French Letters

by Jonathan Miller

  The political class pretends that this community does not really exist. Republican doctrine does not recognise multiculturalism and the census does not count people by their racial identification or origin. The evident reality is that les beurs occupy a wholly different space to the so-called Français de souche (French people by roots). They are poorer, more poorly housed and educated and earn less, if they are employed at all. Other immigrant groups in France - the Portuguese, Italians, Spanish - have largely assimilated. Not so les beurs. There is a separateness that is palpable. Of course there are exceptions, and this is hardly a uniquely French problem, but the chasm between this community and the rest of France is enormous and seems to be widening.

  The word beur is a contortion of the word Arab, taken from the mostly obsolescent Verlan argot (slang). Specifically it has described the descendants of north African immigrants, although in practice it is used to describe anyone whom the French might describe as Arab. The notion that north Africans from Algeria, Tunisia and Morocco, who constitute the majority of France’s immigrants, are Arabs, is contestable, although they do speak distinctive versions of Arabic.

  French national football teams, in which players of immigrant origin are heavily represented, are sometimes referred to as the ‘black, blanc, beur’ in an ironic reference to the ‘bleu, blanc, rouge’ of the national tricolour. There is a radio station called Beur-FM, determinedly secular, with a playlist heavy on Arab pop music and an agenda focused on defining a ‘nouvelle génération.’The station supports women’s rights, offers horse racing tips on its web home page, and the only visible headscarves are in the ads for Islamic dating sites.

  BHL

  Bernard-Henri Lévy

  The global brand of a French public intellectual. Too grand to describe himself as a journalist, and very rich since he inherited about 100 million euros, Lévy, always known as BHL, is a celebrity-philosopher, essayist and controversialist who has parlayed his bilingualism to straddle the gap between Paris and New York. He has a website on which he confidently pronounces in English and French on topics from Heidegger to Greece. Editors like him because he tickles the readers with views that are sometimes as ridiculous as they are elegantly stated. In Paris he is a columnist and talk-show stalwart and has advised Arte, the TV channel paid for by French and German taxpayers. In New York he is seen at parties with Arianna Huffington (and, for a while at any rate, with Daphne Guinness, the granddaughter of Diana Mosley), for whose eponymous online journals he pronounces frequently. It is hard to identify BHL with any consistent school of thought other than strong self-belief in his rightness on everything, underpinned by a dark view of the past, very much coloured by memories of the Holocaust. His identity as an egotistical neoliberal humanitarian interventionist puts him on the same piste as Tony Blair. A Jew, he is not apparently sufficiently self-aware to see anything paradoxical in his consistent advocacy of western military intervention in the murky affairs of the Islamic world. BHL is a style icon, being ruggedly handsome, and always wears his trademark, immaculate, tailored white shirt open halfway down his chest. Michel Houellebecq, his frenemy, has written of BHL: ‘You dishonour even the white shirts you wear. An intimate of the powerful who, since childhood has wallowed in obscene wealth, you are… a philosopher without an original idea.’ BHL is also an enemy of the controversial anti-Zionist comedian Dieudonné.

  BISES, BISOUS, POIGNÉE DE MAIN

  Kissing - 182 billion kisses

  handshakes - a social obligation

  Who to kiss, how many times, when? When I was elected to my local council, with 10 male members and nine women, it was apparent that all the men were required to kiss all of the women at the start of every meeting. Some of the men, who had known each other a long time, also kissed one another. In our part of France, three kisses are the norm. Hence, before any business could be transacted, at least 270 kisses were exchanged. The maths are fuzzy but one can estimate that the population of France (65 million), each kissing, say, 10 times per day (this is just a guess), could collectively be kissing up to 3.5 billion times a week, exchanging some 182 billion kisses a year. But the figure is conjectural because in parts of Corsica, it is customary to kiss five times, in much of northern France four times, twice in the southwest and three times in the Midi. The Bretons make do with one. It is hard to see how any of this contributes to national productivity, although it is very sweet.

  Avoid use of the synonym baiser, which also means to fuck.

  If kissing is reserved for people who you already know, poignée de main (shaking hands) is ubiquitous and you will shake hands with anyone with whom you have even a passing acquaintance. Walking through my village to the bakery in the morning, I will shake hands with up to a dozen people. Failure to observe this ritual can be taken as an insult. Arriving at work, it is customary to shake everyone’s hand. I find this custom extremely agreeable as it establishes a direct and human contact that is a formal recognition of mutual respect. It is typically accompanied by the phrase comment allez vous? (how are you?) or more informally, comment ça va? (how’s it going?). I prefer to vouvoyer (using the formal vous) as it indicates respect. The handshake must always be accompanied by eye contact. Those who you do not know must also be acknowledged. At the very least, you must offer a bonjour (good day). If you ask a conductor at a railway station for directions without prefacing your question with a bonjour, he or she is likely to be insulted. These rituals are indispensable social signals. When I am in England I reflexively shake hands with many people who do not expect it, evidence, I suppose, that I am going native. It goes the other way, too. Marie-Jo, a French friend who has lived for 20 years in England, tells me she once asked an official at the Gare du Nord for advice, forgetting the obligatory bonjour, and could tell at once that the official was distressed. ‘I felt ashamed,’ she later admitted. ‘It was as if I had ignored his humanity.’

  BOBO

  Champagne socialist

  The bourgeois-bohème is a privileged, comfortably off champion of the workers, although unlikely to know any as such. Family money is often in the background. Educationally privileged, the bobo works in government or the media. Self-situates politically well to the left and culturally to the bohemian. A typical bobo might be a film director living in a smart, Brooklyn-style loft in the posh, artsy Paris suburb of Montreuil. There’s a comfortable contract with the irrelevant but state-subsidised Arte television channel, a heavy bookshelf and, on his feet, 500-euro hand-made English shoes. Our bobo voted at the last presidential election for Jean-Luc Mélenchon, candidate of the Left Front, la gauche de la gauche (the left of the left - hard leftist).

  BOLLORÉ, VINCENT

  Politically-connected businessman

  A capitalist who infuriates the French because he has survived all attempts by the taxman to take him down. Industrialist, friend of former President Nicolas Sarkozy, despised by the left for having made a fortune despite all the obstacles that make this so hard in France. He has a law degree from Nanterre (not the smartest university), started with a family fortune and made it vastly bigger. The notorious/celebrated (depending on your point of view) corporate raider has profited handsomely by outwitting less agile opponents. The patron (boss) of media companies Vivendi and Canal+, Bolloré is the 329th richest person in the world, according to Forbes. He is currently manufacturing electric cars in Italy (although some will soon be made in France by Renault, under contract) for deployment in the expanding Paris autolib’ car sharing scheme. His Bluecar uses an innovative lithium metal polymer battery, coming soon to London. With typical swagger Bolloré admits the Bluecar is a gamble but says even if he loses the bet, he will still be rich. His other friends include, inter alia, the supermodel Vanessa Modely.

  BOONE, LAURENCE

  Economic advisor to François Hollande

  In June 2014, Boone was appointed member of François Hollande’s kitchen cabinet, and subsequently named sherpa to the president (personal representative of a head of stat
e) responsible for preparing his participation in the annual G8 international summit. Aged 46 in 2015, she is a graduate of the University of Paris at Nanterre, holder of further degrees from London Business School and the University of Reading and a former chief European economist for Merrill Lynch. Attended the 2015 elite Bilderberg summit in Austria in 2015 alongside various prime ministers, chief executives and, inevitably, Henry Kissinger. Since it does not appear that the president has any coherent economic policy at all, either her advice is ignored or she is merely expanding her impressive CV. Cynics note that she is very pretty.

