About Haiti: L' énigme du retour, by Dany Laferriere

These days –but hasn’t it always been like that? [1]-, when you get news about Haiti, it is always bad news: political unrest, hunger riots, gang violence... Then the earthquake, then the international help so disorganized that almost a year after the earthquake most of the population of Port-au Prince is still living into one of these tent slums…then the cholera and again, political instability. A doomed place, a living hell, that’s what Haiti looks like these days from the outside.

And yet, what a great nation: Maroons [2]Haitians led riots and battles against French soldiers and finally won their independence in 1804; the first independant Black-led country; then, they fought again against the French and Spanish that tried to submit the young nation. Its first Haitians rulers like Dessalines tried to build a democratic and egalitarian society.

Haiti has also a rich literary history, both in poetry and fiction; authors like Jacques Roumain in his Gouverneurs de la rosée (1944) have given voice to the people of Haiti, exposing the injustices and cruelties of their society. And because of the long reign[3] of the Duvaliers father and son, many Haitians intellectuals were forced to leave the country and build a new life in France, Quebec, or in the U.S, creating a literature of the diaspora.

Dany Laferriere is one of these intellectuals forced to live in exile (since 1976). Laferriere lives in Montreal and shares his time between writing articles for local newspapers, writing books and now directing movies. He became famous in the literary world in 1985 with his first provocative novel entitled Comment faire l’amour avec un nègre sans se fatiguer (how to make love with a nigger without getting tired) in which he was exploring the relationships between Whites and Blacks in Montreal and the way they dealt with sexuality. After this one he published more novels, some as provocative as his first one, some reflecting on the questions of identity and exile (themes also present in its first novel). 

For some reason, I wasn’t really attracted to his writing (I had this image of a show-off kind of writer, the kind that would exploit trendy topics and styles to become famous) until he published in 2009 L’énigme du retour[4]. Here, I have to say that I certainly behaved as the snobbish French I tend to be more than often since it is the fact that this particular book received the prix Medicis[5] that made me change my mind about its writing. If it had received the Medicis, it certainly had something more interesting in it than des parties de jambes en l’air [6]between Blacks and Whites[7]!

And indeed, it has. The novel is rooted in the Haitian experience of exile, loss of one’s self, guilt of having left, of not doing enough for those still living there…As a kind of exilée, I was particularly moved by some of Laferriere’s reflections on exile, like the following passage, where the ancient opposition between nomads and sedentary people appear to be still very alive and true:

                “En fait, la veritable opposition n’est pas

                entre les pays, si differents soient-ils,

                mais entre ceux qui ont l’habitude

                de vivre sous d’autres latitudes

                (meme dans une condition d’infériorité)

                Et ceux qui n’ont jamais fait face

                à une culture autre que la leur.

               

Seul le voyage sans billet de retour

peut nous sauver de la famille, du sang

et de l’esprit de clocher. »[8]

As you can see from  this excerpt, Laferriere has used a poetical prose to tell about his loss ; for those of you familiar with the French Martiniquais writer Aime Césaire, it certainly reminds you of his masterpiece Cahier d’un retour au pays natal (1943), entirely written in a poetical prose very influenced by  Surrealism[9].  The topic is also similar, since Césaire was describing the conflicting feelings of a Martiniquais young man going back to his island after having studied in Paris. In Césaire’s poetry, the topics of alienation and anger against the White oppressor were mixed with an ode to his own Creole culture, as if the exile had made him aware of the beauty and richness of his island and its people.

So, Laferriere’s style is not unique but it is still a powerful device to move his readers and tell his story.

Because a story it is: the narration is mostly linear, with some reminiscences from childhood or other past times.  The narrator- the author’s literary twin- is awaken in his sleep by a phone call from a hospital in the Bronx letting him know that his estranged father has just died. Then the literal and psychological journey of the narrator begins; first, he drives to a remote place in Quebec, to try to see one of his friends; then he takes the train to New-York to see to his father’s funerals and then, finally, he feels the urge to go back to Haiti and to his father’s native village. En route, he meets with some of his father’s old friends, then his mother, sister and young nephew still living in Port-au Prince and also with some Voodoo powerful spirits.

One of the main strings of the novel is the son’s attempt to reconcile with the figure of his estranged father: we don’t learn much about him, only bits and pieces that give us the portrait of an intellectual who fled Duvalier’s dictatorship, living behind him a wife and children who barely knew him. Then, living in New-York, he seems to have turned into a kind of hermit, even refusing to meet his adult son. And yet his friends speak highly of him, making it even more difficult for the narrator to come into terms with his grief and loss.

The first part of the novel is mostly self-centered, the narrator being absorbed in his anger and grief and reflections on exile; while in the second part, he opens up to the Haitian reality, reconnecting with his native land. Here Laferriere’s poetical prose beautifully and painfully describes the Haitian’s hardships , like in the pages where Laferriere sees every morning, from the window of his hotel room, in the slum perched on the hill facing his room, a very young girl, always the first awaken, setting up the fire for the first meal of the day. This young girl, modern Sisyphus condemned to a life of poverty and violence with not much of a prospect, where is she now? Did she survive the earthquake?

Here is one of Laferriere’s talents in this book: making his characters very alive but without the heaviness of social realism. On the contrary, his poetical prose enables him to draw his characters and the places he visits, in a kind of Impressionist way: with small strokes of ink, of words:

                “La nuque fragile

                des jeunes femmes

                contraste avec

                leurs mains calleuses.

                C’est toujours la main

    qui révèle nos origines sociales »[10]

Or this, when he is in the Haitian countryside:

« La démarche indolente

d’une vache

à  sa promenade du soir.

La nuit devient

chagallienne. »[11]

Day after day, the narrator seems to “reroot” himself to his country, its pace and traditions. To the point that he finally reaches the end of his physical and spiritual journey.

