Francophile

Lately I’ve found myself to be quite the phile. I just don’t like certain cultures, objects, or food groups I LOOOOOOOVE them, with lots of extra O’s for emphasis. Probably my greatest crush in the last few years has been France. Yeah, yeah - I’ve heard it all before. French people are snobby. French culture is too refined. If it weren't for us French people would be speaking German by now.....blah blah blah. I hold no such grudge against the Gauls; I love them tremendously. Hellooo, Alexandre Dumas is my great great great grandfather….wink!

Grandpappy Dumas

But in all honestly, French culture is everything I think a perfect world should be. Insanely delicious food, fashion, day-time drinking in cafes, butter…the list goes on. In the last two weeks I’ve read two novels that were pretty well drenched in all things French and I could not have been happier! Afterwards I found myself merci-ing right and left and wearing every black and white Parisian striped dress that I own. So here they are..... Reading Rainbow style!

13 Rue Therese

By Elena Mauli Shapiro

This book is quite the gem. Part history (it takes place post WW1 but with lots of references to the actual war), part French culture, part time travel mystery! There are two basic narrators. Louise Burnet is a bored, stay at home wife in 1920s Paris. She teaches music on the side to one pupil, but is constantly visiting past memories of a lost love (who was killed in The Great War) and stirring up trouble with her hot new married male neighbor. The other parts are narrated by a visiting professor at a Paris University circa 1960, who receives a box of old letters and belongings upon arrival at his new school. The box ends up being Louise’s and her story unfolds through his deductions and her memories.

I don’t know if I completely got the whole time travel thing; there was some inter-dimension stuff that I really didn’t understand but the writing was beautiful, poetic and also at times a bit…..erotic. Get ready for things to get a little steamy! The best part is that this story is partially true! Ok, regretfully not the time travel, but the author based the story around a box she received when she was a young girl. A old woman died in her apartment building (13 Rue Therese of course) and she had no family, so the tenets in the building were allowed to go through her things and take what they wanted. Her father brought home this box filled with old photos, gloves, and letters about a real Louise Burnet. So while the story itself is fictional, the artifacts shown in the book are real! A memorable read for me.

The Elegance of the Hedgehog

By Muriel Barbery

For the second weekend in a row I’ve had a case of the hangover blues. You think I would have learned at this stage of my life that too much wine = bad times. But where is the fun in that? So this past Sunday I found myself bed-ridden with severe dehydration and a headache. Since I wasn’t going anywhere fast, I took this time to read this book---in one day.

God, I loved this book. I can’t really even pin-point why; it was just really beautiful. It was translated from French, which is always interesting yet tedious for me. I constantly get distracted when I read translations because every other word I read, I think in the back of my mind if this is what the author really meant to say? Also, when I see a phrase that was not translated, I wonder why they couldn’t translate it, and it makes me feel bad about only being able to speak English. There is a lot of philosophical and existential ideas in this book, which would normally make my eyes roll back in my head, but I actually kind of liked it.

The story follows the residents of a large apartment building in Paris. The two main narrators are the concierge, a 50 something widow named Renee and Paloma, a precocious and brilliant twelve year old who lives in the building with her parents and sister. The chapters are short and alternate between these two; exploring different meaning of life themes and overall French culture. I got kind of emotional at the end too, which I don’t tend to do. This book made me glad to be alive on a day when I’m pretty sure when I woke up I had wished I was dead---Amen for that!

Revenge of the WMFUN

What: The Corrections

Who: Jonathan Franzen

Where: Borrowed from the library but was recently led to Franzen’s literary splendor through the Morning News Tournament of Books and after reading his much heralded (or despised) book of 2010, Freedom.

As far as readers go, I would consider myself pretty unbiased. I don’t read only women writers. I don’t read only mystery, romance, or classics. I don’t just read biographies or books about war, time travel, or Snookie. For me, reading is like going to The Old Country Buffet. With so many options, why would I strictly stick to just the salad bar? Or for that matter, the section with over cooked and fairly processed questionable meat products? I fill up my plate with as much as I can stand, devour it all, and then I am back for more.

While we're on the topic of questionable meat products, I’ve recently been introduced (by way of the Tournament of Books) and now have read my fair share of books about egotistical, flawed men otherwise known as WMFUN or White Male Fuck Up Novels. The tournament featured many of these books, for no specific reason, and it got me thinking. In many cases, what else are gifted male writers supposed to write about? There’s that saying familiar to anyone who has taken a creative writing class; write what you know. Well if this rings for true for Jonathan Franzen, man did this guy major in Fucked Up-ology.

I’ve seen on many a review that people consider Freedom a near sequel to The Corrections, and in many ways I would agree. The story centers on a dysfunctional Midwestern family, The Lamberts, and chronologically shifts faster than Doc Brown in a Dolorian. We get to see each of the main characters through several different parts of their life. This device works great for Franzen, as it allows the reader to see where and when each character began their path to fucked up-ness. The patriarch and who one could argue is to blame for his families utter demise, is Alfred. His wife Enid, is your typical mid-western, rose colored glasses wearer, constantly nagging her husband and children till they submit. She reminded me of George Constanza’s mother. Their three children Gary, Chip, and Denise have moved out long ago, optimistically searching for less fucked up lives in Philadelphia and New York. The novel takes the reader on a ride through each of these characters zany lives (which includes but is not limited to the following topics; cruises, bisexual love affairs, hallucinations involving feces, mind alternating drugs, a bi-sexual love triangle, student/teacher affairs, and a trip to war-torn Lithuania) and by the end you realize that The Lamberts, probably like most families out there, are way beyond correction; they are just too flawed. Yet, would anyone want a perfect family, who were not in need of corrections? Wouldn’t that be…..boring??

I try not to read too far into titles when I am reading books, but Franzen’s give clear messages on what he wants to say. Much like in Freedom, the interpretation of The Corrections is multi-layered, built over time and in detail in over 500 plus pages. He creates an interesting alternate reality full of characters that are quick as whips but with a moral compass pointing due south of asshole. While Franzen includes women in his surveys of messed up lives, it is by far his male characters who take center stage and I would largely say make the worst decisions. His cleverness is entirely entertaining but his books leave me with a hollow feeling of dread. For his fucked up characters and the fate of man-kind. “Do people really live this way?” I ask myself. But does this even matter? No one watches The Jersey Shore because they work at a lame T-shirt shop and are model citizens! Being fucked up is interesting! Fucked up is funny! My new favorite word is schadenfreude or as Herr Webster defines it, “pleasure derived from the misfortune of others.” Maybe that really explains the success of such WMFUN. It’s far more enjoyable to read about others fucked up lives, when we all know we’re probably just about as messed up as the Lambert’s in our own special way.

Grade: A minus---Another example of Franzen’s mad skills but I hate when you start seeing patterns in writing, even if it all works.

For more on WMFUN, check out this lively discourse on The Morning News.