Drownout France

Berlin, The Divided City

Un-reconstructed. 29 Juillet.

Berlin, in recent memory, has suffered a lot of history: * supine to the Western Allies of WW1, * capital of the Third Reich's war machine, * headquarters of the Holocaust, * strategic ground zero for the Cold War.

Now's it's been restored to its deserved position: capital of the democratic German republic at the heart of Europe.

But what can you find in Berlin? A crisis of monuments.

Here to the right is Kaiser Frederick's church, damaged during the war and never rebuilt. This is a formidable, massive stone church ruin on Berlin's finest, upscale shopping street in the heart of old West Berlin: the Ku'Damm. It's as if St. Paul's Cathedral on 5th Avenue were a massive empty hulk.

There is an uncomfortable dynamic, however, between these scars and reminders of war and the many histories that intersect in Berlin. The Germans regret the atavistic impulse to war--they leave this monument at the center of the consumer and tourist quarter. This church was built as a memorial to Kaiser William II's father shortly after he acceded to the throne. William was the modernizing leader of great ambition who ultimately led Germany to its defeat in WW1 and the disastrous Versailles peace (recall his Chancellor Bismarck's doctrine of realpolitik and game of machtpolitik).

The violent, imperialist aspirations of the newly-born state are quite apart from some of the other horrors to follow.

Arendt. 29 Juillet.

This is what Hannah Arendt is pointing out in the video they have of her at the Jewish Museum. Everything else could have been repaid she says, except for the Auschwitz. When the Germans themselves learned about the Holocaust, they learned about an unforgiveable horror.

The Holocaust had a moral status quite apart from ordinary war. How can you address a cataclysm at the roots of modern Germany? The East Germans chose to distance themselves from it, but the West German government had inherited the culpability of Hitler's defeated regime.

At the over-architected Jewish museum, less than a year old, they have attempted a history of German Jews. The dominant theme is of a diasporic people that have suffered at the hands of their German hosts always, never worse than in the disaster of the Holocaust.

The basic project: reconciliation through engagement with history. But who is party to this reconciliation? The Germans. The people invented by 19th Century nationalists like Bismarck, in fact the race invented for Nazi ideological ends. And on the other side are the German Jews. The museum is not a history of the Jews. You do not hear about their fate in Spain (or the Catholic Inquisition) or in Eastern Europe (or in Stalin's gulags).

Inside the Void. 29 Juillet.

In fact, the basic principle that organizes this monument to and document of Jewish ethnic history and apology for the crimes of the German state, is a conception of a national race: on the one hand the German race that murdered and the German race that suffered.

Not many Jews remain in Germany after all, and here in the old quarters of the Berlin Museum they have built a history of German Jewry that ends in 1945 and extends thereafter not with Jews but with stories of the successor state that has struggled with Marx's Jewish Question recast.

The old problem was a Christian state oppressing its Jewish subjects, a problem of religion. The problem is a German state oppressing its Jewish subjects, a problem of peoples in opposition.

If that is not the problem, then what have the Germans to apologize for? The state itself is not guilty. It is a people that sits guiltily. It is the conception of a nationhood underwritten both by the nationalistic notion of a German people and by the supra-religious notion of Jewish identity that continues to prevail. They are locked in historical struggle in virtue of their very existence. How can the dialectic be superceded if both parties linger on, their existence itself pointing vividly to the other party's identity?

Holocaust Memorial. 29 Juillet.

A few meters from the un-wrapped, glass-domed Reichstag is a patch of verdure that reminded me of Prague's old Jewish cemetery not because of the long grass but because of the huge grave stone. This sign marks the future site of the memorial to the Romani ("Gypsy") people murdered by the Nazis. Just a few blocks away is the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, just now beginning construction after a long controversy.

What can you build? Will it be enough?

Just to the left of the Brandenburg Gate is the site, surrounded by a fence.

All the while there is an entirely separate history carefully being erased: 50 years of division and escape attempts in the shadow of the Berlin Wall.

The wall is gone, there is no trace of it. At the old Checkpoint Charlie, there is a small, private museum and its documents of the division. And the builders are quickly eradicating any memory that one half of the city is 50 years behind the other.

Another famous sign. 29 Juillet.

West Germany, US bases, soldiers in Berlin discos, defectors and dissidents, and all the Cold War souvenirs. They are neatly separated in Berlin. Two cities entirely with two unrelated histories. You are meant to pity one of them, and stare at the other's horror in awe. And for the old Romantic Germany of Goethe and Schiller, Humboldt and Helmholz, which built the muscular, bald wise men that adorn the places wher the French would have put Beaux-Arts blindfolded Muses, there is yet another attitude: the history lessons of the lately-born lately-industrializing European states.

Of course there is also a cute and cuddly art show all over Berlin. Giant polar bears painted up in various designs, like the traveling cows that came to New York some years back.