L’enigme du retour  is an essential reading for anyone who wants to understand the Haitian people whether in Diaspora or in Haiti. That is the splendor of literature: it drags you into someone else’s existence as no non-fiction book or documentary will ever be able to do.

[1] Since its independance bravely fought for by Maroons slaves, it seems that Haiti has rarely had the chance to rest from either natural disaster or man-made disasters (dictatures, repressions, corruption, poverty…)

[2] Escaped slaves.

[3] From 1957 to 1986. Papa Doc and Baby Doc ruled as dictators, having their militia (les tontons macoutes) killing about 30.000 people.

[4] “The return: an enigma.”

[5] One of the most important French literary prizes.

[6] Saying for: having sex, literally: legs up games…

[7] And having  experienced  them myself during my student life, I didn't feel the need to read about it, there wasn’t anything “exotic” about it anymore…

[8] “In fact, the true opposition is not

       between countries, as different as they can be,

       but between those who are used

       to live under other latitudes

       (even in an inferior [social] condition)

       and those who have never have to face

       a culture other than theirs.

       Only a journey without a return ticket

       can save us from family, blood

       and  parochialism”.

[9] It is Andre Breton himself, while waiting in Martinique for a ship to take him to New-York –where he lived until the end of WII- that “discovered” Aime Cesaire’s work and helped him get published later in Paris.

[10] “The fragile nape

          of young women

          contrasts with

          their callous hands.

           It is always the hand

          that reveals our social origin”

[11] The indolent gait

          of a cow

          during her evening stroll.

           The night is becoming

           Chagall-like”

---

La Vie devant soi (Life before us) by Romain Gary.

Here is the incipit of the novel:

"La première chose que je peux vous dire c'est qu'on habitait au sixième à pied et que pour Madame Rosa, avec tous ces kilos qu'elle portait sur elle et seulement deux jambes, c'était une vraie source de vie quotidienne, avec tous les soucis et les peines. Elle nous le rappelait chaque fois qu'elle ne se plaignait pas d'autre part, car elle était également juive. Sa santé n'était pas bonne non plus et je peux vous dire aussi dès le début que c'était une femme qui aurait mérité un ascenseur."

The first thing I can tell you is that we lived on the sixth floor and that, for Madame Rosa, with all the pounds she was carrying around and only two legs, it was a real source of daily life, with all its worries and sorrows. She would remind us of that each time she wasn't complaining otherwise, because she was also Jewish. Her health wasn't good either and I can also tell you right away that she was a woman who would have deserved an elevator.

As you may have already guessed, Romain Gary (and under his aka name of Emile Ajar) is one of my favorite writers. Romain Gary deeply moves me as few other writers do: chez Gary, you encounter a fragile blend of ever burning indignation against injustice, ignorance, racism, stupidity; a ferocious irony against himself and most of the humanity, an explosive combination of hope and despair that give us some of the most beautiful pages of French literature.  

Gary liked to tell the story of a chameleon: you put it on a red blanket, he turns red; on a green blanket, he turns green; on a blue blanket, he turns blue; on a plaid, he explodes. Romain Gary is a lot like the chameleon of his story. Born to a Jewish single mom in Vilnius, he already had experienced several lives before arriving to Nice in 1928 (he is then 14): his real one, the one of a Jewish little boy raised by a single mom in a very anti-Semitic environment (Russia then Poland); and the many ones his mother was dreaming aloud for him: that he would become famous, as a French ambassador, or a French painter, or, even better (and safer[1]) as a French writer… His adult life would be no different: a Resistance fighter during the war (as a pilot in the RAF), a French consul in several countries (and more notably, in America, in Los Angeles), a film director and of course, at the same time, a very popular French writer. And, to this day, the only one to have won twice the Prix Goncourt; under his “true” name, first (for Les Racines du Ciel, in 1957) and then, under his alias, Emile Ajar, in 1975, for La Vie devant Soi. Five years later, he would end his chameleonic life by committing suicide.

A few nights ago, I finished reading La Vie devant Soi; I hadn’t read it again since I was in high school. For a long time, I favored La Promesse de l’Aube  and some other purely Gary pieces but La Vie devant soi is undeniably worth rereading and keeping on your bedside table. 

It is the story of two unforgettable characters, one at the beginning of his life, Momo (Mohammed), a young Arab kid, a son of a bitch (literally), that is being raised by an old Jewish lady, Madame Rosa, a former prostitute  and Auschwitz survivor, that now takes care of the children of  the Belleville neighborhood’s whores. Momo is the only narrator and you have to wait until the last page to understand to whom he is telling his story, aside from the reader. He is a street smart kid, who does his best to help Madame Rosa end her life up with dignity. But the most remarkable thing about Momo is the style Gary uses to make him talk: a very elaborate kind of literary spoken French that conveys the best of Gary/Ajar’s irony and humor and the kind of improbable French that could be spoken by an uneducated but smart and sensible kid. Momo wants to be a writer, like Victor Hugo, whom he has heard of by his old friend monsieur Hamil, a retired rug seller who tries to teach him a bit of religion but very often confuses the Koran with Les Miserables! And, most of all, he is in need of affection, of love. In this, he is typical of Ajar's/Gary's characters who all are desperately in need of affection, tenderness; like the main character of the novel Gros-Calin, Michel Cousin, who rescued a python and keeps it in his Parisian flat as his pet, for he needs some "human contact"...

