December 2011
4 posts
November 2011
2 posts
October 2011
3 posts
Sheikh Art: The Louvre's Proud Name Mired in Oily...
It it art? That’s what many were asking when the Louvre’s pyramid was unveiled two decades ago in the grand courtyard of the world’s greatest art museum. At first, the glass pyramid was met with scorn and derision as an affront to good taste in such a grandly historic location. Over the past two decades, however, Parisians have accommodated themselves to the now-trademark glass...
September 2011
5 posts
August 2011
8 posts
FELIX, TATI, ZARA: REMEMBERING RUE DE RENNES
Nearly every day, after an invigorating workout at my Montparnasse gym, I pull open a big green door on rue de Rennes to step into the human traffic in one of Paris’s busiest commercial streets. And every time, the first thing that comes into sight is the faded yellow-and-green façade of the Art Nouveau building directly across the road. That building today is a Zara retail store where...
July 2011
12 posts
BEL-AMI: ON THE STEPS OF THE MADELEINE
One of my favourite novels in French literature is Guy de Maupassant’s Bel-Ami. Published in 1885, the novel chronicles the spectacularly cynical social ascension of George Duroy, a would-be journalist and womanising bounder, to the loftiest circles of Parisian society. Maupassant’s unflinching insights into human nature and ambition are at once fascinating and alarming. His portrait of...
THIS IS THE END: JIM MORRISON'S FINAL DAYS
Jim Morrison died exactly forty years ago in Paris. His last day in this world was July 2 1971. He expired in the early hours of the morning of July 3rd. It’s a tribute to Morrison’s status as a pop icon that legions of his fans still, forty years later, make the pilgrimage to Paris all year round to visit his gravesite in Père Lachaise cemetery. They undoubtedly will be more...
CELINE: STIGMA OF CONTROVERSY 50 YEARS LATER
Louis-Ferdinand Céline, arguably the greatest French novelist of the last century, died fifty years ago today — on July 1 1961. While admired around the world for his 1932 masterpiece, Journey to the End of the Night, Céline remains a profoundly controversial figure in France. Consequently, there will be no official commemoration today celebrating his place in French literature. The...
June 2011
11 posts
THE HEAT IS ON: BLOWING HOT AND COLD ON FRENCH...
France has been hit with intense heat today — temperatures are soaring as high as 37 degrees Celsius in Paris, more than 40 degrees elsewhere in the country. That is more than 100 degrees Fahrenheit. It’s a scorcher today in France. On the television and radio, there are guarded warnings about a “canicule” (from the Latin canicula for “little dog”, as the...
SEX, SCANDAL & FRENCH PHILOSOPHY
Luc Ferry is not well-known outside of France — at least he wasn’t until last week when he found himself sweating uncomfortably in the hot glare of a full-blown media scandal. In France, Ferry is known as a former education minister under Jacques Chirac. He is a descendant of Jules Ferry, a famous 19th century French politician credited for founding the country’s secular...
YOU DON'T SAY: WORDS "FACEBOOK" AND "TWITTER" ARE...
The French are notorious for their obsession with maddening, micro-meddling rules and regulations. Anglo-Saxons who live in France, as I do, constantly struggle with the puzzling paradox in a society universally admired for its splendid “joie de vivre” — yet infamous for its oppressive bureaucratic culture of legalistic codes and decrees. The term “French...
NAME CALLING: FRENCH BUTCHERS HAVE A BEEF
French butchers have a beef. They are offended by the habit, especially in the media, of referring to genocidal monsters as “butchers”. History indeed counts many evil butchers. In France, we still have in memory the heinous crimes of Gestapo chief Klaus Barbie, who was responsible for the torture and murder of thousands during the Second World War. Barbie was known at the...
May 2011
7 posts
NO SEX PLEASE, WE'RE FRENCH: POWER & PRIVACY IN...
If there is any subject that, on the surface, reveals the well-known differences between French and Anglo-Saxon cultures, it’s the most obvious one — attitudes towards sex. Nicolas Sarkozy knew this, Dominique Strauss-Kahn did not. There is a story, perhaps apocryphal, about a conversation between Sarkozy and Strauss-Kahn just before the latter moved to Washington DC to take up his...
FRENCH INCIVILITIES: QUEUE-JUMPING AS NATIONAL...
The other day while queuing in line at my local grocery store on rue Saint-Dominique, I suddenly felt a familiar sensation — a vague emotion of mild disbelief that quickly hardened into bristling ambivalence. My basket was loaded with the usual purchases — fruit, tomatoes, morning cereal, designer soups (asparagus, wild mushroom), ground coffee, milk, and a Camembert cheese...