The construction is everywhere in Berlin. How difficult it will be to build on these foundations!

Angels over Berlin. 29 Juillet.

Berlin was only capital of Germany for 74 years when the Allies split it up and the Soviets took possession of the burnt shell of the Reichstag. But now it's back and from it is broadcast the future of Europe. A continental European war between the major powers seems impossible now, not only for the facts of history but because of the international order they have mutually constructed (in part De Gaulle's vision of a Europe to rival America, but also a vision of multilateralist commune of non-militaristic powers in Kantian perpetual peace).

They have certainly built this into all the transparent glass government buildings in Berlin. They can see themselves. But where will be the fund of their national identity and pride in the future. It is not easy to define your statehood on the crimes for which you apologize. Inside the glass buildings, into which everyone can see so easily, what do you find? What do they have inside? There is nothing inside.

L'Horlogerie suisse

Head. 08 Juillet.

Philosophical, non-philosophical.

The French have a philosophical culture. Not the USA, the cult of technoconsumption.

Par exemple, see how the French comment on this development: those zany Japanese are at it again, revising Occidental traditions. Nobody gives engagement rings anymore, they give watches!

Du Monde, 25.07.02, sous le titre "Le temps d'aimer":
Les temps changent. Les symboles ne suffisent plus. Pas question en effet de symboliser l'éternité, car il est aujourd'hui possible de la compter, de la mesurer avec la précision de l'horlogerie suisse. La société japonaise contemporaine, à l'image des mœurs occidentales modernes, recherche l'utile, le pratique. La montre : voilà enfin un bijou qui sert à quelque chose. Etre ponctuel, pouvoir dire l'heure, voilà le plus précieux.

<The Amol Translation>"Time to love"
Times change. Symbols aren't enough. Not a question, in effect, of symbolizing eternity, because today it is possible to count it, to measure it with the precision of Swiss watchmaking. The contemporary Japanese society, in the image of modern Western mores, looks for the useful, the practical. The watch: there it is at last a piece of jewelry which serves something. Being punctual, being able to say the time, there you have the most precious thing.</The Amol Translation>

French in the NYT

Paris Plage. 22 Juillet.

The NYT appears in English every other Sunday in Le Monde, so I guess they have decided to cover Paris more closely. Recent roundup:

Paris Beach

French Nazi Trial

Cruella de French Skating Judge

Vivendi this and Vivendi that...

French Football

Lance, the friendly American

Le Blind Date...

OK, c'est tout. Je suis fatigué ce soir. Demain, on ira à Berlin. À bientôt!

Armstrong

The Tour de France is on, the second great sports event of the summer. Armstrong is back in the lead. He speaks french! Badly, though: "Il est le plus grand threat!" (he meant menace). I think I speak french at least as well as he does now. Ergo, I should be the champion of the Tour de France!

Special Offer to Readers

Now for a deal too good to pass up. Four ultra high-resolution images from the library of Parisian classics to use as your very own desktop background. Cost: $1. It's the lowest price they would let me charge on Amazon. Plus a fifth image free! Just click on the Amazon box to the right.

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On Offer.

If you want to request an image seen here previously, just ask. Click on the Amazon box to the right to begin.

Street Art

Photo: Jules Backus. Juillet.

Parisian graffitti has always captured my imagination. In particular, the strikingly beautiful and fanciful images of Nemo.

Nemo is an artist, you see.


Well, so are all these other guys:

Space Invaders. Mai-Juillet.

Made with tiles that mesh well with the early-video-game digitization, images from the classic Atari game. Genuinely all over Paris.

Andre. Mai-Juillet.

"Andre's" classic characters are all over back-alleys and ultra-high-profile sites alike. Some gay nightclubs (Le Bains de Marais, for example) use his image/name on their advertising.

"Balki". Mai-Juillet.

Mini-"Balki". Mai-Juillet.

This funny-looking dude is in my favorite genre, actually: the pure-irony, self-aggrandisement style of mass-produced, un-craftsmanlike graffitti. The whole "spray can authenticity" is nonsense if you ask me -- but this may be an impression I developed in observing neurotic, ethnic Brooklynites "pose" street-tuff.

Trocadero. Mai-Juillet.

This is the kind of juxtaposition just sings the harmony of individual and social in public life.

Metro. Mai-Juillet.

Not a heck of a lot down under, but some.

At the Louvre. Mai-Juillet.

Another zinger afforded by construction walls.

The N-man. Mai-Juillet.

And of course the little man who stocked the Louvre to the gills did not leave off his signature.

You Are Invited

Head. 08 Juillet.

Consider this your invitation.

It's lovely to have visitors and we have space to sleep two extra comfotably, plus 2 more uncomfortably. For a few days, it couldn't be lovelier.

If you're going to be in Europe, do come by Paris. We're here at least till Aug 26, but perhaps a few months or years longer.

