The French Journal

Weekend with the NYT: Sarko & the Holocaust, Orpheus and Eurydice, Rivette, and the Old Boys Club, French division

Nothing like a long weekend to give you the opportunity to read stories from The New York Times:

• A Sarkozy Holocaust education strategy. M. le Président offered a plan whereby ten-year-olds at French schools will be assigned the name of a young Holocaust victim for them to learn about, an attempt to make sure the horrible event is never forgotten. The reaction has been negative, with critics saying that the tactic is too traumatic for this age group or that the president's action injects (once again) uncomfortable religious overtones into policy. Sarkozy has Jewish ancestry, although he is Catholic himself (which, with two divorces and three marriages, is an interesting place to be).
• A dance masterpiece at the Paris Opera Ballet. There's an ecstatic review of a production of Gluck's Orpheus and Eurydice at the Paris Opera Ballet, choreographed by Pina Bausch. The dance is performed with a dual cast of dancers and singers: "...the dancers look amazingly at home with (Bausch's) angular physical vocabulary and austere emotional terrain. With the magnificent musicians, they offer complete submission to their material, and to us, the sublime."
• The French Business elite. A long, fascinating story looks at the leaders of French business and their closed ranks.
• A profile of Jacques Rivette.  The release of a new film, Ne touchez pas la hache (literally, "Don't Touch the Axe," but in the U.S. it's called The Duchess of Langeais) offers a reason to profile New Wave legend Jacques Rivette.

"His films, like Céline and Julie Go Boating, La Belle Noiseuse and Va Savoir, traffic in the spectral and the ineffable. Their plots overflow with paranoid conspiracies and secret codes. The Paris of his movies is a life-size board game, a labyrinth of signs. Everything is connected, or, perhaps more alarming, nothing is. His pet themes can seem dauntingly abstract: the allure of the theater, the line between acting and being, the enigmatic process of artistic creation, the curious means by which fictions take their shapes or take on lives of their own."

Sarkozy marries Bruni (or is it "Bruni marries Sarkozy"? Whatever...)

Quelqu'un m'a dit that President Nicolas Sarkozy married "ex-model" Carla Bruni on Saturday (CNN).

"The bride wore white; she was ravishing, as usual," Francois Lebel, mayor of Paris' eighth arrondissement, or neighborhood, told Europe-1 radio. "The groom wasn't bad either."

It's the first time in the that a sitting president has married while in office.

Nic et Carla, félicitations pour votre mariage. Nous vous souhaitons à tout les deux tout le bonheur du monde!

Just an ordinary man...

While this is a French culture blog, and doesn't cover "news" as such, I'm going to switch gears briefly for two stories related to the most fascinating French person of the week: Jérôme Kerviel, who all by himself lost seven billion of Société Générale's dollars. Or is it euros? Anyway, a lot of money, and there've been rumors that more losses are in the pipeline. The NY Times profile of Kerviel suggests that he is a pleasantly handsome, nondescript guy, whose colleagues are struggling with the idea that he had the capacity to do what he's been accused of. And in a related sidebar,The Times also suggests that last Monday's panic in the French markets had as much to do with Société Générale's dumping of stocks in an attempt to minimize its losses as it did with a reaction to the American economic malaise.

You can also hie over to Charles Bremner for additional information; supposedly, Kerviel has a page on Facebook, but I couldn't find it. Most of his "friends" are dumping him faster than you can say "SocGen." However, a number of fan clubs have already sprung up.

France redux, requiring some effort

To enjoy these items, you'll need to follow the links:

• I featured a story about tours of Paris aimed at Black Americans a few weeks back; at the time, this video on The Chicago Tribune about the tours was not available. Hopefully, by the time you try it, the sound will work properly.
• The Telegraph (U.K.) has put together a travel guide to France, but it's mostly about technical matters like airlines and places to stay, and aimed at people living in Britain. However, there is a beautiful slideshow of photographs of different cities. (So click already.)
• Let us now praise Craig McGinty of This French Life for two recent posts: one, on The France Show, a massive exhibition about France that Londoners were lucky enough to have access to last weekend, and two, a bunch of links to alternative sources for news about the Hexagon (some of which are in French).

France's population in 2008

Last year, one of the most popular posts on this site was a one line news item about the number of people living in France as of January 1. My guess is this is a question that gets asked a lot. So, having learned a lesson about giving the public (and Google) what it needs and wants, here's a quote from Agence France Presse about this year's numbers:

"France's overall population -- comprising mainland France and overseas territories -- totalled 63.753 million on January 1, 2008, swelling by 400,000 since the previous year.

"But despite a high fertility rate, the French population continued to age, with over 65 year-olds making up 16.3 percent of the total, compared to 15 percent in 1994.

"French women had Europe's longest life expectancy, with a girl born in 2007 expected to live 84.4 years, and a boy 77.5 years -- a three-month increase on 2006 in both cases."

