Almost American

The Almost Frenchman has found his match in the Almost American, someone I’ve met this year who yearns for America about as much as the AF yearns for France. I would love to play divine diety and scramble their lives for them, but alas I’m relegated to the post of the quiet observer. (Not so quiet, thanks to WordPress, but my point still stands, as do their pseudonyms).

A lot of Americans come here with this divine vision of France in their heads–bonne bouffe, bon vin–a vision fostered by film noir DVDs and translated paperbacks of Colette and Camus. They last six months or a year here, maybe, and then just as they’ve gotten used to doing their Sunday grocery shopping on Saturdays and estimating a two-hour wait at the Post Office, they go back.

They can’t put their finger on why; “I want a better job; I don’t speak the language; it’s too hard to integrate.” They don’t really figure out that what’s actually wrong is that that France doesn’t exist anymore. The France that they imagined, men in berets and striped shirts biking their morning baguette home, de Beauvoir and Camus and Sartre sitting on a café terrace, smoking unfiltered cigarettes over endless cups of coffee and waxing poetic about everything and nothing, the image that they had in mind when they boarded a plane to Paris… it doesn’t exist, except in black and white photographs which tease in their depiction of what was possible and is no more.

At any rate, it’s like my 20th century novel professor says: “Sartre, c’est un salaud.” The image that we may have of France is just that, an image. Sartre was a jerk; not all buildings in Paris were built in the 17th century. This may be part of the reason for the Almost American’s disdain of Paris, of les gauchistes (left wing “intellectual gangrene,” Sartre’s bande of idiots), the reason why, with as much fervor as the Almost Frenchman and I are trying to stay in the country, he’s trying to get out.

I just bought a copy of Céline’s Voyage au bout de la nuit, one of the many that my 20th century novel professor has waxed poetic about, one that I’ve already quoted on this blog, for lack of a better way to say what it was he wanted to say. I haven’t asked–I probably won’t–but I bet that if the Almost American read Céline, he’d agree as well.

— Y en a pas deux comme lui pour defendre la race francaise ! — elle en a bien besoin la race francaise, vu qu’elle n’existe pas.

“There aren’t two like him to defend the French race.” “It needs it, considering there is no French race.”

C’est pas vrai ! La race, ce que t’appelles comme ca, c’est seulement ce grand ramassis de miteux dans mon genre, chassieux, puceux, transis, qui ont échoié ici poursuivis de la faim, la peste, les tumeurs et le froid, venus vaincus des quatre coins du monde. Ils ne pouvaient pas aller plus loin à cause de la mer. C’est ca la France, et puis c’est ça les Francais.

Powerful stuff, Céline. Words I’m really in no position to agree with, considering the fact that tomorrow I’m headed to rue de la Roquette bright and early to try to get the French government to let me stay here. France isn’t my country; no one gets to insult your family except for you, and the same goes for countries. But Céline–and the Almost American–have a point. Paris–and France, for that matter, though to a lesser degree–no longer fit that perfect image of what they are supposed to be, what they may have been at some point, long before I ever got here.

Paris has to be knocked down before it can be built up again. Unlike Toronto, which had no image in my mind before the first day I saw it, Paris has an allure about it that needs to be negated before you can discover your true Paris. You need to really love it, more than anything, to want to look past the modernization that some say is its downfall, the political problems that pundits argue over daily, the disparition of certain traditions and the apparition of others that some don’t want to see.

France isn’t what it used to be. There was a time that would have bothered me, but I think I’m OK with it now, especially because of what I know is in store. I won’t tell you about it now–I don’t have enough details to do it justice–but suffice to say, I’ll be more excited than ever to come back to France in two weeks, just in time for the New Year.

American Cookies for the Almost American

(adapted from Alton Brown’s “The Chewy”)

1 sticks unsalted butter
1 2/3 cups bread flour
1 teaspoon kosher salt
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 cup sugar
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 egg
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
2 cups semisweet chocolate chips

Heat oven to 375 degrees F.

Melt the butter in a heavy-bottomed medium saucepan over low heat. Sift together the flour, salt, and baking soda and set aside.

Pour the melted butter in a bowl. Add the sugar and brown sugar. Cream the butter and sugars. Add the egg and vanilla extract and mix until well combined. Slowly incorporate the flour mixture until thoroughly combined. Stir in the chocolate chips.

Chill the dough, then form with a tablespoon and place onto buttered baking sheets. Bake for 8 minutes or until golden brown, checking the cookies after 5 minutes.