This offer is only good for faithful of this blog, and could be cancelled at any time without notice. Mention this advertisement.

Bikes

Les Eurockéens are hell on 2-wheels.

Bike. 18 Juillet.

The evolution of the bicycle, through the parking grate at the BNF.

Bike. 18 Juillet.

Bike. 18 Juillet.

Bike. 18 Juillet.

Bike. 18 Juillet.

Bike. 18 Juillet.

This last pair is the killer. It's a scooter with a roof. BMW. Chest wig, anyone?

Bike. 18 Juillet.

The Paris Fashions

Used. 14 Juillet.

The 80s will not leave you alone and this shop is predicting the following.

"Tennis apparel". They are pushing these stylish, used tennis dresses from the fine European brands: Adidas, Le Coq Sportif, etc.

"T-shirts". Well, aren't they perennial. Featured here, a classic long playing 33.

Bizarre Parisian oddity of the week: used sneakers. Available everywhere. 1986 Air Jordans, red with black, reconditioned, soft leather. Cheap. Imagine yourself in Air Jordans.

Automatic Transit

Chatelet. Juillet.

This is line 14.

You may know the good things about the Paris metro:
- frequent trains! Every 90 seconds or something.
- many stops! You're never more than a few blocks away.
- reliable service! Point-to-point: add 2 min for each stop and 5 min for each train-change, accurate within seconds.

The bad things:
- it stinks like the sewer just inches above. :(
- the train-changes can be long.
- short-ish trains (made up for by the frequency?)

Now for something you wouldn't have guessed: strikes. Damn near everyone in France is in a syndicat (union) and damn near all of the go on greve (strike). Even neurosurgeons (if you remember Adam Gopnik's Paris book) and even the train drivers.

Apparently they wait until December each year. Why? Not to disrupt la Noël! Over the years they have negotiated, get this, 13 months of pay for 12 months of work. So they get paid double in December. And if they strike in December, they don't need to get the last unit of pay; they can last the strike.

But what you see here, John Henry, is the driver-less metro train of the future. Running from Madeleine to BNF Francois Mitterand, this lovely train doesn't give a damn if your leg is caught in the door.

Virtual Television

Game Channel. 07 Juillet.

After the first month, the loads of free cable channels went away.

Here, they are playing FIFA World Cup on Playstation, on television!

They chat about upcoming games, and--if you were still hankering for World Cup action--you watch them collect yellow cards and game away the day.

In the Dark

(c)A.Tannenbaum.

So there has been a near info blackout from my end.

Not to worry--all is well.

We've just had a lot of visitors! Last weekend, this weekend, next weekend; and of course the weeks are jammed with some highly productive writing days at the moment. I'm in the end-game of Chapter 3. That will put me into striking distance on the whole dissertation! I'll have first drafts of 3 of the 4 main chapters. I'll only need to write that last one, add a minor 5th chapter, and polish things up a bit. September, here we come.

Progress and the Age of Les Lumieres

NASDAQ pre-April 2000? 28 Juillet.

In French there is a "vous" and a "tu"-- like in other languages you may know -- with one reserved for privileged social relations. In the Revolution they decided to get rid of the "vous"! (I wish they had succeeded, but c'est la vie.) Robespierre addressed great masses as "tu".

So how is my progress going in Paris? That, I'm sure, is the question on everybody's mind. Well, I hereby present to you an SEC-verified statement of progress:

Summer Progress 2002.

I do not endorse any gaming or wagering on the eventual results.

Assassin!

Le parade. 14 Juillet.

Bastille Day is the French July 4th, though they should really have several. They're on their 5th Republic since they started having republics, all in only 250 years. Not only have all kinds of armies marched through Paris in the interims, but there have been a number of revolutions and abdications. It makes Decision 2000 in Gainseville, FL look tame.

The breaking news Sunday morning: anti-globalisation activists had taken over the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles, unfurling a grand banner and chanting aggressively at the sleepwalking tourists.

The parade each Bastille Day runs down the Champs-Elysées (literally: Elysian Fields, check your Greek History database, to the left of your medulla oblongota). The idea, you see, is for the military of the Republic to be inspected by its semi-civilian chef of state (but see the constitution, custom-fitted for a war-savvy but domestic-issue dunderheaded De Gaulle, or Bush père for that matter...or for that matter...).

The breaking news by Sunday afternoon/evening: some right wing nut took a shot at Chirac. He carried his gun in a guitar case. The gun was a hunting rifle. The nation gripped by terror? Not quite. Chirac's quote on learning he was shot at (he didn't notice when it happened): "Ah, bon."

Immediately after the parade, Chirac sat down and gave a pre-scheduled 3 hour interview one-on-three with reporters from the major networks. They asked questions like: "Why are you hiding behind the mantle of the presidency to avoid investigation on criminal corruption charges?"