As for Madame Rosa, she is probably one of the most touching and beautiful characters of the French literature. If the novel is a kind of coming of age for Momo, it is also a novel about elderliness, decrepitude, loneliness, death. And Gary depicts it all in both an intimate and crude way: Gary doesn't spare his readers with the physical decrepitude (we see Momo and Madame Lola cleaning Madame Rosa, dressing her up, changing her sheets...), but at the same time, because we see it all through the eyes of Momo - for whom the elderly lady is certainly an adoptive mother-, Madame Rosa, in her already lost battle against death, always manages to keep her dignity and her actions, which, otherwise, could be seen as pathetic, show on the contrary a sort of grandeur d'ame, retain some of this resistance spirit that was so important to Gary: like in the scene in which she gets dressed in her whore's clothes that do not fit her anymore (she has become obese), puts make-up, takes her purse and starts pacing up and down in her room as if she was still on the sidewalk (2).
The only desire that Madame Rosa has left is to die with dignity, thus not being sent to an hospital where she would be at the mercy of doctors who would force her to live a life of a "vegetable".Therefore, she asks Momo to help her die in what she calls her "trou juif" ("Jewish hole"), as she calls her cellar that she has transformed into a hiding place, because, as she puts it at the beginning of the novel, "depuis que je suis sortie d'Auschwitz, il ne m'est arrive que des malheurs" (since I left Auschwitz, I only had bad luck")... She goes down to her refuge from time to time, when she loses her mind and thinks that the French police can still show up at her door and take her to the Vel d'Hiv to send her to the German "foyers".
Here is another aspect of La Vie devant Soi worth noticing: Gary, through Momo's voice, gives a crude and caustic version of History. Here is how Momo tries to sum up the Shoah:

Madame Rosa, quand elle avait toute sa tete, m'avait souvent parle comment monsieur Hitler avait fait un Israel juif en Allemagne pour leur donner un foyer et comment ils ont tous ete accueillis dans ce foyer sauf les dents, les os, les vetements et les souliers en bon etat a cause du gaspillage"

"madame Rosa, when she has all her mind, would often tell me how mister Hitler had made a Jewish Israel in Germany to give them a "foyer" ["foyer" in French means both "home" and "fireplace"...] and how they all had been welcome in this foyer except for the teeth, bones, clothes and shoes in good shape for fear of wasting"

We also find in this novel Gary's love for the outsiders, people broken or so different that they can't fit anywhere but in the neighborhood of Belleville, mostly populated by Arabs, Africans, Jews. Colorful characters inhabit the novel, like Madame Lola, a former Senegalese wrestler turned into a drag queen with a big heart; or Monsieur N'da Amedee, an illiterate pimp who asks madame Rosa to write his letters to his family back in Cameroon; letters in which he says he is studying civil engineering... The Belleville neighborhood created by Gary is hardly realistic, it is more a contemporary and Parisian version of the shtetl from the yiddish folkstales. The other Parisians,  the "French", only appear later on in the novel and I won't say anything about it since I don't want to spoil the end for those who haven't read it yet.


When the novel was published in 1975, almost nobody had a clue that Gary was its true author. Most of the critics believed the fable that Gary had imagined: that Emile Ajar was his nephew's pseudonym and that yes, the young writer was indeed very talented. The very few among the critics that felt something was wrong were tempted to attribute the novel to Raymond Queneau, but nobody thought of Romain Gary as the true writer. Even when the novel was awarded the prix Goncourt, he continued the farce and his nephew, although reluctantly, kept pretending to be Emile Ajar. It is only after his suicide that the fraud was revealed in a posthumous text: Vie et mort d'Emile Ajar (life and death of emile Ajar), in which Gary tells the whole story.
It seems hard, now, when looking back, to not be stricken by the similitude in the style and topics between the novels signed Gary and those signed Ajar (4 novels: Gros-calin, La vie devant soi, l'angoisse du roi Salomon, Pseudo); of course there are differences but the soul is the same; it is the same disillusioned irony, the same love for the humanity and the same rage, anger at her endurable ability to self-destruction. 
 Through the mask of Emile Ajar, Gary reinvents himself one last time as a young and promising writer (he is 61 when La Vie devant soi is published); may be as an attempt to escape his own dibbuks.

---

[1] Gary writes in his romanced autobiography La Promesse de l’Aube that, although he seemed to be a gifted young painter, her mother had him quit completely this art when she learnt about Van Gogh…
(2) "Je vous jure que Madame Rosa a poil, avec des bottes de cuir et des culottes noires en dentelle autour du cou, parce qu'elle s'etait trompee de cote [...]je vous jure que c'est quelque chose qu'on peut pas voir ailleurs [...]." (I swear that seeing Mrs Rosa naked, with her leather boots and some black underwear around the neck because she got confused, I swear it is something you can't see anywhere else)

Happy Thanskgiving, Sitting Bull!

Ok, I get the whole picture, Thanksgiving is about reuniting as a family, sharing a good meal with parents, siblings, aunts, uncles, cousins, friends, watching football...and finding great deals on Black Friday.
And yes, I know, it is also about being thankful for something. Like the Pilgrims, who, because they were grateful for not having been slaughtered by their savage neighbors, and for having been fed a whole winter by them,  actually invited and treated them to a free meal - one thing very close to total bliss in contemporary America-!!
Yes, Sitting Bull, I know, it sounds unbelievable and yet, it happened. In 1621, in Plymouth, very far from where you lived and before your time, anyway. So, here they are, the lucky "Indians", arriving in the colonists' hamlet, not sure that they would eat anything edible -I don't blame them- but too polite anyway to say anything like that. They seat -on benches or on the ground?-. Do they mingle with the colonists? Do men and women eat together? Do they toast? Does the colonist-in-chief make a speech for them? In Wampanoag or is it translated by a native American who would understand some English? Do they really eat Turkey with cranberry sauce? And some pumpkin pie for dessert?
And after, well, after, I guess they all went back to their cabins and huts and did it...

 I meant AFTER?

