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America and France have always had a special relationship. In fact, it would not be an exaggeration to say that the two have enjoyed a love affair of sorts, with all the love/hate dynamics that suggests. From Benjamin Franklin charming Louis XVI to Jackie Kennedy enchanting Charles de Gaulle, the two peoples have fascinated and repelled each other. Mary Blume has cultivated her own love affair with this often inscrutable land -- France.
It is an affair that spans more than thirty years, from the time Mary Blume first came to Paris, beginning her renowned columns in the International Herald Tribune with a fine eye for the charms, and no aversion to skewering the pretensions, of her adopted home. As with the best chronicles of a time and a place, the narrator begins to emerge through the text. Only Mary Blume could have written these essays. Hers is a unique voice that has won her a devoted audience who have turned religiously, over decades, to her weekend features.
Quintessentially American, she has managed that fine trick of not assimilating, and yet coming to know, in the fullest sense, the place and the people in all their often sublime and sometimes ridiculous complexity. In the pieces themselves, whether she turns her penetrating lens on Frenchemen or their money or their socks, whether a bearded lady or Simone de Beauvoir, street performers or members of the Académie Française, whether the newest chic potato or the eternally chic St. Germain de Prés, whether the events of May '68 or the last presidential elections, she sees what would pass unseen -- were she not there to notice it.
In the simplest things, Mary Blume reveals the telling detail. In a piece ostensibly about cooking lessons given by two well-meaning aristocrats, she lays bare the acute French sense of class; in a deadpan explanation of the byzantine process of changing street names, she captures the Kafkaesque French bureaucracy; in looking at one beloved Left Bank bistro, she gives us the essence of every such restaurant; by describing the French art of window shopping, she gives us a reflection of how the French see themselves. Whether plumbing the nuances of their language, their rites, rules, or rituals; whether looking at the Mona Lisa or the political arena, film-makers or winemakers, the places and personalities come alive with an uncanny ring of truth.
Illustrated by Ronald Searle with the unique wit and delicacy for which he is world famous, A French Affair gives us not only a unique perspective on a time, a place, and a people, but a France that we can digest, distill, and revisit without ever leaving the comfort of home.
Auteur
Mary Blume is a columnist at the International Herald Tribune and author of Côte d'Azur: Inventing the French Riviera. Born, raised, and educated in New York City, she lives in Paris, France.
Contenu
Contents
Preface
PARIS FRANCE
When Paris Put On Its Best Dress
Men Will Be Boys
Genêt: French Rigor and American Gusto
The Friends of Mona Lisa
A Rueful Glance Ahead at New Face of Paris
The Last Old-Time Soup Kitchen in Paris
A Struggle for the Soul of a Paris Restaurant
Paris in a Bottle: A Wine Grower's Dream
Animating Paris, City Hall Style
Cooking Classes by Princess and Countess
Potato of Snobs, Dainty and Newly Chic, Captivates Paris
Daniel Cohn-Bendit: Ten Years After the Events of May
Happy Memories of Gray Paris in the Fifties
Vionnet, Last of the Great Couturiers
The Fine Art of Window Shopping
Saint-Germain's Latest Brainstorm
Simone Signoret: A Memory
RITES AND RULES
Paris -- La France Profonde Comes Back to Town
Money Speaks in France
Getting Through France's Linguistic Jungle
Exemplary, Bearded Clémentine
The 2 CV: They Laughed, Then Loved It
Age-Rated French Encyclopedia on Sex
Luminous Ideas of the Concours Lépine
Assembly Line Vacations
French Pursuing the Right Number
How Long Is Long? The Meter Turns 200
The "Rustproof" Candidate for the French Presidency
Virtuosi of the People's Piano
French History: Past and Present Clash
An Election in Which the Scofflaw Wins
1944: The Many Who Were Forgotten
Letting Loose and Holding Down
Be Careful, It's Mushroom Season Again
Monsieur le Perpetuel to the Rescue of English
Why a Leopard Cannot Change Its Spots
WORDS AND IMAGES
A Vintage Year for Duras
Simone de Beauvoir Talks, and Talks
V.S. Pritchett's Cheerful Laments
Elisabeth Lutyens: "A Dog Barks and a Composer Composes"
Erich Salomon's Eye on Clever Hopes
Keeping Berlin Berlinisch
"Love Ya": Voznesensky and His Collages
Brassaï, Among Friends
Robert Doisneau's "Little Scraps of Time"
Photographer Don McCullin: "The Dark Side of a Lifetime"
Christo in Search of a Perfect Umbrella
Peter Brook: "One Has to Do Everything as Lightly as Possible"
Robert Morley Has Just Had Fun
Before "Paradise" and After -- Carné's Prickly Recollections
A Renoir Air of Family
François Truffaut -- Love and Children
Alain Resnais: The Rhythm of the Ear and Eye
In Raul Ruiz's Cinematic Labyrinth
Wertmuller: "I Love Chaos"
Fate, Fellini and Casanova
Ingmar Bergman: A Shadow of the Future
Marcel Ophuls, Professional Memory Man
Bertrand Tavernier and the War That Never Ended
Ella Maillart at Her Journey's End
A Lost World in Paris