I also recently pondered Marginalia and the Strange Magic of Allée Marcel Proust. It’s not about Proust himself, but about one of my favorite spots in Paris, a bench on a dirt path beside Avenue Gabriel where I spent many hours waiting for a certain someone.
November was a foggy month. It reminded me of this:
“The house was very quiet, and the fog—we are in November now—pressed against the windows like an excluded ghost.” ? E.M. Forster, Howards End
Michelle
Walking in Paris – Park Monceau to Batignolles, a Beautiful Goodbye
During our final week in Paris at the end of October 2020, I ventured out for one last walk to Batignolles. Although traffic had returned to the boulevards, the city still felt deserted. Travel from the United States to the EU was still restricted, so the only Americans in town were expats like us. We had lived the first eight months of the pandemic in the City of Light. I had stirrings of affection for Paris I’d never felt before the pandemic. We’d all been in this together for such a long time. Now, when I saw the clerk at the Franprix or the machine-gun toting gendarmes along Avenue Gabriel, our “bonjours” held more warmth, our nods more familiarity.
On that quiet autumn Tuesday I set out from our home in the 8th arrondissement under a gray sky, walking the block and a half along Rue Rembrandt to Parc Monceau. The park had been my oasis in the center of the urban storm, green and vibrant in a city of browns and grays. On countless days, I had escaped our apartment and the book I didn’t feel like writing to walk through the park and order a crepe from the snack stand beside the carousel.
Parc Monceau crepe stand
That Tuesday I skipped the crepe, as I had one thing on my mind: coffee. I exited the park, veered right on Ave. Georges Berger, and crossed Malsherbes, where Berger becomes Rue Legendre. The light caught me at the corner of Legendre and Toqueville, in front of the old brick house on the corner (19 Rue Legendre), so out of place among the whitewashed buildings.
I crossed the busy Rue de Rome, where ugly modern apartment buildings tower over the train tracks. The first time we walked this route, the day after our arrival in Paris, we were searching for our nephew Jack’s favorite restaurant, Crepe Couer. We didn’t yet know that everything closes in Paris in August, and the few things that don’t close for the entire month do close on Sunday.
By the time we reached Batignolles in the 107 degree heat, our son was hangry, and I was regretting the move from Northern California, where beaches are always a few minutes away and the fog keeps a lid on the heat. Crepe Couer was closed. The only open restaurant we could find, Brutus, had a line out the door. Once seated, we sweated and waited and sweated some more, thirsty and out of sorts. Eventually the crepes came, and so did the cider (though not the water, as we didn’t yet know you must request un carafe d’eu if you want water with your meal). It was delicious, and forever after Brutus was our favorite crepe place in Paris.
If you’ve spent any time reading memoirs about France, you might have noticed that these books tend to fall into one of the following categories:
I quit/lost my job/boyfriend/wife and moved to Paris and fell in love.
I quit/lost my job/boyfriend/wife and moved to Paris and learned to cook.
I quit/lost my job/boyfriend/wife and moved to the French countryside and renovated a farmhouse.
I met a Frenchman/Frenchwoman and moved to Paris and raised a child.
This is not that kind of story.
No one in my family quit a job. I’m still pretty hooked on the guy who caught my eye 24 years ago, and he is a Californian to the core. Having spent the past 19 years in the Bay Area, I’ve become a Californian too, although not the kind of Californian who grows her own herbs and knows her way around the Chez Panisse Cafe Cookbook. I don’t expect to suddenly become a great cook, or even a very passionate one. I am so not DIY, and I won’t be renovating anything. Which is good, because at the apartment we’re moving into, we aren’t allowed to so much as paint a wall.
We are not running from anything; there is nothing to escape. We love Northern California. We love our friends, we love being so close to my husband’s parents and siblings and large extended family, and to my sisters family. We love our neighborhood. We love our sweeping canyon views and the zen-like calm of our comfortable house, which is in many ways our dream home. We are not really seeking new adventures, although we embrace adventures as they present themselves. We are not trying to slow the pace of life; the pace of life in Paris will, in fact, have far more in common with the rat race we lived in New York City many years ago. We are not, in any way, seeking greener pastures. The canyon on which we live is, indeed, very green.
No, we are escaping nothing, and adventure is not exactly on our radar. We are creatures of habit. When we were younger, we traveled a lot. Now, we both travel overseas for work and we take a family vacation out of the country about once a year, so we still enjoy travel, but not with the same fervor we once did.
We have aged out of discomfort. Had aged out of discomfort, I should say. We are now diving headfirst right back into it.
So what kind of story is it? Is it a romance?
A comedy?
A farce?
A grand adventure story?
A story of mishaps and misadventures coupled with discoveries of both the culinary and artistic variety?