After, that's the part I still don't understand. How can you be thankful one day to your neighbor for having fed you and the next day, just decide that you had had enough with his peace calumet and savage dances and ugly face-painting and praise of nature and all that crap and just go on your little business and "kill them all"?!

How come during Thanksgiving people always remember to be thankful to a bunch of do-good Indians that saved the first colonists from starvation but are completely oblivious to the fate of thousands of other Native Americans Indians who were slaughtered, raped, deported, parked, whose children were taken from them, forced to become good Americans by living far away from their parents in prison-type boarding schools, forced to cut their hair, wear White-man clothes, speak English, pray to Christ and so forth?
How come at Thanksgiving nobody ever seems to remember to apologize for all the crimes committed by the colonists and pioneers after the first Thanksgiving meal?  

I wonder if tomorrow, in their reservations, Lakotas, Navajos, Nez-perces, Apaches, Hopis, Comanches, Blackfeet, will celebrate Thanksgiving as well. If their kids would have had to dress up at school in Pilgrims' clothes with black hats and white Henri-the-fourth kind of collars like my daughter did last year.


P.S: In fact, I just learned that each year, some Native Americans from different tribes gather in Alcatraz Island to celebrate an Unthanksgiving Day (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unthanksgiving_Day) in remembrance of all their sufferings and of their occupation of this island between 1969 and 1971, when they fought for more civil rights and a fairer place in the American society.

Between here and there: mourning Britannicus.

Every émigré has to face, from time to time, moments of forlornness, of irremediable loss. To me, it usually comes by surprise, when I’m seemingly drifting smoothly in my American life; like the other night, when I was flicking through channels, trying to catch something more interesting than cops chasing bad guys, bad cooks pretending to be French chefs, arrogant TV anchors trying to convince me of their smartness and grandeur, pet behaviorists willing to teach me how to tame my dog, carpet cleaner experts eager to sell me their awesome new product…After a while, I finally grew tired of my fruitless search and retreated to the French TV5 channel, and it hit me. My “world of yesterday”, as Stephan Zweig called it, was right there on the screen, almost unchanged. The movie was called “Evil friendships” and took place in 2006 in Paris, mostly in the Quartier Latin and at La Sorbonne. The main characters were a gang of Sorbonnards, all students of French and comparative literature, all smart, beautiful and witty people, all passionate about literature and writing, all willing to become either writers or comedians. One of them, though, was a fraud: a very talented guy but too lazy to commit himself to any serious academic writing. Instead, he enjoyed manipulating other students, baffling them with his culture, trying to convince them not to write anything since it would never be worth publishing.

But it is not the plot that riveted me on my couch but the setting of this small movie: suddenly I was there again, in La Sorbonne’s old classrooms, being lectured on Montaigne, on La Fontaine, on Abelard and Heloise, on Chretien de Troyes…I was there again, in my own high school classes, later, this time my turn to lecture teenagers on the role of the writer in society, trying to instill in them the very same passion I had for literature; or I was back in the teachers’ lounge, defending Racine’s poetic against Corneille’s; vilifying Beigbeder’s latest opus or arguing with a colleague about Louis-Ferdinand Celine. Yes, my “world of yesterday” was there, on the screen, very alive: in the movie, the students were having heated discussions about literature, and one particular discussion was about the Act II, sc. 2 of Britannicus, one of the most beautiful of Racine’s tragedies. One of the characters was accusing Racine of being “cheesy” and “thick” while the other was trying to explain why he liked that tragedy and that scene in particular, so much. In this scene, Nero makes is first stage appearance; Narcisse, the traitor (since he is supposed to be Britannicus’[1] aide-de-camp but in reality serves Nero’s interests) is also there and Nero confides in him his love for his captive, Junie (Britannicus’ lover), and all his fears about his future: how to get Junie to truly love him? How to free himself from his mother’s powerful influence? How to have Rome’s citizens love him? What to do with his brother? Will he be up to this gigantic task? In fact, this scene is one my favorite among French classical theater: here we have a historical character, well-known for his later cruelties and acts of pure and simple folie (craziness)[2] but in Racine’s tragedy, he is an adolescent, conscious of his destiny but still unsure of the path to choose; he is not yet a monster but a “monster-in-progress”; a monster who loves, who doubts and, above all, wants to be loved, not yet feared. And Racine’s Alexandrines perfectly convey to the reader/spectator all this range of emotions.

Here, listen to Nero’s narration on falling in love for Junie: (the translations that follow are from myself and render only the gross idea, not Racine's poetry)

                    «  Excité d'un désir curieux,
Cette nuit je l'ai vue arriver en ces lieux,
Triste, levant au ciel ses yeux mouillés de larmes,
Qui brillaient au travers des flambeaux et des armes,
Belle, sans ornement, dans le simple appareil
D'une beauté qu'on vient d'arracher au sommeil.
[…] Quoi qu'il en soit, ravi d'une si belle vue,
J'ai voulu lui parler, et ma voix s'est perdue :
Immobile, saisi d'un long étonnement,
Je l'ai laissé passer dans son appartement.
J'ai passé dans le mien. C'est là que, solitaire,
De son image en vain j'ai voulu me distraire.
Trop présente à mes yeux je croyais lui parler ;
J'aimais jusqu'à ses pleurs que je faisais couler.
Quelquefois, mais trop tard, je lui demandais grâce :
J'employais les soupirs, et même la menace.[…] »

Excited by a curious desire,

Tonight I saw her coming into this place,

Sad, raising to the sky her eyes wet from tears,

[her eyes] that shined through the torches and the weapons,

Beautiful, without any ornament, in the simple apparel

Of a beauty that one has just snatched off sleep.

[…] Anyway, pleased by such a beautiful sight,

I wanted to talk to her, and my voice got lost:

Still, seized by a deep astonishment,

I let her go to her apartment.

I went to mine. It is there that, lonely,

From her image I wanted to distract myself [from].