I missed the parade, but caught this shot of some imperially-dressed riders using the exit gangway down Rue de Rivoli. The streets were choked with tourists. I'll have to start avoiding the main events in Paris, as things get overloaded.

The French Love of Film

From Le Monde. Mai?

The Lumiere Brothers invented the format and their inheritors love it still. Famously, Woody Allen is huge here, and Jerry Lewis even bigger. But Adam Sandler, the "yiddish troubador"? Does it make any sense?

Le Monde on Punch Drunk Love, the new film from Paul Thomas Anderson. Here's what they say:

Punch-Drunk Love n'est pas seulement, et de loin, le meilleur film de Paul Thomas Anderson. C'est tout simplement la comédie américaine la plus achevée, la plus émouvante, la plus drôle, la mieux écrite, la mieux jouée depuis la grande époque de Woody Allen.

Punch-Drunk Love possède son diamant bleu en la personne d'Adam Sandler, prodigieux en Barry Egan dépressif gagné peu à peu par les lois de l'amour fou et de l'apesanteur. Son interprétation devrait le placer parmi les candidats au prix du meilleur acteur. Star colossale aux Etats-Unis, où il a imposé son image de célibataire impénitent dans des comédies trop souvent médiocres, Adam Sandler hisse son talent à des hauteurs jusqu'alors insoupçonnables.

<The Amol Translation>Punch-Drunk Love is not only, and by a long way, the best film by Paul Thomas Anderson. It is quite simply the most achieved, most moving, most funny, best written, best performed American comedy since the great period of Woody Allen.

Punch-Drunk Love has it's blue diamond in the person of Adam Sandler, prodigous as Barry Egan the depressive slowly overcome by crazy and weightless love. His performance should be placed among the candidates for Best Actor. A colossal star in the United States, where he has imposed his "unapologetic single" image in comedies too often mediocre, Adam Sandler hoists his talent to levels now beyond suspicion.</The Amol Translation>

Capitalist Crisis

Grace a Economist. Juillet.

A thoughtful reader inquired how the rags here were reacting to the devolving situation of capitalism in the USA.

They're taking it reasonably well.

For one thing, they are not claiming that this proves the ultimate instability of capitalism itself (a moribund doctrine to be replaced by revolutunionary Fabianism).

But there was a full section insert on ECONOMIE in Le Monde, and the didactic line included these assorted elements:
* there is a deep similarity between the crisis in the US Catholic Church and the crisis in corporate confidence;
* Adam Smith better wake the hell up and sort things out;
* Bush and Cheney look to be implicated in the practices of the cronies, as had been the worry pre-2000;
* capitalist markets cannot autoregulate, as was the lesson of the 20s;
* the cause of this latest problem is the repeal of Glass-Steagall and stock options;
* this is a problem led by Americans that effects everyone, it must be American policymakers that address it;
* mainly American analysts and commentators cited in the discussions (Greenspan, Gary Becker, Harvey Pitt, whoever);
* indeed it is the American system that is being tested, since there are other (European) models for capitalism;
* capitalism is strong and has vanquished its competitors, but this is a serious problem.

Le Vrai Père de l'Europe

Le père? Juillet.

Some history monthly at the newstands argues that Napoleon ought to be considered the real father of Europe.

Surely the first to conceive of a single "people" from Moscow to Lisbon.

I wondered after visiting the Invalides what the French really thought of their little emperor, and I think this is interesting evidence. This Sunday is Bastille Day, so I expect there will be some martial displays worth connecting back to the crusades across the Alps.

The image you see there is from the magazine, and a modestly doctored version of Jacques-Louis David's famous Academy portrait of Napoleon crossing the Alps with his army. "Calm, on a fiery steed" were Napoleon's instructions to the painter, perhaps from atop his actual mountain-crossing steed, a mule.

Life with Terrorism

Poubelle. 07 Juillet.

When I visited France in the mid-90s, I noticed that the garbage cans in subways were all boarded up. You couldn't throw anything in them. It was quite messy. Made no sense to me.

Well they have solved that problem now. The problem was, in fact, bombs.

All the trash cans in Paris are simple, transparent bags. So you can see if there's a bomb I guess, and so there's less stuff to blow into frag.

But who was bombing Paris in the mid-90s? Algerians? Seems too late for that. If you know, dear reader, please save me the google search.

France and Empire

Invalides. 07 Juillet.

You don't hear much about French imperial history, like you do about the British.

That's not really for lack of it; they had a lot in North Africa (Algerian maladies linger on), influence in the Middle East, and, if you remember, they were the first post-colonial losers in Vietnam.

In particular the tenor is always sort of anti-Hitler. The French do not like Vichy-sympathizers, though Americans like to paint all the French as such. De Gaulle certainly wasn't and he was the French Republic after the war.

But even at Invalides, which you may have wondered about if you ever visited Paris, has a funny sort of dynamic. You look at a Paris map and there's this huge quadrant of land labelled simply as the "Hotel des Invalides". Fine. You go up the Eiffel Tower and that beautiful gold-painted dome is at the Invalides. Fine.

