May 05 2008
∞
“ There is a strong case to be made that, in recent years, it is with good reason that the English-speaking cultures of the world have lost interest in France. Certainly, French writers no longer enjoy the world standing they once had - the most prominent figure in French letters is probably the novelist Michel Houellebecq, known outside France mainly for peddling a stew of gloomy and sensationalist filth.
Meanwhile, French philosophy has become a quaint relic when it is not a joke (the name of Jacques Derrida, to cite only the most recently dead, already evokes, in the style of Life on Mars, the far-off era of early-Seventies prog rock and Maoism). French politics are a model of duplicity and corruption. French cinema has not produced anything worth watching in decades. French cooking is said to be in terminal decline. Even Paris - the crucible of European modernity - wears an old-fashioned air, a fact acknowledged by its young people, who flock to New York and London in search of employment. It seems that only the age-old sport of French-bashing, now equally popular on both sides of the Atlantic, reminds us of the existence of the French at all.
Meanwhile, French philosophy has become a quaint relic when it is not a joke (the name of Jacques Derrida, to cite only the most recently dead, already evokes, in the style of Life on Mars, the far-off era of early-Seventies prog rock and Maoism). French politics are a model of duplicity and corruption. French cinema has not produced anything worth watching in decades. French cooking is said to be in terminal decline. Even Paris - the crucible of European modernity - wears an old-fashioned air, a fact acknowledged by its young people, who flock to New York and London in search of employment. It seems that only the age-old sport of French-bashing, now equally popular on both sides of the Atlantic, reminds us of the existence of the French at all.
—
Andrew Hussey’s Observer review of Graham Robb’s The Discovery of France. English swine. Also, wrong on so very many counts. (via czupcaks)
That whole article? Written by somebody who’s never set foot in France.
The following quote: “It is, however, one of the lingering ironies of this book that although the ‘discovery’ of this defining dynamic of French history is clear to an English historian such as Robb, it is yet to be discovered by the French themselves.”?
Written by somebody who’s never talked to a French person.