Too present to my eyes I thought I was talking to her,

I loved to her tears that I made run [I’m responsible for]

Sometimes, but too late, I asked for her forgiveness;

I would use sighs, and even threats […]

It is indeed a monster’s love since he seems to love his prey’s defenseless and despair.

Or here, when he confides his powerlessness in the face of his mother’s authority:

« Eloigné de ses yeux, j'ordonne, je menace,
J'écoute vos conseils, j'ose les approuver ;
Je m'excite contre elle, et tâche à la braver :
Mais, je t'expose ici mon âme toute nue,
Sitôt que mon malheur me ramène à sa vue,
Soit que je n'ose encor démentir le pouvoir
De ces yeux où j'ai lu si longtemps mon devoir ;
Soit qu'à tant de bienfaits ma mémoire fidèle
Lui soumette en secret tout ce que je tiens d'elle.
Mais enfin mes efforts ne me servent de rien :
Mon génie étonné tremble devant le sien.
Et c'est pour m'affranchir de cette dépendance,
Que je la fuis partout, que même je l'offense,
Et que, de temps en temps, j'irrite ses ennuis,
Afin qu'elle m'évite autant que je la fuis. »

Far from her eyes, I give orders, I threaten,

I listen to your advices; I dare to approve them;

I get excited against her and try to defy her:

But, I show you here, my whole bare soul,

As soon as my misfortune bring me back to her sight,

Either that I do not yet dare to deny the power

Of those eyes where for so long I read my duty;

Either that for so many kindnesses my faithful memory

Submits her secretly all that I owe to her.

But in fact my efforts are useless,

My astonished power trembles in front of hers.

And it is to free myself from this dependence,

That I’m running away from her everywhere, that I even offend her,

And that, from time to time, I worsen her troubles,

So she would avoid me as much as I’m running away from her.

 

Many teenagers would recognize their own attempts at freeing themselves from their parents’ love in Nero’s words. It is probably one of Racine’s great talent to infuse life and realism in his Antique’s characters, so that, far from being dusty classics, his tragedies are on the contrary “larger than life”; his Nero, his Bérénice, his Phèdre, his Andromaque are not haughty characters, but sensible, complex human beings, just like us[3]. But with the inestimable advantage of talking like gods, in Alexandrines.

So, that night, alone in my couch, somewhere in the “beautiful California” of Steinbeck and London, I mourned my “world of yesterday”. Because of course, almost nobody that I know care about Britannicus (but I’m not blaming anybody here; the contrary would be astonishing) and because, more importantly to me, I realized that my kids will probably never experience, never feel the physical joy that you can feel listening to Racine’s poetry. Even if I do my best to build a bridge between them and the realm of French literature, they will most likely always be some kind of foreigners in their native language.

That was one of those moments where living here but being from there can be painful.

[1] Britannicus is Nero’s half-brother and is rival on two counts: for being their father’s real heir since Britannicus was supposed to become the emperor but Nero’s formidable mother, Agrippine, opposed the decision and put her son on the throne; and for being in loved and loved by Junie, the woman Nero wants to conquer.

[2] Remember, he kills his brother and his mother and later set Rome on fire; he also liked to race himself in the arena and to recite his own poetry in public.

[3] It is interesting, indeed, to remember that one of the constant critics Racine had to face in his time was this very one that we now consider as one of his most remarkable qualities: putting on a tragedy stage characters who, although they would still speak like the powerful and VIP people they were, would show their weaknesses and doubts. (one of the rule of the  French classical tragedy being that only noble characters should be showed: emperors, princes, kings who would all behave with grandeur. Hence it excluded the expression of personal feelings)

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Why you should read C.J Box's novels



Okay. If you judge a book by its cover, C.J Box would probably not be your most likely future recipient of the Nobel Prize of literature, except if he were to undergo a radical change, both in its writing and, may be more importantly, in its looks: come on, where is the dark, haunted, weary look so typical of your average New Yorker or European writer? And where are the usual overflowing bookshelves or the Parisian cafe crowd?!  Instead, with his black Stetson hat, tough guy goatee and a horse in the background, you would probably assume that C.J Box is more a roman de gare writer rather than a Pulitzer winner. And you would be right. Still, this is not a good enough reason why you shouldn’t read his novels. On the contrary: everybody needs to get a break now and then from the “great” literature, otherwise we would all end up behaving like a spoiled child at his friend’s birthday party, throwing a tantrum because he is unable to enjoy the cheap toy he received as a parting gift… Don’t act like a snob and try C.J Box’s novels out.

Here are a few good reasons why you should read him:

1-      The main character, Joe Pickett.

Considering the genre (thriller), he is more of an anti-hero: he is not divorced, he doesn’t have major marital issues, he doesn’t have a drinking problem, he is not violent nor does he uses slang or dirty words all the time; he isn’t a gun lover (of course he has a rifle and a gun but he doesn’t have a NRA bumper sticker on his pick-up truck); he doesn’t work for the LAPD or the NYPD or as a private eye; he is not even a former basketball star. Nope. He is just your average Wyoming State Park Ranger, married, with two (or three, depending on the novels) daughters, a yellow lab and a horse. He lives with his family in a rundown state-owned small ranch house in Saddlestring, Wyoming, He is a good husband (most of the time), a good father and a good friend too. And, he loves his job, even if the pay is hardly enough to make ends meet.

But he also has some of the expected features of a regular thriller hero: Joe is brave, steady, street- smart (or, in his case, trail-smart), uncompromising – which puts him at odds, from time to time, with his hierarchy and his political connections. And he has the rare ability to find himself right on the path of dangerous criminals of all kinds that chose the remote mountains of the Grand Teton Park to hide…

2-      The location.

