Jean-Benoit Nadeau & Julie Barlow. Sixty Million Frenchmen Can’t Be Wrong: Why We Love France But Not the French.

Silly titles notwithstanding (and no one really minds the odd Cole Porter reference), I quite enjoyed this book.

The basic premise advocated by Nadeau & Barlow is that North Americans expect the French to behave just like North Americans:

The typical traveller to Japan, China, or Africa is more open-minded than the typical traveler to France. The fascinating rites of the Chinese, Japanese, or Zulus may cause travelers considerable discomfort and inconvenience, but travelers in these countries tend to accept the obstacles stoically, reasoning (rightly) that things are just done differently in foreign cultures. For some reason, when it comes to the French, North Americans drop this reflex. (9)

After putting aside my aversion to their paternalism, I agree with their point.

What the book attempts to do is to explain to a North American audience what those differences are, and how they’ve emerged from the history, culture and territory of France. The authors do this in three sections: “Spirit,” exploring concepts like grandeur, eloquence, conceptions of private/public spheres; “Structure,” exploring the institutions, laws, and politics of France, and the development of those structures; and “Change,” exploring how France is changing and relating to the world’s increased globalization.

While the authors frequently seem pretentious, portraying themselves as amateur ethnographers, they do present a coherent—if occasionally repetitious—view of what France is like, and why it’s like that. They even manage to be funny, from time to time. While I’m (sadly) unable to comment on the veracity of their assessments, I’m sufficiently convinced by their presentation that I’m going to read a couple of other books to which they refer. The book was a good read, and what it says makes sense in light of recent events (The book refers in passing to the UN Security Council disagreements, but doesn't treat them in depth; it doesn't need to, because its explanation of the French view of how issues and relationships should be considered explains in turn the French viewpoint that so annoyed those Americans.)
I'm happy to recommend this book to others.

And wish that I could go to France. Or at least that my French was in better shape.

I believe that a work of non-fiction should have a point.

That is to say, underlying the facts presented, there is a case being argued. For a moment, let’s consider a biography—say, Peter Ackroyd’s Dickens. It’s a well-done biography. Certainly it’s comprehensive. Underlying all of the details that Ackroyd feels we need to know is an argument: that Dickens, having experienced such poverty and abominable conditions as a child, resolved not to experience such conditions again, and resolved to work to better the lives of those around him. Hiccoughs of life, unexpected difficulties, and wilful straying because of lust & other temptations put aside, Ackroyd offers this lens to help us to understand Dickens’ motivations & actions, his beliefs & his ideals. I enjoy Dickens because Ackroyd makes an argument.

In a book that is not a biography—and hence not constrained largely to follow a life’s pattern from parents to upbringing to adult life to death—an argument is all the more essential. Now, I don’t read a lot of non-fiction intentionally (I seem to fall into books of that ilk, rather than selecting them). One I did read last year, because my friend Yaacov recommended it to me (and I am nothing if not catholic in the face of book recommendations), was Tom Pocklington & Alan Tupper’s No Place to Learn: Why Universities Aren't Working. I disagreed with a lot of it, and got quite irked while I was reading it (not least because the book doesn’t seem to understand the concept of flow, but oh well). I did, however, respect Pocklington & Tupper for engaging with a difficult issue, and for arguing well for their conclusions (however much I may disagree with those conclusions).

What I really do not care for is works of non-fiction whose argument is so weak that, saying it, I don’t really care to find out how the argument works. The book I finished last night, Scott Hahn’s Lord, Have Mercy: The Healing Power of Confession resides squarely in this latter category. It’s entire argument is that confession is good for you. OK, makes sense, fair ’nuff, sure, but… I was given to expect much more from it. And sometimes, just sometimes, the expectations we bring to books make sense and deserve to be part of our critique of the book.

Ignoring for a moment Hahn’s dismissive attitude toward the two non-Roman-Catholics that he cites (Luther & C.S. Lewis), the book is weak. It’s poorly argued, has no sense of cohesion whatsoever—the chapters bleed into one another without making points, or letting one see what point exists in separating the material (save for having chapter divisions every few pages, so as not to lose the attention of people who can concentrate for less time than the average gnat)—and is so full of platitudes as to leave one feeling that one has just finished consuming the most trite bit of cloying cotton candy. The book seems to be a confection designed to attract money from the faithful who buy it, leaving them unfilled.

One might—I did—expect a book about confession to have some sort of survey of the historical development of the RC sacrament of penance. After getting through a saccharine testimonial, Hahn begins such a survey with Adam & Eve (a good place to begin, to be sure)… and then lets it crash and burn, unfinished.

One might expect that such a book have a fairly careful examination of the theology underpinning confession. My advice? Spending more than two pages on that might be of use.

The book has countless other faults. The only other one which I will share is the book’s annoying habit of being trite. Mostly with its subheadings. Consider “Pact House,” “Substitute Teaching,” “Mutual Savings,” “Rite Turns,” and “Un-Bull-Leaving Israelites.” I like a good bit of humour, even in a serious work. No book, though, need resort to such overly clever bits of tripe… err, trite-ness, in an effort to convince the reader to stay with the topic.