Napoleon. 07 Juillet.

You go to the Invalides itself--it is a military museum, the former hospital and re-training center for war veterans, built perhaps by Louis Le Grand.

And then you realize what's going on. That huge gold-painted dome is--yes, a church, but also--the tomb of Napoleon. They bundle access to the tomb with the museum entry, so it looks like you're just touring the French martial past. Are you there to see defeated WW2 weapons? I don't think so.

When you get there, it turns out, you are there to see Napoleon, the greatest French general--the man to wear the imperial crown of Charlemagne, only the third general after Hannibal and Charlemagne himself to lead an army across the Alps into Italy and conquer it, etc etc. The tomb of Napoleon is the roccocco to Westminster Abbey's baroque. The French love Napoleon, their little emperor. And Invalides is his enormous, fabulous monument at the center of Paris.

At the Hypermarket

Auchand's nut section. 5 Juillet.

France has these things called hypermarches which you might expect to be something like a cross between Dean & Deluca and Wal-Mart.

Interested in all things ultra-consumerist, we made a special trip to the middle-class periphery of Paris to visit Auchand, the chain which--along with Carrefour (literally, "crossroads")--dominates this business in France.

There is a kind of ecstatic consumer pleasure I experience at Target in particular. The stores are just so huge, well-lit, clean, usually rather empty (not sure if it's always like that, but it usually is when I sail through a nowhere town on one of my road trips out of NY/SF), and full of cheerful signs and energetically wrapped products. This happens at Wal-Mart too, but I have noticed that it and K-Mart tend to be a bit more shabby.

Auchand was WAY bigger than any Wal-Mart I've ever seen. It was two floors, each with warehouse-height ceilings, each with roughly the square footage of two football fields. Maybe you've seen Wal-Marts this big. There were pigeons flying around in the rafters.

We went on Friday night and, boy, was it ever crowded.

Generally, there was less "consumer ecstasy" in this place. Less clean, less pulsing with brands and logos and such. Maybe I'm a stranger in a strange land or maybe the ideas of consumer-goods packaging are still a bit traditional here. If you must know, I was kind of disappointed by this big hypermarket thing. We know it well in the USA: big shabby retail.

Feeling Full

I speculated about "fat making you feel full" a few posts ago. Apparently the Frenchman Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin agreed, in the 19th century, and recommended a fattier diet to fat people.

Fat is good for you?, in the NYT magazine this week.

The article also explain why, more or less, there are no low-fat chips or low-fat frozen yogurts or any such thing in all of France. Maybe that's a good thing!

BAC, the SAT Egalité?

A kid reports home, on TF1. 3 Juillet.

The Stanford-Binet Test is probably the most famous of intelligence tests (Derived from the Binet-Simon test of French psychologist Binet and his colleague Simon, and developed by Lewis Terman at Stanford, who was in turn the father of Fred Terman. They named an engineering building after Fred because he is often cited as the father of Silicon Valley, who as dean of engineering encouraged his students--including Dave Hewlett and Bill Packard--to go off and start companies. Unrelated but interesting is that Stanford University (known as "The Farm") is on the former site of former-CA-governor, railroad tycoon, and founder of the CA wine regions, Leland Stanford's farm, was the very same place where Eadweard Muybridge took the famous photos of horses on the gallop, to settle a bet between Stanford and some chums: is there a point mid gallop when all the horses feet are off the ground? (Yes.) Stanford ripped him off in the end, taking full credit in the book published from the discoveries. Sad. Apparently LS was also a malefactor of great wealth, having gotten rich on scamming the government and his British investors with the railroad project.)

Intelligence testing is something not well-regarded by most psychology today, and the US has drifted away from it. One would think this had passed in France too. It sort of seems not.

I say this because the BAC results came in on Friday. The BAC, being the baccalaureate exams administered throughout France. There were sleepless nights for parents and pupils the night before, because this is one important test.

There used to be something called the "elevens" (I think; corrections anyone?) in the UK which were much reviled and eliminated. Essentially a general aptitude test given early in your adolescent career, and by which your future life was determined. One gets this feeling with the SAT, since it seems to be so important (but isn't really when you get down to really fine-grained discriminations). Even the SAT seems crazy as it is.

But the BAC is more than a little test. At the end of high school, you take this wide-ranging and complex test of essays and multiple-parts that aspires to demonstrate your achievement across wide ranges: sciences, languages, etc. Many people don't pass at all and historically the number was around 50% of people that completed the BAC. It was a significant achievement and presumably the sort of thing that a "college education" used to be in the US. But socialist (!) governments through the 1980s pushed that up (remember Mitterand's hostilities to the Reagan Right?) to about 75%.

So everybody gets a BAC.

