39Vaugirard

From the New York Times…

Hemingway’s descriptions of Paris in A Moveable Feast are as true today as they were then. I’m glad though that I’m no longer trying to decide between a pack of cigarettes and a croissant.

You got very hungry when you did not eat enough in Paris because all the baker shops had such good things in the windows and people ate outside at tables on the sidewalk so that you saw and smelled the food. When you were skipping meals at a time when you had given up journalism and were writing nothing that anyone in America would buy, explaining at home that you were lunching out with someone, the best place to do it was the Luxembourg gardens where you saw and smelled nothing to eat all the way from the Place de l’Observatoire to the rue de Vaugirard. There you could always go into the Luxembourg museum and all the paintings were heightened and clearer and more beautiful if you were belly-empty, hollow-hungry. I learned to understand Cézanne much better and to see truly how he made landscapes when I was hungry.

From A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway

Much of this period in his life takes place in the 6th around our apartment and over to the 5th. The Musée de Luxembourg at the time housed the Impressionism collection that would move after that to the Jeu de Paume, and then on to the Musée d’Orsay. Unfortunately, no where does Ernest mention staying at our apartment at 39 Vaugirard.

I’ve always disagreed with Hemingway on the whole “moveable feast” thing. It’s a great image, but I was lucky enough to live in Paris as a young man, and I never feel like it’s a moveable feast. I certainly have memories of it, and things I crave when I’m away, but, justement, I keep coming back to Paris because I can’t replicate the feelings I have when we’re here.

By the way, in the recent controversy over the new or old versions of A Moveable Feast, I hold with the original, which may be a bit harder to find right now.

If you’re traveled France for 20-30 years, you likely have Madelaine cookie-style memories of French food that are conjured up every time you have a good glass of wine or a hearty boeuf bourguignon. But, if you’ve been to France recently, you may also wonder if France has lost it. I always thought I could take my wife to any old French bistro and get a good meal. I sighed at her reams of articles from Vogue, Bon Appetit, and and Gourmet. Why go to across Paris to get an over-priced meal surrounded by Americans when the little place on the corner had all the classics.

The question still remains whether I changed or whether the food has gotten worse, but I now mostly follow my wife onto the métro across town because I can’t tell the good from the bad looking at a menu placard in the window.

Here’s a review of a new book that tries to deconstruct what has happened to France. It’s a similar description to what has happened to food everywhere.

I can’t tell you how relieved I was when Steinberger’s recent book, “Au Revoir to All That: Food, Wine, and the End of France” (Bloomsbury USA), came across my desk not long after we got back from Paris. For weeks, I’d been thinking it was me. After all, my memories of magnificent French repasts were a couple of decades old. Maybe they were too rosy. Maybe my palate had changed. Maybe it was because we hadn’t really planned out where to eat, assuming that we’d walk into deliciousness without any effort. Maybe we were just old and out of it.
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Even if all those things are a little bit true, reading Steinberger, a wine columnist for Slate magazine (which is owned by the Washington Post Co.) and admitted “food-loving Francophile,” reassured me. Because there’s more to it than that, he writes. Way more.

Here’s the thing. If you’re a food expert, you’ll know where to go to find tasty food in France. Joe Yonan, who runs The Post’s Food section as well as this one, knows his vittles, so when he visited Paris a few weeks after we did, he planned well, used his contacts and had lots of fine meals. But if you’re a casual tourist, you need to know: You’re not going to find a fabulous meal around every corner. And mostly, the French don’t care.

Take a look at these facts: From 200,000 cafes in 1960, France was down to 40,000 — and dropping — last year. Bistros and brasseries are likewise disappearing rapidly. Certain kinds of cheeses are dying because no one knows how to make them anymore. The wine industry is in upheaval as the French quaff less of the fruit of the vine. Forget the quaint little French outdoor market; they still exist, but the French now buy 75 percent of their food in supermarkets, just like Americans. And “most ominously,” Steinberger writes, “the bedrock of French cuisine — home cooking, or la cuisine familiale — was in trouble. The French were doing less cooking than ever at home and spending less time at the table: The average meal in France now sped by in thirty-eight minutes, down from eighty-eight minutes a quarter-century earlier.”

[From An Unsavory Holiday: Lamenting the Decline of French Cuisine - washingtonpost.com]

We’ll be in Paris on Monday and we have plenty of old standards to go to (some not as good as they used to be), but I’m glad that we don’t have to try to find places to eat “au pif.”

By the way, I lived above the Vagenende (photo above), a beautiful Belle Epoque restaurant at 146 Boulevard St. Germain, and can attest that the food there was once edible, and not the over-done garbage that is served with a sneer there today.