Leave the book on the shelf. Go read Augustine’s Confessions. You’ll get the important stuff out of it, too, and at least you might enjoy the read.

I need to learn to remember my Readers’ Bill of Rights right #3: the right not to finish what I start.

<sigh>

Yesterday, 13. "Nausicaa." Today, 14. "Oxen in the Sun." Sometimes slowness happens, sometimes distractions. While I'm enjoying the book--it's time to be done.

Aha! Some good pulp, finally.

Anna Davis' Cheet is the story of a young female cab driver in London. Juggling work and five complicated lovers, Kathryn Cheet's life is a bit too complicated, even for her. The book reads like a much more interesting Bridget Jones. More importantly, this is pulp at its finest: a hint of mystery, a hint of literary pretensions [without slipping into the annoying], and some sex combine in an amusing and enjoyable quick read.

Ulysses: 12. "The Cyclops."
I'm starting to have real fun, reading this book.

10. "Wandering Rocks" and 11. "Sirens." Slight progress since Monday.
"Sirens" is gorgeous, and it actually manages to describe a musical moment or two, reasonably well.

I had felt the need for a divertissement.

I remember an English teacher in high school, who once said that "Reading is kind of like sex. Most of the time you want the serious, good stuff--relationships, or great books. But there are times when you just need to get laid, and times when you just need to read pulp."

My mom & sister are big fans of Patricia Cornwell. So Blow Fly is home from the library at the moment. I read it. It was awful. The plot was razor thin and lacked any and all cohesion. Not a mere moment seemed plausible. The characters seemed unrealistic and annoying. Why can't half-decent, popular authors learn when to call it quits? Isn't there a point at which an X amount of money is sufficient?

I mean, really. I need some better pulp.

I finished 9. "Scylla and Charybdis." It's as though I was even making progress, reading Ulysses.

Over breakfast, I finished 8. "The Lestrygonians."

I'm debating what to add to my current reading list. Charles Dickens' Our Mutual Friend, Nikolai Gogol's Dead Souls, and Marcel Proust's Swann's Way top the list (all part of the reading everything I own project). Would you like to weigh in?

Sitting Practice, by Caroline Adderson. Toronto: Thomas Allen, 2003.

There are few pleasures in the world greater than sitting quietly in the dark, and listening to Bach. Whether it’s in the pureness of the Two and Three Part Inventions, the stately elegance of the Goldbergs, or the brilliance of the fugues, I get lost.

It’s the fugues that really get me. An instrument, or hand or foot at a keyboard, plays a theme. Then there’s an answer. Then another voice comes in with subject and answer, again. He changes them, a bit. Maybe we don’t get to hear all of them. Maybe he has three or four different expositions of the subject and answer going on at the same time. He weaves in other melodic and harmonic ideas that add to, but never distract from, the subject and answer. Then, finally, the subject and answer again, intensified, fraught with all we’ve been shown. That a fairly simple idea could have that much to say! That it could mean that much! I never fail to be astonished.

I finished, this evening, a book that is a fugue. A book that begins with a call to attend Ross & Iliana’s wedding, that than moves on to the story of the accident that leaves Iliana paralysed. A second section that begins with the preparations for the wedding, and then deals with the after-effects of the accident. A third section: the actual marriage, & its problems—Ross’s Buddhism, their new life, Iliana’s affair, their rapprochement. The end. Having read it, you are able to trace the subject, love, and its answer of being worth it. While reading it, held spellbound by the variations—the contrasted love of parents for children, of brothers for sisters, of neighbours for each other; the food, and descriptions thereof, that make the mouth salivate for enjoyment; the terrible complexities inherent in communications, in expectations—yet always listening for the return of the theme, and it’s answer.
Caroline Adderson is not indulging in some post-modern trick in revealing only sections to us at a time; she is sharing with us a verbal fugue. She tells her story, in what is obvious at the end, the only way that the story can be told well. Each moment reaches simultaneously backward and forward; her fugue seeks to exist long after the last note dies down.

It is not a perfect book. Iliana is never as fully real to me as I wish she was, and there’s far too much of Ross. The balance feels ever so slightly off kilter. Vancouver is idealized, and never gets described when it should be; for all that the city tries to be a character in the novel, it is, in the end, only a place that could be interchanged for any other slightly trendy city.

Yet, despite these (and a few other, minor problems), this book is deeply wonderful. Adderson writes smoothly, realistically, and with no end of love for her people and their plights. The book's characters are alive, and there were for me far fewer moments when I was reading a story than there were moments when I wanted to smack people around, get them to think straight, to talk straight, to act straight. For me, that’s always the first sign of a good book. The second is like unto the first: I was sad when it ended. I’ll have to reread it before returning it to the library. It’s one that will need to be added to my shelves.

It’s a book that you should go read.