But that's not it, since the BAC also determines--entirely on its own--where you will be accepted to college. If you get above 18 (out of 20) you're into the grands ecoles (which are the six ultra-elite semi-vocational-style schools such as the Science Po, HAC, Ecole Normale Superiure, and so on). If you get between 16 and 18, then you go to school for two more years to get your score up! And then, 10% of the re-takers are admitted to the elites. The rest go to the liberal universities--including the very old and famous Sorbonne which apparently isn't as prestigious as we think it is.

And if you fail the BAC, well then you can go to a private "alternative school" (sort of like the Devry or Apex Tech option I think). That is, because all the higher education in this country is run by the state and free to attend (Hope Grants my ass!).

It's not exactly an intelligence test in the spirit of all the IQ chaps, but it does have an important symmetry: the idea that a single battery of tests is accurate enough to serve as the basis for irrevocably deep steering of a person's life. Not sure about that one myself.

Talk about egalité!

In a long article commenting on the situation--the education minister just appointed by Chircac (one Professor Luc Ferry, a philosopher and creditable one at that while also chum of SuperLiar; author of such inconceivable titles as "Man Made God" and "Why We Are Not Neitzscheans" as well as a critique of Deep Ecology. Imagine Andrew Card writing something!)--seemed to be arguing that the BAC should be made more important and more benefits bestowed on the high achievers.

Cars

If you've been to Europe you know that gasoline is around 4x as expensive as the US. There's less of the suburban commute thing happening with the cities too.

Car. 1 Juillet.

Given the above facts, perhaps you will notice that there is a single, dominant design for cars here. There are other ideas around too, though.

Car. 1 Juillet.

Car. 1 Juillet.

Car. 1 Juillet.

SMART Car. 1 Juillet.

SMART behind an SUV. 1 Juillet.

Images Galore

I hope you're not on a modem! If you are, all I can do is apologize. There are a lot of pictures on this page, but they're pretty cool and I think they're an important part of this whole deal.

The Frenchman's Garb

Sweeping the nation. 05 Juillet.

Here is a look that a Frenchman loves. Look around the streets of Paris. You will not miss this distinctive striped design, usually blue stripes on white, shirts with boatnecks, but of course with variants.

Mysterious: on old and young alike, shirts and skirts, with many variations.

But completely unrelated to fashion; not at all momentary (I conclude, since even the least modish are wearing it).

It is, the official French casual uniform. The politicians wear windowpane shirts with light colored suits (the MPs, that is; Chirac looks more serious and grave in the American style).

Of every stripe. 05 Juillet.

Sorry so many o these pictures are of poor quality; I had to take them discretely (I thought) to avoid explaining why I was photographing innocent frenchmen.

Let me point out the bottle of Gaultier cologne. It's called "Le Male". And that stripey pattern is meant to be a tight sailor's shirt gripping the upper body of this chap. And indeed, in the streets of the Marais, there are many gay fashions displaying the whole "sailor look" this summer. Sleeveless and closer-fitting than what I've photographed here.

See below for some stuff on Daniel Buren, French conceptual artist. There has got to be a connection.

The Writer in Paris

Salle J. 30 Juin.

Perhaps you picture a shabby fellow shuffling around with a sheaf of papers from cafe to cafe? Well no! I am buried in the heart of the grand BNF.

I really should give that cafe thing a try. But I don't live in a part of Paris that's terribly desolate, i.e. the cafes are full of German tourists. Not exactly sleeply parts of the Parisian margins. I plan a visit to the margins soon--but to see the French hypermarkets. Watch this space.

The schools are out now--no more late-teenage kids studying. Now it all seems to be people studying law (Droit Civil and all that).

The Gray City (II)

You can get out of the metro in Paris and find that the quarter is essentially the same as the one you left. All the buildings are around 6 or 8 stories tall, they're all constructed in continuous rows along the blocks (not like NYC townhouses that separate very sharply), uniform colors in the neutral pallettes, uniform architectural period. Even the central Opera district (2nd admnt) is currently being rebuilt to look exactly the way it did before.

Various views. 20-30 Juin.

"A gray city peopled by whites." The quote from Klein really is telling; cuts to the heart of more than just images of this old city in this old country.

Methodological Reflections

I think was a bit unfair to the French, intentionally in fact, by reviewing the top two albums on Amazon.fr as a sampling of their pop music.

Here are two points that I think are still true, implicit in my comments:
- their music is not dominated by American pop. Ms. Spears does not even exist here. The situation is different of course in the sitcom department.
- their music has a distinctive crooner tradition that has not been integrated into the world's mass-pop milieu.

But when you look at the top of Amazon.com, one finds:
- Norah Jones, #1. I have no idea who this is. Maybe this is in the way that my Dad has no idea who Morrissey is. More likely, this is in the way I have no clue who sings "Lady In Red" (and don't care). Maybe old people flock more than younger people do, so the tops of the charts can often be unpopular, old-people music.
- "Oh Yeah! Aerosmith's Ultimate Hits" (or something). This speaks for itself. If you like it, fine. You're like a Frenchman who likes Renaud the Country Balladeer.