  BOURBONS, LES

  Failed French royal dynasty that lost its head

  The decadent royal family whose greed and selfishness condemned France to Republicanism. Or at least this is the history taught in French schools. The Bourbons have been systematically traduced by Republican historians, but the truth is more nuanced. The Bourbon Henri IV, ‘Good King Henry,’ seemed to launch the French monarchy on a new path when the family replaced the somewhat deranged Valois dynasty on the throne of France in 1589. Louis XIV, the Sun King, was on the throne for 72 years during which France was the leading European power. Louis XV, his great-grandson, inherited a kingdom that was financially stagnant as a result of military adventurism and was forced to return the Austrian Netherlands (Belgium and a bit) to Austria and New France in North America to Spain and Great Britain.

  Louis XVI was guillotined on what is now the Place de la Concorde on 21 January 1793. ‘Le roi est mort, vive la nation,’ screamed the mob as he was decapitated. His wife, Marie Antoinette, followed him to the scaffold a few months later. She is notorious for having proposed, when informed that the people had no bread, Qu’ils mangent de la brioche(let them eat cake). Yet there can be little doubt that this quotation was entirely invented by Jean-Jacques Rousseau as there is no trace of it in contemporary reports.

  Despite his subsequent Republican demonisation, Louis XVI was a deeply cultivated and intelligent man (though he required instruction in the mechanics of conceiving a child with Marie Antoinette), fluent in many languages. His efforts to reform the country were undermined by the nobility and never went far enough to appease the growing popular disgust with the regime. Yet he was a patron of science and technology, vaccinating himself against smallpox to demonstrate to his sceptical subjects the value of scientific medicine. He sponsored the Montgolfier brothers’ first flights, was patron of the legendary sea voyages of Jean-François de la Pérouse and left an architectural legacy that is still admired by millions of tourists a year. He was also sponsor of the guillotine as a humanitarian method of execution, and experienced first-hand whether it succeeded.

  BOVÉ, JOSÉ

  Green politician and militant

  A reactionary ecologist with a moustache straight out of Astérix, and a founding father of French militant anarchist-ecologism. Aged 61 in 2015, he has participated in destruction of genetically modified crops, destroyed a McDonald’s in Millau, France, with a tractor, has served prison terms for these and other actions. Has travelled to Ramallah in the occupied territories to demonstrate solidarity with Palestinians. Has claimed that attacks on synagogues in France were orchestrated by Israel. Founding member of ATTAC, a group campaigning for taxation of financial transactions. Although appearing French and nativist, he spent years as a child in Berkeley, California, where his parents worked at the university. He speaks English fluently and, beneath the pretence of being a paysan, is thoroughly bourgeois. He is currently banned from entering the United States, as well as a Member of the European Parliament as a member of the ultra-left green party, Europe Écologie.

  BOVARYSME

  The endless French capacity for self-delusion

  A flight to the imaginary and romantic. Derived from Gustave Flaubert’s novel Madame Bovary: the heroine’s retreat into a world of fantasy, provoked by dissatisfaction with reality, ends in suicide. Bovarysme remains a fundamental French condition. See angélisme, angoisse, misérabilisme, suicide.

  BRETON, ANDRÉ

  Founder of surrealism

  Died aged 70 in 1966, author of the Manifeste du surréalisme (Surrealist Manifesto), a striking philosophical document inspired by the Marquis de Sade, Charles Baudelaire, Arthur Rimbaud and Dante, inter alia. Poet, art collector, contemporary or colleague of Louis Aragon, Claude Lévi-Strauss, Leon Trotsky and Salvador Dali. Surrealism has powerfully influenced art, literature, theatre, music, film and politics and continues to do so. Expelled from the communist party, Breton eventually drew the only possible surrealist conclusion and became an anarchist. It is quite possibly true that modern France is itself a surrealist state, an attempt to resolve the contradictory conditions of dreams and reality. See Haïti.