The news stories are generally highlighting the fact that in France, with the highest birthrate in Europe (1.98 per woman), more babies are born out of wedlock than to married couples.

Updates, marginalia, blog entries, technical notes, etc.

Lots of small stuff:

• Bruni/Sarkozy, wedding (and child?): That's today's rumor. Let's hope it's true, so we can get it over with and all move on. I read about the pregnancy somewhere.
• French president of Facebook (not): The French press gave "massive publicity" to a young Frenchman who was elected "President of Facebook." (The Times U.K.) The problem? It's a honorary title, with no connection to the company, and essentially meaningless.
• Bremner steal, #1 - Patrick Poivre D'Arvor: Charles Bremner has an entertaining post about Patrick Poivre D'Arvor, the most popular newsman in France. A gaggle of PPDA's staffers have written a "tell-all" book which portrays him as a major league asshole jerk.
• Bremner steal, #2 - The death of "The Death of French Culture" (with in-breeding) -- Bremner also reports that PPDA's brother, Olivier, or "OPDA," has written the official French response to Time magazine's "Death of French Culture" article of a few months back. He disagrees with the notion. (Surprise!) On the other hand, after several tries on different computers, I've yet to get the Cultures France site to load properly so I can read the response; maybe French culture isn't dead, but Cultures France ain't in good health.

(There are so many connections to ponder in this point -- Bremner to Bremner to OPDA to PPDA to Time and so on -- that it's easier to give up. Plus I'm not done cribbing from The Times (U.K.). More to come tomorrow.)

• Lumière winners - "The French Golden Globes" gave its major movie prizes to Le Scaphandre et le Papillon/The Diving Bell and the Butterfly for best French picture of 2007 and best actor (Mathieu Amalric), to Abdellatif Kechiche as best director for La Graine et le mulet/The Secret of the Grain, and Marion Cotillard as best actress for La Môme/La Vie en Rose.
• Technical note #1: The Tocqueville Connection seems to be back in business, after its URL disappeared last week.
• Technical note #2: For those of you who send me notes, I have a new e-mail address: lateboston@gmail.com.

Websites: French Books, French News

Here are two websites that you may find of interest.

First, French Book News promotes recently published French fiction and non-fiction for "anglophones." While I don't yet have a sense of how comprehensive its listings are, or what makes up the criteria for selection, it would appear to be the closest to a browse through a French book store that you'll find on the web (excluding commercial sites, of course).

Second, for those of you who have missed my daily headlines, perhaps French News for Anglophones will fill the gap. It's a new site, fairly plain, but it recaps coverage of mostly hard news stories about France in the world press, as compiled by an Australian francophile.

Paris #4: The Friendly City

U.S. media outlets have been chomping at this story. Mayor Bertrand Delanoë is encouraging Parisians to be more polite to tourists. I'll grudgingly admit that if you experience rudeness in France, Paris is probably where it'll happen. And I'll concede that Parisians don't have the finest reputation even among their fellow French. Still, I'll proclaim you will not experience rudeness as often as you may fear --  perhaps once or twice.

There's a flip side to Delanoë's effort. He's also encouraging tourists to play their part by introducing themselves, making their language skills or deficits apparent, and sampling local products. Good guests will help to create good hosts.

Trucs from the IHT/NYT: Sarkozy, oysters, hideaway, and Rue89

Here's a mash of small things from the New York Times/International Herald Tribune combo (regstration may be required):

• At last week's conference of the European Union, Sarkozy proved himself comfortable handling matters of diplomacy, particularly in a matter with the bizarre twins who lead Poland.
• Minimalist Mark Bittmann goes ga-ga in Paris at the Huîtrerie Régis -- an oyster bar - in Paris, where he is seduced away from belons by pousse en clairs.
• Meanwhile, on the other side of the country, you can stay at the "sleek" Hotel K, in Baeranthal, outside of Strasbourg; that way, you won't have to travel after you eat at the three star restaurant L'Arnsbourg, which, along with the hotel, is owned by chef Jean-Georges Klein and his wife Nicole.
• Another piece tells of Rue89, a French website that covers Sarko news which may be avoided by the mainstream outlets due to the friendships between the new president and various media barons.

One more comin' up tomorrow.

News - June 22, 2007 - Jobs gone, Satanists in Brittany, Old news about "drunken" Sarko

• 40,000 civil service jobs in France will be eliminated next year, mostly through attrition. (Expatica/AFP)
• Self-declared "Satanists" have proclaimed their responsibility for the desecration of Christian sites in Brittany. (FrenchEntree)
• Old news: A video of President Nicolas Sarkozy at the G8 summit in which he appeared drunk was a YouTube hit over the last couple of weeks. The president has since explained that he was "out of breath" and that he found the item "hilarious." (TTC/AFP) Here it is, belatedly, for a chuckle: