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Rendez-vous with Adam Gopnik  

 




Adam Gopnik, writer for the New Yorker magazine has spent the past five years living in Paris and reporting on French Culture. His new book "Paris to the Moon" is a compilation of essays on living in Paris and an acute view on French culture and all its intricacies. A must read!


Adam Gopnik spent five years in Paris as the correspondent to The New Yorker. His Paris Journal became one of the most awaited features in the celebrated weekly. Gopnik finally decided it was time to go back home or become an expatriate. He left the 7th arrondissement for Manhattan last September, with his wife Sarah, his son Lucas, and baby. He has traded the Luxembourg garden for Central Park, and writes something akin to his Paris Journal for the magazine. Gopnik says he never expected his collection of essays, Paris to the Moon, written for the New Yorker to become a best-seller when it was published by Random House, a few months ago. We sat with him near his new home, on the Upper East Side, eating croissants and American coffee, while Lucas, 5, shared with us the fact that his teacher in the Paris public school he was attending was much more demanding than his new teacher.

 

Q. What do you now miss about Paris?
A. I miss a number of things: the Luxembourg garden, the flower shops. It's the small things that I miss, like having the chance to talk and lunch with people, reading Le Monde every day, I miss the sense that life starts at 4pm. In New York, 4pm is the hour of exhaustion while in Paris 4pm is the time of renewal. I miss the reflective quality of these things. Really, if there is a thing I miss most, it is the sense of living in a society not entirely commercial. I had forgotten that. I miss the "presentational" quality of life in Paris: how architecture frames life. This presentational quality has to do with buildings but also with the fact that we feel looked at all the time.
Q. And New York is a city of anonymity.
A. Yes. And this feeling of always being looked at is both a terror and a beauty. In Manhattan, I can walk with my hair unkempt, not shaved. Rue du Bac I would feel strange and I could not do it. Paris is much more formal. There is a sense of presentation, that things are framed in a theatrical way. I love it and also became exasperated by it. But I miss it now.
Q. Do you think you have been transformed by your stay in Paris?
A. Very much so. The theme of my book is about paying attention to small things. ItŐs the idea that small things matter as much as big ones. It is not only the big things which define a civilization.
Q. What "small things" have you been touched by?
A. For instance, I have become a fanatic of 12 to 4pm Sunday lunches. There are also issues of capital punishment and gun control. I was always opposed to them but since returning to New York, I have joined an anti gun club. I also came to understand French intellectual life. Baudrillard, for example, can say absurdities but still his lectures are open to the public and people came. People can be engaged in intellectual life. I was often exasperated by French life but also instructed to pay attention to society. When I left New York, I thought Baudrillard was slightly ridiculous, but in the end I was instructed more by it. The mind of the French elite tends to be abstract, but now, coming back to New York, I value that. Because French society values reflection and the life of the mind. I was exasperated by it in France, but in the USA, from a distance, I miss it, I miss this quality of reflection. I miss terribly the higher level of intellectual life in public. In America, all you have is lawyers, never philosophers.
Q. How do you think the French would have looked at the fiasco of the Florida vote during the U.S. presidential elections?
A. If Florida had taken place in France, people would be searching for fundamental laws, rules. In the U.S., it's only a series of legal hoops.
Q. And the French are the only ones resisting the uniformity of the world.
A. There is "baudrillardian" resistance which is not conscious against the movement which says there is only one way to do things in the world now. If I go to London, the structure of life is not very different from life in New York. It is part of the English speaking emporium. France is distinct from that in unconscious ways, like the 4 o'clock phenomenon. In the U.S., the right wing discourse dominates. In France, the legitimacy lies on the left. France is unlike America more than any other country. One of the big differences between France and the U.S. is that in France, no one wants to be 17 again while in America no one wants to be 40.
Q. What changes did you see in France in the five years you were there?
A. I saw the coming of the new economy and the soccer World Cup. These are symbols of fundamental changes in attitude, in style. For five years, London was hot in the sense of hysterical and full of hype. Paris is Paris. Its millennium celebration was wonderful, it won the world. London overreached itself in a ridiculous way. At the same time, I donŐt think France is changing. Last year, there were demonstrations against reforms. Even the most necessary reforms are not possible in France. The moment they run into vested interest, they stop. Reforms always lose, in France
Q. You lived in France during one of its worst depressions, what did you see?
A. What impressed me is that even in depression how much of the continuity of life there was, and not just in cafes. All the thousands of small things that make Paris, make you feel you are in direct line with history. I took my son Luke to the caroussel in the Luxembourg garden each day. It is not a big sign, but itŐs part of the continuity of everyday life. It distinguishes Paris from every other city. In London, the old and the new are in conflict. In New York, even the old is new. There is one city where both forms of the past mingle: Paris.

Q. What does your son Luke tell you about the differences between his Paris school and his Manhattan school?
A. First of all, in France, school starts at 8:30am and finishes at 4:30pm. French children are still oppressed. Luke told me his New York teachers were too nice. In France, they were mean but they were demanding. As long as this is intact, there will be a very high degree of culture and also an inegalitarian society. The educational system shapes these differences.
Q. How do you explain the success of your book, "Paris to the Moon"?

A. Because there is this perpetual dream of exoticism. Also, because of this idea of being different, that America might not be the only way to organize one's existence. The book is about the universal and the particular, particular to a place. I like to believe that at the beginning of the 21st century that people feel that differences are essential to this life.

 

Listen with Real Audio to two past interviews on NPR:

  • Interviewed by Melinda Penkava on Talk of the Nation on NPR

  • Interviewed by Susan Stamberg on Weekend Edition on NPR

 

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