France's other "New Year"

 

It’s “la rentrée” in France, the time of year when important things happen. Not only do students begin a new school year; new movies, books, music, art, fashion, and ideas flood the national scene. September is an exciting time in France. After the summer torpor that brings the nation almost to a halt, life moves into high gear and it takes stamina to keep up. In my modest way, I’ve been trying, jotting down the titles of new books, new movies, concerts, exhibits…

In Paris, the threat of covid is not behind us. We wear masks inside public buildings and in public transportation. To go to the movies or dine out, we are required to show our “sanitary passport” issued by the government. These sanitary-identity checks make Parisians bristle each time they sit down in their favorite café. Yet, how good it feels to reconnect with old habits: people-watching, browsing in bookstores, going to museums and concerts, the pleasures that bestow wonder and excitement upon city life. 

This “rentrée” has been a new beginning for me. For the first time since the pandemic began, I returned to a museum, the Pompidou Centre, the Parisian monument that wears its infrastructure on the outside. If there are any readers who remember the 3-dimensional boardgame “Mousetrap,” then you have an idea of what this museum of modern art looks like.

In early September, I rushed there, wanting to be among the first to see one of the biggest exhibits of this “new year,” devoted to American artist Georgia O’Keefe. Here is a painter who made modern art, a European movement in the early years of the 20^th century, American. Inspired by close-ups in photography, inspired by the land, be it the dense forests and lakes of upstate New York or the deserts and mountains of New Mexico, she bent abstraction to her purposes, seeking to extract the essence of the natural world around her.

 

An independent woman, truly in the American grain, early on she determined her goal in art: to “crystallize the simplest, clearest vision of life,” a path she followed across almost a century (b.1887 – d.1986). Threatened by blindness during the final decades of her life, she turned to Pueblo pottery. In the exhibit, a sole example, a simple round vase, attests to her mastery of that art.

Soon I’ll also be returning to the opera, prompted by my admiration for a young friend—take note of this name—Tiago Lucet-Rémy, 13-years-old, who will appear in a production of Beethoven’s Fidelio at Opéra comique. This work has always been a favorite of mine, perhaps because Fidelio, the opera’s main character, is a woman disguised as a man. For love of her husband, the courageous Leonora puts on the uniform of a prison guard and enters the jail where he is unjustly incarcerated. Her goal? To set him free. Her motivation? An inner force stronger than fear.

Meanwhile, I’ve also been reading—and listening. I tune in regularly to morning radio on “France Inter.” That’s how I learned about a new book by the historian and sociologist Pierre Rosanvallon. The title is Les épreuves de la vie, which I’d translate as “the trials and challenges of life.” After listening to an interview with the author, I went out and bought the book. It has helped me to better grasp current trends in both French and American societies.

Rosanvallon sets out to demonstrate that politics is no longer an affair of interests, as it was, for example, at the beginning of the 20^th century in the coal region of northeastern Pennsylvania. That’s when UMWA President John Mitchell negotiated the 8-hour workday in the best interest of miners. In the 1960’s, Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society aimed to bring “an end to poverty and racial injustice,” and laws were passed to redistribute America’s wealth in the interest of greater equality. 

I’ll admit to being perplexed by the die-hard support of so many Americans for former president Donald Trump. He gave to the rich and took from the poor! How could anyone from the heavily taxed middle class be on the side of such a man?

Pierre Rosanvallon, in simple, clear language, opened my eyes to a striking evidence. Politics is no longer about interests as it was a century ago, nor does the promise of redistribution of wealth get out the vote. No, it’s all about values and individual grievances, and that’s how a man like Trump can unite the millionaire and the family that can barely make ends meet. They share the same values and their political opponent is the person who does not think like them.

You can negotiate interests, as you can a budget. Certainly, you can debate values, but in the polarized societies of both the United States and France, in the fractured world of cyberspace, it’s easier to “curse out” the opposing side than support your ideas with thoughtful arguments.

At the risk of offending some readers, I’d say former president Trump is a case in point. Back at the turn of the century, the man was solidly pro-choice in the explosive abortion debate. Since then, his opinion has shifted to the side of the pro-lifers. His values are similar to a lien on a property. He owes them to the side that gives him the most votes.

Just this morning, listening to France Inter, I learned of another new book. Written by Jean-Marie Guéhenno, former UN Assistant Secretary for Peacekeeping, its title is Le premier XXI ^ième siècle, which I’d translate as “the early 21^st century.”

Guéhenno fears for democracy in these contentious times, not because everyone is becoming someone else’s enemy, but because so much discord, so much fanatical clinging to values, will eventually wear us out. On social media, we embrace the like-minded with relief, seeking within virtual communities of shared values the harmony denied us when we step out into the street.

The 20^th century has been called “the American century.” Guéhenno fears the 21^st will go to the Chinese, not because China’s economic or military strength may someday dominate the world, but because its model for society will supersede that of democracy. Through the control of all aspects of life, the Chinese government strives to construct a model of state-controlled harmony.

Exhausted by our culture wars, might we simply give up, handing over our hearts and minds to whatever form of government offers us a rest, freeing us from the heavy burden of thinking for ourselves?

