May 23, 2012How did French machismo compare to American machismo, as exemplified by your coworkers?
I actually don’t think there is machismo in America, unless it’s the cowboy type — the silent, smoking brooder. Machismo requires Latin blood. I’d say I never experienced machismo up close until I worked in a French office; the typical Wall Street gunner has the soul of a coffee filter in comparison.
I was invited to curate Very Short List today. Best part was getting to trumpet Drops of God, the Japanese comics about wine.
(via How To Make It As A French-Wine Fraud | VSL)
Jun 1, 2012John Cunningham Climbing Ben Nevis 1976
Jun 1, 2012The writerly path from America to Paris is so trampled at this point, what more could there be to say about the experience? Probably not much, but Mr. Baldwin’s snapshot of the 18 months he and his wife spent there while he worked at an ad agency and wrote his first novel (“You Lost Me There”) is at least taken with a high-quality, sharply focused lens. “Living in Paris while barely speaking French was like drinking coffee through a veil,” Mr. Baldwin writes. One sad expat is said to feel her loneliness “like stomach rolls, forming over who she’d been.” Mr. Baldwin also gives the pompous city he adores the ribbing it deserves. “Every Parisian man wore a scarf,” he observes. “Some even wore coats.” As with any deep connection, he recognizes Paris’s shortcomings, which makes him love it all the more.NYTimes.com May 31, 2012
So, The Paris Casino & Resort in Las Vegas: To start, it’s all in French. The door markings, the room names. More than any of the other Parises in America that I’ve visited, here tribute is paid not just in deed, but words: L’Hôtel Elevators. Les Toilettes. The bigger conference rooms are named Concorde, Rivoli, and Vendôme. The second biggest conference room is called Champagne. The third is Versailles and the staff there who I ask to pronounce it say the name in the French manner, not the Kentucky way. Everywhere are street signs to point you in the right direction for Le Business Centre, Le Champagne Slots—but they’re useful not only for assistance but assurance that the facsimile of Paris never ends. Inside and out, the hotel is coated by Franco-ectoplasm. It’s shock-and-awe decorating, sheer cultural immersion—tulle, lampposts, fleur de lis, and enamel signs. The employees are trained in French banter. French pop fills the air (I don’t recognize a single tune, it’s so French). If The Paris has one unifying aura—more pervasive than the smell of cigarettes, which can be openly smoked—it’s of Frenchness rather than French; an extravasation of Frenchness from every square inch that is both wonder-inspiring and, after only a little while, annoying. Like when your cousin Bill visits Europe for the first time and returns all-knowing, suddenly wearing an oddly tight T-shirt, saying, Listen, it’s amazing, it’s like this.
via Our French Connection - The Morning News
May 29, 2012Teddy Wayne: Interview With Rosecrans Baldwin, Author of Paris, I Love You but You're Bringing Me Down
Farrar, Straus and Giroux: Rosecrans Baldwin on Carla Bruni and Pants
May 23, 2012Third week in December, I risked my life and rented a Vélib to ride to work. Face-smacking loveliness of a day, and while I navigated around Place de la Concorde and began climbing up the Champs-Elysées, I heard a loud rushing RRRrrriiiiiipppppppp. Whence cometh hell.
It had sounded like a…
Baldwin’s portrait of his office life is funny, filmic, and shocking: a Judd Apatow film in the waiting.The Boston Globe May 21, 2012
My questions dealt largely with the broader mood. But I also asked people to name a single living French artist – 78% of respondents could not; those who did inevitably named someone dead – or to identify on whose side France fought during the American revolutionary war. In response to that question, 66% got it right, 20% had it wrong, and about 10 people asked me which American revolution I was referring to. But only once, in dozens of interviews across 11 states, did someone mention cheese and/or primates. (via US-France relations: cheeseburgers still go well with French fries | guardian.co.uk)
May 21, 2012(Source: youtube.com)
May 21, 2012The Myth of Parisian Life
May 18, 2012Americans, and especially New Yorkers, are expert at combining activities like eating, drinking coffee, and doing laundry while working at the same time. Is the image of the restful French executive, the 35-hour week, the two-hour lunch, mythical or basically true?
I think it’s mythical. The lunch hour exists, and is respected, and people do take their five weeks of vacation. But at least among the Parisians I worked with, people worked hard. Minimum nine-hour days. Passionate and dedicated about their careers. And there was a terrific sense of bonhomie in the office, of family—a core value of French identity that’s not just reserved for the home. After all, they are the second biggest European economy for a reason.
Nine Paris Apartments In Eleven Hours | The Awl
May 16, 2012The next two apartments were under construction. A fourth apartment, north of the Luxembourg Gardens on a demure, quintessential Parisian street, was all green. Green walls, green drapes, green furniture. Kitchen appliances in avocado. The only thing that wasn’t green (the doorknobs were green) was in the bedroom, behind a chair: a large trompe l’oeil painting of women’s lingerie hanging on knobs.
I will die in Paris with a rainstorm,Black Stone on a White Stone by César Vallejo : Poetry Magazine May 14, 2012
on a day I already remember
Puts a lot of French fantasies to rest—and replaces them with realities worthy of true love.Shelf Awareness May 10, 2012