 For a European, Wyoming  is  the paragon of Western exoticism: its name evokes wilderness, endless mountain ranges, horseback riding, wolves and grizzly bears…It is also rural America, where hunting is part of your life, where most people vote Republican, where foreigners like me would be spotted immediately…yes, so although it would probably be quite uncomfortable for me to live in a town like Saddlestring, I liked  a lot the background scenery of Box’s novels and the atmosphere resulting from the omnipresence of nature. I also have to say that, when it comes to nature, Box’s prose becomes almost poetical. He has some beautiful descriptions of the wilderness and of his hero’s’ close relationship to nature.

3-   The topics.

Box has a knack for choosing interesting and underused topics in crime novels: through his several books, he tackled green terrorism, Christian fundamentalism, anti-federalism, Wyoming politics and always without being Manichean. Good job, C.J.!
And, because the hero is a game warden, you'll also learn a lot about the hunting and fishing legislation in Wyoming! (ok, it might not be so relevant to you, but you'll still read some nice pages about nature and wild animals)

4-      Family life.

As I said above, Joe Pickett has a family and thus a family life. The way Box describes his hero’s family is both very realistic and quite humorous. For a guy, he has a very accurate perception of some women’s issues and of the children psychology.  His character has a very strong-will wife, Marybeth, who becomes, novel after novel , a very successful entrepreneur (and it gives Box the opportunity to reflect on some couple issues such as how to deal with the stereotype of the husband as the breadwinner); he has two daughters whom we follow from childhood into almost (so far) adulthood. The older one, Sheridan, is a lot like her father: brave, selflessness, serious and very aware of environmental and social issues. The younger one, so far, is the portrait crache of her maternal grandmother: selfish, superficial, spoiled. The mother-in-law, although quite cliche, is a funny character and Box knows how to use it when he needs to relieve the tension for awhile. The dialogues between the parents and their daughters are very realistic and any reader who is a parent will enjoy seeing the Picketts dealing with the joy and sorrow of raising children. I should also mention the character of the yellow lab-I know it sounds cheesy, but I do also have a yellow lab and Box's paper yellow lab will immediately win the heart of all the readers who own a lab-
Moreover, the familial and social background of the novels give you a good insight of the middle-class life today, in America. I really do think that critics tend to underestimate the importance of realism in crime novels. No need to read only Jonathan Franzen to learn about America today. Many crime novels also give you a fair reflection of the everyday life of the middle class.


5- The action.
You'll get plenty of it in these novels, although not the usual car chase: instead, expect snowshoes chases and horseback riding pursuits. And most of the action is assumed not only by Joe Pickett, but also by his Nemesis of a friend, the mysterious Nate Notalowski: he may be a former CIA agent turned mercenary and he is currently wanted by the FBI, which is why he is more or less always living clandestinely. The character itself is not that new: many crime novel heroes have a tough guy as a best friend without much principles doing the dirty work at their place. However, in this case, although not new, the character is an interesting one: Nate is a free-thinker, violent and sensible at the same time; he has freed himself from any social compromise and the Pickett family is almost his only contact with society (but he is also going to change, novel after novel). So, action scenes, especially when Nate gets involved, are very satisfying (especially when Nate crushes some stupid, ignorant and self-righteous guys...)

Not convinced yet? I can't say that, when reading one of the Joe Pickett's novel, I have been moved to the point I would cry or that I would keep reading again and again the sames pages because of the style of its writing (1); yet, if you like crime novels, you'll enjoy the Joe Pickett's series because it has both all the ingredients of the genre (a nice guy, some pretty deranged bad guys; humorous and touching secondary characters, lots of shooting and crushing skulls)  and also some not so common ones, and these kind of ingredients (the ones that play with the genre boundaries: the family life; the scenery; the topics) are the ones that make C.J Box novels fun (2) and interesting to read.
So, C.J, when are you done with the next one?


(1) I'm currently reading again La Vie devant Soi -The life before us- by Romain Gary/Ajar and yes, sometimes I'm so moved I cry...to be continued.


(2) I can't believe I used "fun"...such an American adjective... I should have said enjoyable, pleasant, entertaining, distracting...

"Have a nice stay"?!

I’m always puzzled when I hear a clerk wishing me to « have a nice stay ». After some years in California, it’s not the complete emptiness of this statement that still strikes me, but its true meaning.
At first, I thought that my foreignness was the reason why clerks kept wishing me to have a nice stay: indeed, my accent, my hesitations, my more-than-often-completely-at-a-loss face was enough for anybody to read as NOT AMERICAN. The most educated would recognize my accent for what it is, while others, because also of my not-so-French look (to my mother’s eternal despair: tu devrais faire un effort ma Cherie, les hommes preferent toujours les femmes elegantes!) would ponder whether my outdoorsy attire was indeed proof of my German origin or may be Russian? (they should know better: in the kingdom of clichés, Russian women are very elegant too)
So, I would thank the thoughtful clerk and try to have a nice stay. How long the pleasant stay was supposed to last, I don’t know.
But after two or three years and an improvement in my language abilities and day-today knowledge, I begun in fact to feel offended by this seemingly innocuous statement. “Have a nice stay” How could a clerk know that I was a legal alien and not a permanent resident? Was there any unconscious wish from his part of kicking me out of the country, me, the deceitful foreigner? Because, in California, when you are white and act pretty casually, look bored- a good technique to not look as a tourist- and, in my case, when you haven’t spoken yet, it is easy for people to mistake you for one of them, an American. I mean, a true American. That’s why, without making any special effort, I can easily receive a connivance stare from another white person lost in a sea of Latinos or Asian faces; sometimes, I try not to speak so as to nurture for a while that new bond, to make the other only white person at ease for the time of her purchases at Target; sometimes, I engage her in a mundane conversation because I’m in the mood for a bit of meanness: maybe she will feel betrayed and disappointed to discover that, indeed, she is the only white-American person in the queue.
To go back to my point, I couldn’t and still can’t understand why the clerk would still part from me with that “nice stay”. To add to my puzzlement, I discovered recently that some “true American” are also told to “have a nice stay”. Do clerks receive a special kind of training to make the difference between locals and, say, Floridians or Montanans? I know these people can have a different accent and weight also a bit more than the average customer at Whole Foods, Monterey, CA; but still, their skill at targeting the non-native is extraordinary. The other day, the lady who was in front of me in the queue and who didn’t speak received nonetheless a gratifying “Have a nice stay”. I listened carefully: the clerk said “stay”, not “day” as I used to think that except from me, the other customers received a “have a nice day” as a parting word. So the big question is still: why on earth do clerk wish us a nice stay? Are they all very religious people and in that case, the “stay” to which they refer, would it be our life on earth? Would they wish us to make good use of our finite existence, would they be part of a secret sect of clerks, the “philosopher clerks” whose goal on earth would be to rekindle our sense of self and to incite us to live a more meaningful existence? But one of their principles would be, as in any good religion, to only speak by charades and metaphors? Are the clerks the new bare feet prophets?