What spurs this concession? The Euronews channel (el cheapo French CNN) does a daily 5 minute "what's new in music" section. And they recommended "Felix Da Housecat". Inconceivable that I would see such a thing on US national TV. "Melange de la 80s, disco, New Wave, electro". Word up!

Look, I don't want to get all Margaret Mead on you. (Though I haven't seen the French having any sex! I think they might have a sexless society...!)

Growing Out of Control!

Growing Out of Control!
My beard, since I've been here, is growing like crazy! Is it the super-summer effects of the long days? Are the Scandinavians growing huge beards?

Californie Diaries

Californie Diaries

CA documentary. 1 Juillet.

I guess every week this program goes to California and interviews representative Americans. This guy owns an alternative bookshop. He sells, in his words:

"Some of the most unusual and bizarre things you will find anywhere in the world practically. Wes Craven comes here. Marilyn Manson comes here. We have things you will not find anywhere.

Very unusual things. Mayhem, destruction, violence. Amok. Running amok, murder, blood, sexxxxual perversity. Books about rape. Books about bondage. We have extreme and unusual Japanese comics. Unusual stories about people die trying to masturbate while strangling themselves. French books. Uh, ... oh, uh. Yeah I just spaced out there for a minute. [..]

I like Camus. We have The Plague. No I haven't read that one, but I am very interested in The Rebel. That's what we do here. [...]

I've never left LA, never left California. I was born here in LA, opened this shop, and we have some very unusual things here. This is still somewhat of a free country. So we have very uncommon things."

The Monolith, Delivered

The Monolith, Delivered

Le Monde Sunday. 30 Juin.

They include a 12-page New York Times insert in the Sunday Le Monde. In English. Apparently the NYT wanted to have it published in French (marketing). Le Monde preferred to have it in English (anthropology).

Fatty Food, Less Food?

Fatty Food, Less Food?
Here's a crazy theory based on the following observations:
- breakfast foods pretty much amount to butter croissants, chocolate croissants, madeleines (soft chewy egg and butter cookies), and other small pastries like that.
- huge snack sections for yogurts (with all the creamy milkfat) and biscuits (butter biscuits, chocolate butter biscuits), and some chips (zero "low fat" or "baked" types).
- meal main courses which focus on sauces, or if you're me which focus on steak frite (fried steak, not even BBQ'd!).
- lots of chocolate bars (the lady in front of me on line always has one in the basket).
- pre-made sandwiches (at grab-n-go lunch type places) with healthy slathers of mayonaisse without exception.
- Relatively small serving sizes of most of these things.
- I eat this stuff, in the small servings, but then don't feel hungry the way I'd expect.

Theory: maybe fatty foods leave you feeling full longer, interposing on any need to faire de snacking as industry urges to do in the US.

French...rock

French...rock

Grace de Amazon.fr

A sensitive reader suggested I look into French pop.

Methodology: went to Amazon.fr, picked the top two albums, downloaded them using Kazaa, listened to them while doing some other stuff, wrote comments on a few songs.

#2 Album: Renaud, Boucan d'enfer
"Petit Pede"
Literally a cross between Serge Gainsbourg's pop melodies and light instrumental backgrounds (without the overtly cribbed ethnicities) and Bob Dylan (post-accident, 1970's vocal whining nonsense). Not bad, actually.

"Manhattan - Kaboul (avec Axell ...)"
There's a John Cougar Melloncamp vibe on this track, a duet with someone who sounds like a young, beautiful, naive chanteuse with eyes like sunglasses. But without the whiff of tired old rocker you get from JCM (i.e. JCM - Jon Bon Jovi + Twiggy = this track).

"Tout arreter"
Country and western whine in the instrumentation, layers of criss-crossing provincial banjo sounds. Which is to say, Bob Dylan cover. I'm thinking _Desire_, like Jack of Hearts but about 10 minutes shorter. Except, replace the kickin' harmonica solos with....accordion.

"Mon nqain de Jardin"
ON the subway you'll see these cute gypsy guys playing the accordion. No more monkeys these days, and they aren't nice guys--aggressive for their dough--but it's France. This track is more straightforwardly the sort of french country/traditional music you might see if you went with your parents on one of those Seinne river dinner boat and a show things.

"Mal Barres"
Translator having difficulty with this one.

"Elle A Vu Le Loup"
This one's a live track. You can hear the cabaret audience laughing at his jokes. I'm guessing you're going to have to speak french to like this song. It's

Okay I'm bored of this one now. On to the next.

Patrick Bruel, Entre Deux (double album)

"Mon amant de Saint-Jean"
Soaring, winding and classically french syncopated accordion, piano, and strings. To me, it's 1925, I'm drinking absinthe, the grainy black and white color of the heroine abandoning me breaks my heart.