Two ladies in Camelot.…. Who knew… Just read in the Vanity Fair article of how the 1963 American exhibition of the Mona Lisa in New York City and Washington, D.C., was America’s first blockbuster art show. The writer Davids recounts in numbing detail the negotiations, preparations, flummoxes and successes of the exhibit. The exhibition was masterminded by the diplomatically savvy Mrs. Kennedy, whose personal relationships with French cultural minister André Malraux and National Gallery director John Walker overcame negative French press and concerns over subjecting a fragile artwork to a transatlantic journey. Heavily guarded and packed in a custom strong box, the Mona Lisa traveled in a first-class cabin on the USS France. Imagine…

If you are following France and Paris, here are a few places I like to watch to get a feeling for the culture and social movements:

Ô-Chateau, a Paris wine-tasting company (with champagne cruises on the Seine!) has a funny and pointed blog called Stuff Parisians Like. It’s modeled after StuffWhitePeopleLike.com, and has some funny and wise bits. It’s very well-written and will give you some idea of the inner workings of those French minds.

We’ve always loved following Kristin Espinasses continuing travails as she inserts herself deeper and deeper into provincial French life in her French-word-a-day blog. Using examples from her life with her husband and two kids, she tells funny and often poignant stories of her life in France, including things she loves, hates and is just plain confused by. She has also collected these columns in several books, which make good presents for the Francophile in your life. Her site has grown to include other recommended books on French history, language, and culture.

InParisNow.com, or TheParisBlog.com (not to be confused with ParisBlog.com, the unbelievably well-written musings of a thirteen year-old girl) is a group blog. More than two dozen bloggers contribute to it, most of whom are Anglophones living in Paris. Most days, there are three or four new articles. This one could keep you busy for a while. As soon as we live in Paris again, I’ll ask to join on with them.

Where else do you like to look for information about Paris?

If you happen to be in France this year for the 14th, or just have an interest in revolutions, here’s a good “revolutionary” walking tour that starts in our favorite neighborhood and ends at the Madeleine. That makes it a “bonne trotte” as the French would say, but doable in good shoes and with a good walking partner.

I’d also recommend
Seven Ages of Paris, my favorite history book on Paris.

To understand France and the French, you need to get to grips with the Revolution. As July 14 approaches, Anthony Peregrine transports us to a Paris where the tumbrils still roll.

Start your tour in Rue St André-des-Arts, which remains as narrow and dense as it was at the time of the Revolution
This year, as you will have noticed, is the 40th anniversary of 1968. You will have noticed particularly if you have been in France recently. There they have treated the riotous events of May 1968 as if they were of Earth-shattering import. Oh dear. As revolutions go, May 1968 was playtime – and so inflated with self-importance that you feel like slapping it.

So let us ignore 1968 and turn instead to the real French Revolution, the one of 1789: the one that overthrew an absolute monarchy, turned France upside down and set the template for revolutions (and totalitarianism) to come. In consuming most of its leading perpetrators, and thousands of others, the 1789 revolution was also an early indication of the disparity between abstract theory and human reality – and of the blood that most often fills the gap.

[From Paris: Back to the Bastille - Telegraph]

Here are three recent favorites from the hardcover shelves. My bias is that I like my non-fiction fictionalized. That is, I like a good story well-told. With Paris 2000 plus year old history, this is a tall order for a manageable book, but one of these stands out as one of my favorite books of 2007, and I’ll likely re-read it. It was that good.

“Paris: The Secret History” (Andrew Hussey) – I found this to be a very complete book, but a not very exciting read. I don’t know if the stories here are really that secret, but are a little more arcane then the broad sweep of history you get in “Seven Ages.” As one Amazon reviewer said,

this book reads like a minimally organized pastiche of historical snippets commonly acccessible to any grade school student researching Paris. The entire text is compsed in jejune paragraphs as if the author himself couldn’t even stay interested enough to sustain any intellectual progression of thought.

Yikes.

“The Discovery of France: A Historical Geography, from the Revolution to the First World War” (Graham Robb)

I searched and searched for travel books to excite a two year old kid as well as inform me as to what are best things to do when we traveled. I found these, written by Sasek in 1959! With a minimum of words and a maximum of illustrations, ‘This is Paris’ captures the magic of mankind’s capital city. ‘This is Paris’ is a delightful tour of 1950s Paris from a child’s eye view. Sasek had written ‘This is Rome’ and ‘This is London,’ in 1959, but where the heck was ‘This is Tokyo,’ and ‘This is Seoul,’ for the kid of the 21st century?!@* So this is what I’m setting out to do, in 21st century format, in blogs.

“This is Paris (This is . . .)” (Miroslav Sasek)

“This is Rome (This is . . .)” (Miroslav Sasek)

“This is London (This is . . .)” (Miroslav Sasek)

Well, what do you know? As I’m searching for the links, I’m founding out that during the past couple of years, the publishers of Sasek book has figured out the same thing that I have, and have extended the series, using new editors, to create books for other cities, around the world. In fact, there is now, ‘This is Hong Kong!’ and Texas, for goodness sakes! As Paul always says, we’re always about two weeks ahead of the latest trend insight from NY Times!

“This is Hong Kong (This is . . .)” (Miroslav Sasek)

“This Is Edinburgh (This is . . .)” (Miroslav Sasek)

“This is New York (This is . . .)” (Miroslav Sasek)

“This is San Francisco (This is . . .)” (Miroslav Sasek)

“This Is Ireland” (M. Sasek)

“This Is Texas (This is . . .)” (Miroslav Sasek)