I haven’t been brave enough yet to ask any clerk if it was so. But I will. And I may try to have a nice stay. Really.

Just an arithmetic question?

Two numbers: 272; 1555.
Let’s do some math: 1555, it’s 5.71 times more than 272.
1555-255= 1283.

The good thing with mathematics is that figures don’t lie; figures don’t take side; 1555 is a far greater figure than 272. It is undeniable.

And still. Still. When you shed some humanity on these figures, they lose their stone-like immutable quality, they start to dangerously falter, stumble toward the elusive, the scurvy.

1555 days and nights of incomprehension, fear, anger, hope, depression, pain, longing, screams, tears, forlornness, and pain again and again.
272 days and nights filled with the same fear and pain.
And still. Still it seems that for the French media, despite the arithmetic, 272 is a far greater figure than 1555.

Why? Because 272 is the number of days and nights so far spent in captivity by two French journalists (Stephane Taponier and Herve Guequiere) abducted by the Taliban somewhere in Afghanistan while they were trying to do their job.
Why? Because 1555 is the number of days and nights so far spent in captivity by Gilad Shalit, (who is also a French citizen), brutally abducted by the Hamas on the Israeli side of the border between Israel and Gaza while he was trying to do his job.

So what? The French international TV, TV5 monde (whose political line well reflects the main political line of the other French TV channels) has the portrait of both journalists incrusted in its screen during each news report; the portraits of both journalists are on display on the facades of numerous French town halls; demonstrations, meetings on their favor are regularly held; TV5 monde doesn’t bother displaying Gilad’s portrait on its screen; to my knowledge, the city hall of the 16th arrondissement in Paris is the only one displaying Gilad’s portrait.

Let’s go back to TV5 monde, that covers almost on a daily basis the situation in the Middle-East: last week, Mohammed Kaci (one of the regular anchormen of the TV station) interviewed the mother of a Palestinian-French citizen (Salah Hammouri) imprisoned in Israel for having tried to commit a terrorist act. Here is what, among other things, he asked her:

" - When is the last time you saw your son?
- I saw him for the last time on September 12 [2010] since I can see him twice a month for 45 mn; the visits are supervised by the Red Cross”
- How is he treated in prison?
- They are 8 by cell; he spends his time as he can; you know, in jail, there is not much to do, so he tries to read and to study.”

Oh, that’s very sad, that the mother of a convicted terrorist can only see her son twice a month and that all he can do while doing his time is read and study! It is really worth wasting some “on air” time!

Now, I would have liked these journalists to interview Aviva Shalit and ask her the same questions:
“- Aviva Shalit, when is the last time you saw your son?
To which she would probably answer: I haven’t seen him since June 2… 2006.
- How is he treated by his captors?
To which, nobody can answer. Because for Gilad, there are no visitation day, no Red Cross supervision, no packages, no letters, no medicine to be sent to. Nobody knows how he spends his time; if he is allowed to read, to study; these preoccupations even seem completely surreal applied to Gilad; for we don’t even know if he is given any basic human right, such as seeing the light; being fed regularly; being talked to…

So what?
TV5monde, as do most of the main French medias, has just proved one more time the depth of its bias when it comes to anything related to Israel. Spending time on a terrorist, deliberately ignoring the fate of Gilad Shalit and systematically inviting biased interviewees [for the French readers, see Alain Gresh’s blog, invited last week also], that seems to be one of their major missions.

I’m not saying we shouldn’t count the days for Stephane Taponier and Herve Guequiere, but we should also, in the same measure, count them for Gilad Shalit, whose detention is as unfair and as horrible as theirs.

And yet, 1555 is a far greater figure than 272. It is undeniable.

On (American) football and the French literary prizes season

For someone coming from outer space, similarities between the U.S and France, at first sight, would probably prevail over differences: both countries are to be counted among the luckiest on earth, meaning the ones with a true –but, of course, imperfect- democracy; with a very enviable GDP, with some (angry) bike commuters; with a permanent seat at the U.N security council; with a government generally composed of fiftyish white men wearing dark-colored suits and the occasional running shorts (usually at the beginning of their term); with some record of excellence in several sports (basketball here, soccer there-did I hear someone snorting?! Wait for the next World Cup, you’ll see!); with a high literacy rate, with a compassionate health care system…(oops, almost forgot to strike this one out…)

