French & American menus

[Steve Klc]

Yes, Bux we now have 5 threads at least on 3 different boards that in one way or another touch on Gopnik and the decline of the significance of French cuisine--if we only could take all the posts that are really addressing the same theme and compile them, we'd be much better off.  I actually repeated Robert Brown's observations from above on one of those other threads because I thought it was a good point--as he had weighed in on this in the past--only to find him making the point here.

I had suggested Gopnik's one chapter--on cuisine--to be our starting point.

[Steve Plotnicki]

Magnolia & Bux-Gee all the things you wrote are pretty much correct. And even more so if one realizes that these are merely subjective critiques of the book. And therein lies the difference between Bux's take on the food chapter and mine. And Maggie is correct to state that Gopnik is just one more writer in a long list of writers who have moved to Paris to try and get an inside handle on what French life really is and what makes it tick. But what the book is about, if I recall correctly, Gopnik says at the beggining of the book. Not having it in front of me, I recall him saying that he was tired of New York. Even though New York City was the center of the democratic world, the place where democratic principals had the biggest positive impact on society, he was tired of the hustle and bustle of it all. And he went to Paris because not only did he have a lifelong love for the place, but it is the predecessor of New York as the world leader of a society based on similar principals.

The essays in the books are all a comparative analysis of what life is like in Paris compared to what it is like in NYC from that vantage point. And it delves into why each place has decided to live in the manner that they live in. How they each got to their own conclusion so to speak. But Maggie, what makes Gopnik different than any other writer who moved to Paris to write of the life there, is that he is the first one to take on the topic of its decline, in the midst of the decline occuring. And if you read through the book, every essay has at least one major instance of the French getting it wrong. From their being behind the curve on exercising, to their slowness in bringing computer equipment into the school system, to their continued insistance that they are the best arbiters of deciding artistic quality like the best films when their own film industry is on the balls of its ass. I mean the book is filled with examples of how the French do foolish things. Does anyone really disagree with that?

But again it is all written within the context of how he loves it there in spite of the mishegas the French insist on. And you know what, I feel the same way about it which is why I loved the book.

[Bux]

But again it is all written within the context of how he loves it there in spite of the mishegas the French insist on. And you know what, I feel the same way about it which is why I loved the book.

And presumably it's also why I loved the book. It's also possibly why I put up with your posts (and maybe vice versa).  

But even towards the end, he doesn't always get what the French are about. Even as he forms friendships and alliances, he can be slow to understand. I think the Balzar staff revolt is a wonderful episode and display of this. That Gopnik can write about his miscues as well as he does makes the book enjoyable and worth reading. In some ways it's more universal than just about Paris in relation to NY or to its decline or even the decline of French culture as a world influence.