Georgia O’Keefe or Xi Jinping? La rentrée has given me food for thought!

 

 

Let Bygones be Bygones: Some Reflections on French Country Living

Last August, while I was still living in the country, my neighbor shouted from his kitchen window, “Retourne dans ton pays de merde.” I am not going to translate his injunction word for word. It contains one of those terms American newspapers cannot print. Let’s just say he told me to go back to where I came from.

My neighbor was what the French call “un pauvre type,” what I’d translate as “a loser,” though he’d not done so badly for himself. He’d worked as a truckdriver, piloting an 18-wheeler all over Europe till he retired. He lived in a small stone house smack up against mine, with a window that shouldn’t have been there according to French law, but was and it gave him full dominion over my life. He could see me, inside and out, and he could torment me from his rising up to his lying down with war movies and quiz shows at full volume on his TV. 

The window of my discontent

 

This man had a lady-friend. They were not married and on paper did not live together, each one having a separate residence. His lady-love lived over the local pharmacy in a big, two-storey apartment, with high, wide windows opening onto the village square, converted in the 1970’s into a macadam parking lot.

Ancient French villages ignore the grid. Their organization is closer to a labyrinth where unimaginable connections become reality. Climbing up and down stairs, groping through dark passageways, my neighbor and his lady-friend could travel between their respective lodgings without ever stepping outside. Incredible but true—it took me a while to catch on.

Like her companion, “un pauvre type,” the woman was “une pauvre fille,” but not in the same sense. She’d been born into a good bourgeois family. Both her parents had been pharmacists and that’s probably how she got her apartment. It belonged to a retired village pharmacist. If my neighbor’s lady-love was “une pauvre fille,” it’s because she was handicapped, mentally and physically.  

 

  

These two were a strange couple. She was broad-shouldered and tall and because of her physical handicap, tottered from side to side when she walked, much like Boris Karloff playing Frankenstein. He was short and though not fat, had an impressive beer belly that preceded him wherever he went. First thing in the morning, that meant a trip to the bakery and then to the village café. In the bakery, he bought an apple pastry. At the café, he washed it down with a beer. He sat at a table facing the entrance and stayed there, reading the café’s newspapers, having a couple more beers, surveying village life, till his lady-love rousted him at noon. Baguette in hand, she led him to the dinner table for a home-cooked meal.

This couple spent a lot of time watching TV, their own shows, in separate apartments. The lady-love broadcast her soap operas from her open windows to anyone passing on the square. My neighbor broadcast to me. At bedtime, the TV’s were turned off and my neighbor felt his way through the maze till he reached his lady’s bower. Yes, on paper, they lived separately but each night slept side-by-side.

At dawn my neighbor would rise and hurry back home. He turned on the TV, sat down, and waited. It was imperative that he be at his address when a home-health worker showed up to give him his daily dose of insulin. He could not be late, he could not sleep in. Otherwise, “the jig would be up,” their subterfuge exposed. The State would know they lived together and their social security benefits would be reduced accordingly. Two single people, two households, neither one benefiting from other financial support, brought in more money than a couple living under the same roof.

In the village, their arrangement was common knowledge and it raised no eyebrows. After all, nearly everyone had some little secret they were hiding from the State.

The French have a taste for petty fraud, and after living with them for years, I can understand why. We pay a lot of taxes (yet so do middle-class Americans), and it always feels good when you can hide a few euros from the taxman. This is especially true in a country where, compared to my “pays de merde,” the United States, salaries are surprisingly low. All those years I worked as a university professor, I kept quiet about mine to family and friends stateside. I was afraid they’d worry about me.

In exchange, however, social benefits are high, beginning with guaranteed state health insurance. While we work and even beyond into retirement, we pay for it, yet no one can ever take it away. This insurance removes a burden of worry well worth the price of a dozen McMansions and endless stretches of perfect green lawns. 

Healio is a site dedicated to medical news with links to medical journals.

In France, during the pandemic, there was little debate about helping businesses, renters, or those who found themselves fully or partially unemployed. Aid was quickly put into place. Though there are cracks in the system, the French still aspire to a state that protects citizens and residents alike.

In a few days, on September 2^nd, French children return to school. Based on income and the number of children, many families receive benefits to help pay for clothes and school supplies. This money is allocated not only to the poor but to many middle-class families, who are not made to carry an unreasonable tax burden, as is too often the case in the United States, where tax breaks go to the rich and super-rich.

I love my “pays de merde” in a visceral way I’ll never love France. I am grateful to France because it enables me to live a fairly stable life. Things may change, but as they stand today, a health emergency cannot wipe out my savings or put at risk the ownership of my home. Such things happen, as readers know, in the United States.

Because of people like my neighbor and his companion (she’s the one who put a lamb-skinned-covered fist through my front window in a fit of acute paranoia), I left the country village where I’d hoped to settle. I made a mistake. I didn’t fit in, but that’s OK.

On this late August day, back in the village, my neighbor is probably at the café having another beer while his lady-friend prepares the noonday meal. Frankly, that is the way things should be and I’m glad the French state is taking care of them.