of apartments and little pavillons. Enough frequent flyer miles to get to Hong Kong and back, Business Class. A deep love for daily Paris life and yet a gnawing alienation from both her indigenous and adoptive countries. “I don’t feel good over there and I don’t feel comfortable here. It’s confusing; there’s so much I miss wherever I am,” she admits.
Web Future Gazing in 1995
In 1969, when many of us were watching the flag-waving Archie Bunker chew out the Meathead, his lazy, pinko, long-haired son-in-law, the United States government was secretly putting in place a small but innovative network of four computers that would share information and be impermeable to Soviet attack.
Conversation with Publisher John Calder
John Calder and Paris mix like Scottish malt whiskey and mountain spring water. Since the 1950s Calder, a veritable landmark to literary publishing, has focused on Paris as his literary plaque tournante. In fact, there is probably no single literary bookman still in the business that has done more to bring French authors into the English language. If it hadn’t been for Calder few anglophones in Europe would have been able to read the ground-breaking writers of the French nouveau roman. And his stable of writers is wildly impressive; he’s published over 4000 titles in forty years including the works of some 20 Nobel Prize winners, a fact he cringes at from modesty when it’s repeated in public. Artaud, Ionescu, Marguerite Duras, Alain Robbe-Grille, Nathalie Saurraute, Claude Simon, Robert Pinget, many of the Surrealists…the list goes on. Continue reading “Conversation with Publisher John Calder”
Screaming Ice Cream in French
Two little things happened recently in Paris that peaked my American glands: 1) Haagen Dazs infiltrated my local Prisunic and 2) I “dined” for the first time at Pizza Hut on the rue de Rivoli. Seemingly innocuous events, they nonetheless lent themselves to larger cultural scrutiny and psycho-existential re-positioning. The entrepreneur in me spotted the need for a culinary guide for the French, on American Popular Eats. The purist in me wretched. The menu of details before me read with the cultural differences of our two lands. Continue reading “Screaming Ice Cream in French”
How do you Say Mickey Mouse in French?
Unless you’ve spent the last decade meditating in a Buddhist monastery in Tibet, far away from the reachings of the French and international press, you absolutely must know what’s happening in Greater Metropolitan Paris on April 12, 1992.