How not to write about France: a Manifesto
I love Adam Gopnik’s writing almost all of the time. Paris to the Moon contains some of my favorite commentary about living in France, and he always manages to make the personal aspects of his essays completely relevant to the topic itself. This is rare, as many Americans writing about France fancy themselves as Hemingway, and most personal essays end up sounding self-centered or narcissistic. Gopnik is #2 on my “writers I want to meet” list, after Salman Rushdie, because I want Rushdie to date my mom. I hear he hangs out in the Meatpacking district after dark. Who wants to go clubbing?
Anyway, back to Mr. Gopnik: I love his work. But I was quite disappointed when I finished his latest piece about Le Fooding, a Paris-based food movement that is really just a Brooklyn/San Francisco-based foodie movement imported by hip Parisians who reject the culinary aristocracy (shock horror!). He commits three stylistic crimes which, in my opinion, must be retired from commentary about greater French culture for good.
1. Every woman is Bardot or Birkin (or equivalent):
Where Zoe had been an embodiment of fifties French beauty, elegant and tense, Marine was more in the line of the young Bardot
1.1. French (foodie) Women Don’t Get Fat.
Zoe turned out to be an exquisite, nervous blonde in white linen, with a distinct resemblance to the young Brigitte Fosse
2. Portrait of a Revolutionary as a Young Man
I met Alexandre, with Zoe, in Bryant Park; he turned out to be the Danton of the Fooding movement, one of those passionately articulate young Frenchmen who speak with the relentless eloquence of French letters and philosophy, answering each rhetorical question as they raise it.
(note: this is an astute observation in that these young men really do exist and are as intense as Gopnik describes them. Most of them went to Grandes Ecoles and name-drop Bruno Latour in the same way their American counterparts would cite, I don’t know, Wes Anderson films or maybe maybe Samuel Huntington if they majored in Poli Sci and have a stick up their ass. But Danton? Really? Just because it’s France, it doesn’t make bad historical analogies acceptable. I mean have you ever heard someone compare Frank Bruni to Benjamin Franklin?)
3. The New Wave that won’t ebb.
As Camdeborde said that, I suddenly saw the right analogy: Le Fooding was to cooking what the New Wave was to French cinema..It had a similar cast of characters, with Cammas as André Bazin, the propagandist; Rubin as the anathematized Eric Rohmer; Jégo as Truffaut, the humanist-revolutionary; and Camdeborde as Godard, the serious radical
I don’t disagree with the greater statements he makes about how, philosophically, Le Fooding is a bit like the New Wave - specifically, its willingness to adopt American methods and value. But the badass-as-Godard comparison is tired, tired, tired.
In addition to the above, I call for the eradication of the following:
The Dreyfus Affair, adultery/infidelity/Carla Bruni, “The City of Lights”, Jean-Paul Sartre, wine at lunch (it’s awesome, get over it) and the way French people tie scarves. We don’t talk about how Americans tie their shoelaces. Why must we talk about tying scarves? If I wanted to be really pompous, I’d write a book called The Scarf as Noose: American Writing and the Problem of France.
Also related: Gopnik’s Parisian restaurant picks appear on the Fooding website. And I’m having lunch at Frenchie on Thursday. There will be several courses, dessert, and wine, naturellement. As redundant as Le Fooding is, I’m really going to miss eating out in Paris.