Of course, a person from outer space with his/her incredible brain would quickly notice that we certainly don’t speak the same way and, more importantly, that we don’t eat the same way. But he /she would probably not be instantly aware of all the “petites” differences, extravagances that make our countries so deeply alien to each other. Like the one ( I have a very long list that I intend to explore in this blog) concerning the seasons. Just consider the fall season: here, in the U.S, most people get excited by the start of the new season of their beloved TV series, and more can’t wait for the start of the new (American) football season. It is almost impossible, for someone owning a TV and/or a radio, to escape any of them. Ads overflow magazines’ and newspapers’ pages. In France, people certainly do get also excited by the start of new TV shows and by the succession of strikes/demonstrations that also pertain to the fall season. But in France, the season that resonates as much as the football season here is…the literary prizes season, la rentrée littéraire. As some of you might already know, France, since it s first piece of literature written in 880 (La sequence de Sainte Eulalie, written in roman language), has always had a love affair with its literature and its authors. And still has. To the point that any celebrity (be it a politician, a TV anchorwoman, a soccer player –yes, even a soccer player-, an actor and so on…), when sufficiently connected, will publish a novel. It is the ultimate way to prove to yourself and to the world that indeed, you are someone, “ Un honnete homme”.
No wonder, then, that the season in which literary prizes are awarded is of such importance. Any respectable newspaper, magazine, TV show have to talk about it, and sometimes as early as mid-August, when about half of the population (the half that was working in July) is still perfecting its tan on the beaches of Saint-Tropez or Sainte-Maxime. Bookstores struggle to find room for both textbooks and the ton of new books being published in September: for, even an avid, glutton reader can easily be swallowed by all these new tiltles waiting to be read. Why publishing so many books at the same time? Because in October-November, the most famous literary prizes for the French-speaking world are awarded, just in time to make it to the gift-list of the holiday’s season.

And the competition is as fierce as on a football field. In fact, curiously, it looks a lot like football. Let me try to explain: there are some teams, the publishing houses; some are well-established, ruthless, jealous of their reputation, ready to crush the unexpected and truly gifted rookie writer unfortunately drafted by the rival team; rumors about this season’s shape of a famous quarterback are let out during the summer (this year, it’s Flammarion’s famous quarterback, Michel Houellebecq, whose condition has been repeatedly said to be excellent, better than ever); and of course, the literary prizes season has its Super Bowl, le Prix Goncourt (1). Normally, you can only receive it once (2), and it is a tremendous honor to be its recipient. Better than the Goncourt, in the literary world, there is only the Academie Francaise and the Nobel Prize of literature. And, for the winning publisher, it’s like winning at the lottery. So it explains why the competition is so fierce.

Bref, for almost three months, all the intellectual France, from the literary sections on high-school to the terraces of the cafe Flore are fluttering. There are the pro-Houellebecq, the pro-Amelie Nothomb (3)and the anti-; the ones that only swear by the name of that unknown genius published by that non-less unknown provincial publishing house (tu sais, mon cheri, ils publient aussi en province!)(4) Even if they also all know that sometimes, the name of the publishing house is more important than the name of the author…

However, as in a good football season, despite all prognoses, everything can still change during the last game: the jurors of the Prix Goncourt always have lunch (the French-style lunch, lasting at least two hours)(5) in Paris’ famous Drouant restaurant, where they cast their votes as many times as necessary to get a winner. Some jurors change their mind at the last minute or the expected winner is finally beaten by the unknown writer. Or sometimes, it seems that the jury wishes to demonstrate its true independence by awarding the prize to an author who doesn’t belong to the Parisian cenacle (these past few years, the prize has been awarded to a Senegalese writer (6) , an Iranian writer (7) and an American writer (8) ; all writing in French, cela va de soi. This might not happen this year, since except for one writer (9) , all of them are French or Belgian. But the jury may decide to embrace again the feminism cause and give the Goncourt one more time to a female writer, Virginie Despentes (not likely) or Amelie Nothomb (more likely).

What would our friend from outer space conclude from this? Would he/she prefer to watch every football game of the season or read all the books of the Goncourt’s list? Or would he/she just pack and go home, planning to come back when the season is finally over?!



(1) Le prix Goncourt was named and created by two very literary brothers, les frères Jules et Edmond de Goncourt, who wrote a famous journal in the second half of the XIX century; they were good friends of Maupassant and not so good friends of Zola…

(2) With the exception of Romain Gary, who received it twice: the first time for his novel “Les Racines du Ciel”, in 1956 under his real iterary name and the second time for “La vie devant soi”, in 1975, under the pseudonym of Emile Ajar.

(3) This year in competition for her novel Une forme de vie, published by Albin Michel.

(4) You know, dear, they also have publishing houses in the country! –meaning outside of Paris…

(5) Here is last year menu : terrine de gibier aux truffes et foie gras, crème de marrons à la poule faisane, bar poché au jus iodé de coquillages, tatin de légumes, perdreau gris et pommes au lard, munster, tatin aux coings et glace vanille. Côté vins, champagne blanc de blancs, Puligny Montrachet 2006, Château Rauzan Ségla 2003, Riesling Schlumberger, Tokay Azu 2000. Who wouldn’t want to become a juror, just for the meal?

(6) Marie N’Diaye, for Trois femmes puissantes, 2009.

(7) Atiq Rahimi, for Syngue Sabour, pierre de patience, 2008.

(8) Jonathan Littell, for Les Bienveillantes, 2006.

(9) The Moroccan writer Fouad Laroui, Une annee chez les francais.

An introductory note to my readers.

As Montaigne warning his readers that they shouldn't waste their time in such a "frivolous and vain subject" ("ce n'est pas raison que tu emploies ton loisir en un sujet si frivole et si vain"), I also must warn my readers that my blog has no other purpose but to entertain myself, to delude myself with the idea that I, too, can write...about literature...movies...politics...religion...family...how to survive in the U.S when you are from the Old Continent...and more. Quel bazar en perspective! (what a mess, indeed!)
 Adieu donc.