Is it a story about how someone who does not do big cities well suddenly becomes a lover of big cities?
Is it a story about language? About culture? About wine?
About escaping this particular place on earth at exactly the right moment?
About getting lost on the metro?
About new friends and new neighbors and a tiny kitchen overlooking a courtyard?
Is it about learning to speak in code when nothing one says is truly private?
Is it a story about traffic?
Is it a story about cheese?
(Probably oui to both traffic and cheese).
Is it a story about rain? (My husband says it rains every time he’s in Paris, which will be a nice change in weather, until we are soggy and cold and wishing for our dry California heat).
Is it a story about navigating French bureaucracy and discovering French beaches?
Is it a story about appliances (it is rumored that the washing machines and dishwashers in France require vast quantities of tenderness and patience)?
Here are a few of my favorite books about French language, culture, and history. I started reading books about France before I moved to Paris in 2018. There are loads of books about Paris, many of them memoirs about restoring a country house or eating one’s way through France or finding love in Paris, not to mention the huge genre of World War 2 books set in France. These aren’t those kinds of books.
These 5 books to read before you visit France will help you understand the culture, codes of behavior, and French ways of thinking. They’ll help you be a better and more respectful tourist or expat, and they’ll help you to understand why that infamous French rudeness is really just a stereotype based on the bad behavior of visitors, not the French themselves!
We’ll get to the reviews in a minute. But first, here are my recommendations for books to read before you visit France, based on your mood or what you hope to accomplish:
If you’re in the mood for an informative but lighthearted look at making a home in Paris, start with L’appart, by David Lebovitz.
A practical primer on what to say and when to say it, The Bonjour Effect should be required reading for American expats in France. You can’t play the game of life in France if you don’t know the code. Read this book with a highlighter in hand, and commit its “rules” to memory. The Bonjour Effect goes far beyond casual French conversation, delving into the driving forces behind French language, culture, and behaviors. You’ll learn why language purism is increasingly regarded as right wing, and why the French government so vehemently defends the separation between church and state. Informative, entertaining, and indispensable.
A comprehensive history of France featuring a fascinating cast of characters, all written in the “definite assurance of style” (Library Journal) for which prolific historian John Julius Norwich is known. Learn something! “The major achievement of this book is the very fact that Norwich takes each of the four rulers to be a piece of the same story . . . written with often humming literary verve.” ?New York Times Book Review
As charming as it is informative, L’appartoffers a chef’s eye view of the beauty and bureaucratic madness that is France.
After moving from San Francisco to Paris, Lebovitz spent a decade living in a tiny top-floor flat with a magnificent view of the City of Light. When he finally decided to buy his own place, he had no idea what he was in for. In this fresh, funny memoir, sprinkled with insider knowledge about Paris life (sales only happen twice a year, for example, and baguettes always come wrapped in tiny paper “because excess is ground upon in France”), Lebovitz chronicles his attempt to buy and remodel a Paris apartment amidst miles of red tape and misunderstandings. Each chapter ends with a recipe, which, for the culinarily untalented among us, may prove as daunting as dealing with the Parisian real estate agents and electricians. Even if you can’t imagine pulling off a pain perdu caramelise, you’ll be happy to learn that pain perdu got its name because it “takes lost (perdu) bread and turns it around, making it something marvelous.”
Leibovitz’s love of his adopted city, as well as his passion for the bounty of the Parisian marche, comes through loud and clear. An utter delight.
A light-hearted look at part-time expat life in a French village. While the narrator’s voice may at times remind you of a creepy uncle, you can learn a few things about how to get long with the locals.
Don’t let the title and the silly cover deter you. La Seduction is a highly informative examination of French culture from the perspective of the former Paris bureau chief for The New York Times. In this thoroughly researched book, Sciolino dives deep into French history to explain how and why seduction is as much an intellectual pursuit as a carnal one. From food to fragrance to politics, Sciolino argues, seduction is deeply ingrained in the French way of looking at the world. Although the narrative at times feels forced to meet the theme, there is much to learn from Sciolino’s interviews with politicians, executives, farmers, perfumiers, fashion icons, and chefs.
A hilarious look at trying to navigate life in France, literally and figuratively. Worth buying the book just for the story of the roundabout, the car accident, and the strangely accommodating car rental agency.
How the French Saved America is of particular interest to me, as I grew up in the coastal Alabama city of Mobile, which has a longstanding love affair with the Marquis de la Lafayette and which was founded in 1702 by two French-Canadian brothers, Pierre le Moyne d’Iberville and Jean-Baptiste le Moyne, and which served as the capital of the French Louisiana territory until 1720.
For further reading:
This is part of my 5 Things series. Read more Five Things posts.
Read my post about walking in Paris in the first year of the pandemic, after the end of lockdown.