"Le premier rendez-vous"
Pianos ouverture. It's a 50s Hollywood lightsdown introduction. Then here he is. Handsome, mysterious, crooning, deeply gazing...then come the fancifully constructed layers of banjo. The provincial western quarters of France. The troubadors.

Concluding remarks.
I'm not listening to anymore. Bottom line: French popular music is stuck in an introverted, backward looking timewarp of "chanson" fascination from two generations ago. The way indian Hindi film songs are essentially interchangeable with those of 25 years ago and appeal across age groups to mom and teenage punk. Though I don't think the kids are listening to this schlock. It must be that demographic trends in the slowing french population have made Moms and Dads the top music consumers, as opposed to the US where demonic pre-teens are drinking blood and having abortions vicariously through their rappers and barbie-pop-princesses.

Failsafe methodology check: the #3 album, By The Way by the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Uh oh!

One Month in Paris

One Month in Paris

At Musee D'Orsay. 30 Juin.

We've been in France for a month now. Not coming back for a while yet.

In fact, maybe not at all! Here's the dreamscape to underwrite it: my french is improving quickly. Indeed, perhaps I am an idiot-savant for languages. Indeed, perhaps by summer's end I will have the mastery and vocabulary not of a migrant farm worker but of a grand ecoles-educated, duck-eating, St. Germain de Pres-living, homme politique. And indeed if that were the case, then I could simply take some work with a Paris-located multinational (consultingco?), immediately begin enjoying my 5+2 weeks of annual vacation, generous health plan, annual strike threats, and job security. If you don't think I'd do it, you really haven't tried the supermarket yogurt here. What they sell in the US (fruit on the bottom??) is cat's milk compared to this stuff.

Sempé, Busted!

Sempé, Busted!

Ur-Sempé. 30 Juin.

If you look at New Yorker covers regularly, then you know that the retro ones that continue to appear, those featuring landscape-style scenes of New York in the seasons--utterly news-less and simply natural--are usually by JJ Sempé.

Well have a look at this then!! I make no claims of authorial orginality here, but in the wake of Doris Kearns Goodwin and all that, I expect that JJ will respond formally.

(If you can't see it, it's a huge white snowfield with a tiny cartoony skier sliding across it, on a 50-year-old canvas hanging in a museum. My picture of the painter's name was blurry, but who cares about that anyway.)

Daniel Buren, the stripe guy, in Paris

Daniel Buren, the stripe guy, in Paris

The Palais Royal. 27 Juin.

A major new show for the summer has opened at the Centre Georges Pompidou, which is the main museum of modern art in Paris.

They've given the top floor to Daniel Buren, a guy I always liked every since Rosalind Krauss told me about him in 20th Century Art.
What I liked so much about him was this thing he had for stripes, which you can see in both pictures on the right. In one famous "stunt", he went all around New York and replaced the awnings on buildings with his black-and-white striped pattern.

On the video screen outside the exposition they showed some even more interesting stuff. Protesters carrying large placards as they marched back and forth in front of major art and political sites, but the placards were just big rectangular fields of the stripes. It has all the elements of the great art of the 70s: channeling political energy without necessarily adopting a conventional political attitude, taking art out of bounds into the street or the night, hypostatizing the artistic element--the striped field--into the minimal expression of the visual character of what is artistic (the stripes aren't accidental, wherever they turn up you know they were put there on purpose).

A floor from the new show. 30 Juin.

So France hired him to liven up a space in one of those big empty palace quads, at the Palais Royal just behind the Louvre. He put in a cipher of columns, of different heights, striped, with matching window awnings of the same stripes. The result is an absolutely lively and fun-house type place that's great for taking pictures. Parisians, through the medium of Le Monde, consider it a modern classic on an order with I.M. Pei's pyramid at the Louvre. And indeed it shares many of the ideas of classical antiquity transformed and delivered to modern people.

As for the show at Pompidou, it's all new work. Very architectural: he divided up the huge roof-level floor of the museum into 20-25 square rooms, then did crazy things to them. Put mirrors all around, or painted them in his stripes or in new interesting fields of color, or projected light-fields of color, etc. Again, a fun place and nice for taking photos. Here's a neat video we took while there.

Big Day in French News

Big Day in French News

Au revoir, Messier. 1 Juillet.

Two french stories led the business news today worldwide. Messier is out at Vivendi, and France Telecom might be renationalized (!!!). That's France for you. The socialist party is working on re-organizing while the re-elected conservative leadership plots their next move after implementing the semi-communist 35-hour workweek.

Meanwhile, the papers are excited to report that the Euro has reached parity with the US greenback. In January, when last I was hear the dollar was $0.80 to the 1 euro. Now it's $1/euro1. It makes shopping easier, but more painful.