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francofile chronicles

March, 7th 1999 "Which Paris do YOU live in?"

by David Applefield

The funny thing about picking guidebooks is that you can only judge the ones written about the places you already know. I couldn´t tell a great guide to Sicily from a deep dish pizza because I´ve never been to Sicily. I have been to Paris though.

But, as the author of books on Paris I have to make an awful confession; I don´t read other peoples´ guides to this city. It´s not that I´m afraid they´ll influence my own brand of advise-giving or style, but rather after a lot of years of trying to figure out how to help people adapt and adjust and prosper in an adopted culture, it struck me with the subtlety of a sandbag that there is no single entity called Paris. A city is as diverse as a forest or jungle or Russian novel. So how´s life in the jungle, one may ask the lion. Well, it´s just not the same jungle to the centipede or the yak.

A recent blurb in that wonderful smorgasbord of news and analysis, Courrier Internationale, reported that an American writer had penned in her book on the French and how they live that one should never ask to use the bathroom when invited for dinner at a French person´s house. This perplexed me as I contemplated all the liters of Kronenbourg I´ve downed with friends and thus the numerous times I´ve pulled the chasse d´eau and the terrible faux pas I´ve committed. How many of us are guilty of not even asking where the bathroom is? You find it, and since most of my French friends do not have walk-in closets, the WC is a pretty easy target.

Another American guidebook author underscores the horror of bringing the wrong flowers (you know the ones that are for funerals and Toussaint). He also warns of the scandals provoked if you offer to help wash the dishes after your copious paupiette de vaux or poulet basqaise. Guilty again. I usually offer, and, yup, a fair amount of my French friends toss me the torchon.

I forewarn in my guidebooks of the horrors of cutting the point off a pretty wedge of brie. This has become a faux pas chez nous for purely aesthetic reasons and I get irritated when even Americans violate the angles on the cheese plate.

The larger point of course is that the rules, the lore, the culture and sub-cultures, the covenants, the history, the social codes all pass through socio-economic sieves in which the holes are extremely diverse in size and shape. The Henry Miller Model of Parisian life and the Fortune 500 Executive´s Spouse Model of Parisian Living, well, just don´t transpire in the same universe, although both expats´ postal codes may begin with 75. My 2 year old pointed out his best friends at the Maternelle this very morning: Fatumata, Selim, and Issa. My local epicerie sells igname and plantane. Someone else´s serves up bouche de la reine and museau vinaigrette? Some of you use linen napkins every night. We use squares of paper towel? Paris or Paris?

So, which Paris do YOU live in? Try to describe your life in Paris in 50 words and send it to me. It´ll be fun and revealing for all of us to start filling in the dots with data and color and see what the expat map of the city really looks like.