  C

  CALAIS

  ignored terminus

  Mary Tudor said Calais would be engraved on her heart after it was seized by the French in 1557. In 2015, the city is under siege once more and it is not clear that the French remain in full control. Migrants from the Middle East and Africa have invaded the outskirts seeking clandestine passage to England and disputatious dock workers routinely block the ferry port and tunnel. Human rights organisations condemn the squalid migrant camps on the outskirts. By the summer there were violent daily confrontations between migrants and lorry drivers and the migrants repeatedly breached the tunnel’s security perimeter. French police are often conspicuously absent from these confrontations, apparently quite happy for the migrants to get to Britain and become somebody else’s problem. Meanwhile, migrants are dying trying to get to England, eight in eight summer weeks. Very little of this is reported in the French national press. The situation in Calais makes French claims to be a terre d’asile (land of refuge) seem rather hollow. See: Tunnel sous la Manche.

  CAMUS, ALBERT

  French humanist writer

  Died a very French death in 1960 in the passenger seat of his publisher Michel Gallimard’s Facel Vega motorcar. A contemporary of Jean-Paul Sartre and a lion of post-war literary Paris, Camus has stood the test of time better than Sartre mainly because he never made a fool of himself apologising for totalitarianism. Famously preferred football to theatre. Born in Algeria, he played goalkeeper for Racing Universitaire Algerois, won the Nobel prize for literature and accepted it with grace (Sartre later turned it down - to snub Camus?). After his death there were various theories that he had been assassinated by the Russians, but the application of Occam’s Razor to these theories suggests it was merely Gallimard showing off his iconic French Grand Tourer, driving 180 km per hour and hitting a tree. Sartre lived on for another 20 increaingly vapid years. The late, great Tony Judt, eminent historian of France, kept a picture of Camus on his desk.

  CANARD ENCHAÎNÉ

  Satirical, compromised weekly newspaper

  Sometimes funny weekly newspaper and often less seditious than it appears. Private Eye is the closest British equivalent. Established in 1915, it carries no ads and breaks many scoops of which some seem to be spoon-fed rather than uncovered. There is a face cachée (hidden side) to the Canard Enchaîné (literally, duck in chains) according to the journalists Karl Laske and Laurent Valdiguié in their book, Le Vrai canard (The Real Canard, 2008) who accuse it of an opaque financial structure and too-cozy relations with politicians. There’s little doubt that the journal has allowed itself to be used to settle scores and, notoriously, to convey government disinformation (e.g. the invented story that British intelligence was responsible for sinking the Rainbow Warrior). Le Canard’spunning headlines are masterpieces but the wit, while rapier-like and cruel, really serves no purpose other than to boast how clever the magazine is. The paper’s annual parties, which are lavish affairs befitting a journal that reputedly makes gigantic profits, attract many members of the very establishment elite who are mocked. All these accusations are sniffily denied by the journal, which calls them ‘just gossip.’ Le Canard, of all journals, is of course hardly in a position to denounce gossip, its own stock-in-trade.

/>   CAPITAL SOCIAL

  Living France

  A sociological concept coined by the French. Alexis de Tocqueville in the 19th century (Democracy in America, 1835) admired the strong social networks in America and their social importance was subsequently elaborated by the sociologist Pierre Bourdieu in 1972. If these informal networks of citizens have subsequently weakened in America, in France my empirical observation is that they remain resolutely strong. At its most fundamental, social capital is manifested simply by the willingness of people to talk to one another in informal encounters. This is very much part of the fabric of life in a French village where people wish each other good day and look one another in the eye as if they mean it. It is also visible in the strength of the voluntary sector. Although the French have a reputation for leaving everything to the all-powerful state to organise, I have become convinced this is not true. My own village of 2,500 people is extraordinary in its level of community engagement with associations covering sports, culture, heritage, music, senior citizens and a twin-city programme. Nearly 300 people turned up for a community concert and dinner in my garden - more than 10 per cent of the population. Friends who live in other villages tell me that the sense of community cohesion is equally strong there. Of course such collective activities exist in other countries, but I have the impression that they remain especially resilient in France - an example of real community solidarité, as opposed to the ersatz variety espoused by politicians. A weakness is that the French seem far less active in charitable activities that the British and Americans, a consequence of their belief that social distress is a matter best addressed by the all-powerful state.