Travel to France

Sixty Million Frenchmen Can't Be Wrong: Why We Love France but Not the French

Format: Paperback
Author: Jean-Benoit Nadeau
ReleaseDate: May, 2003
Publisher: Sourcebooks
Rating:

Not Funny, a serious book
My husband and I go to France very year, love everything about it, especially the differences between the U. I had just read A Year in the Merde and loved it. S. and France. So many of the customs are unexplainable to us, one being that whenever we go to anyplace in France, we expect it to be closed. The hours the stores keep I cannot figure out, and the hours of the restaurants vary also. We see a sign that says(in French) open all the days, we go the next day and the place is FERME(closed). A Year in the Merde points out so many differences, I just laughed and laughed, as none are serious, just something you must deal with.
We were told that 60 Million Frenchmen was also a very funny book. It is not. Not one bit. Do not buy it if you are looking for something light. .

Complete nonsense
Thrilled to find a book about France and its sometimes baffling ways written by my compatriots, I bought it instantly, but I must say, I have never been more disappointed in a book purchase. I'm a transplanted Canadian who has been living in Paris for the past five years. This work is rife with glaring inaccuracies, sweeping generalities and even spelling mistakes! Seemingly basing their work on their own unsubstantiated observations rather than on any real journalistic research, Barlow and Nadeau lead their readers by the nose down a path of falsehoods that leave uninitiated francophiles believing that France and its people can be summed up so contritely, and the rest of us wondering "What Fantasy-land France are they talking about?". .

Insightful, and has a wider message
I didn't see any of that attitude at all in the book. I absolutely do not understand why reviewers like "Elsa" and John Carr say that the writers think North America is right and the French are wrong. They simply tried to define the differences. Of course, they noted that their North American readers would find many things surprising, which is perfectly true. They didn't say the North American approach was better. And "Elsa", when the cover says ". . and why we love France but not the French" the "we" is not the authors themselves - it's a reference to the well-known stereotypes held by so many North Americans. Remember, it's a book published for a certain readership.

That said, what about the book? I've spent much less time in France than I would like, though I speak pretty good French (probably with a Canadian accent as I lived in Montreal for nine years. ) I thought the central insights into the fundamental importance of the centralized state, the lesser emphasis on money as a yardstick (good thing too!), and the descriptions of the health service and educational system, were fascinating. Clearly, from the comments of some of the French reviewers, they didn't get everything right, and missed out somewhat on the range and variety of social forms in that large country. But as an (ex) Brit, I recognized many ways in which the French style was basically just a further stage along the scale away from North America (particularly the US). Britain also allows a much bigger role for the central government, though not as much as France (in spite of the silly Thatcher/Blair way that Britain has followed at America's heels). The market is NOT a good basis for running every aspect of society.

A huge value of the book is to make North American readers appreciate just how very different another society can be, even one that superficially they may think is like them - democratic, industrialized, etc. One feels that probably no-one in the current American adminstration has any understanding of these major differences of attittudes and culture, stemming from so many centuries of history (and trauma). Then, if they can be so ignorant of a modern Western state, how can they have the faintest understanding of the inner drives of nations further removed - Arab, Persian, Indian, Chinese. . . . And after getting some feeling for the tremendous extent of the differences, we may reflect that however different their guiding philosophies may be, for the nations involved, they work, and perhaps it is none of our business to try to change them. That would be a good message to take away from this book.

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	A Year in the Merde