French Toast
Also by Harriet Welty Rochefort
French Fried
French Toast
An American in Paris Celebrates the
Maddening Mysteries of the French
Harriet Welty Rochefort
THOMAS DUNNE BOOKS.
An imprint of St. Martin’s Press.
FRENCH TOAST. Copyright © 1997, 1999, 2010 by Harriet Welty
Rochefort. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America.
For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue,
New York, N.Y. 10010.
Illustration on the chapter-opening pages © 1997 by David Roth.
www.thomasdunnebooks.com
www.stmartins.com
The Library of Congress has cataloged the hardcover
edition as follows:
Rochefort, Harriet Welty.
French toast : an American in Paris celebrates the maddening mysteries of the French / Harriet Welty Rochefort.
p. cm.
ISBN 978-0-312-19978-4
1. Rochefort, Harriet Welty—Homes and haunts—France—Paris. 2. Paris (France)—Social life and customs—20th century—Humor. 3. National characteristics. French—humor. 4. Americans—France—Paris—Biography. 5. Women journalists—France—Paris—Biography. I. Title.
DC718.A44R63 1999
944’.36081—dc21
98-31419
CIP
ISBN 978-0-312-64278-5 (trade paperback)
First published in France by Anglophone S.A. in a somewhat different form.
First St. Martin’s Griffin Edition: June 2010
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
To the memory of my parents, Paul and Doris Welty
Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction
The French Connection
Meet Philippe!
Getting Here
From Shenandoah, Iowa, to Paris, France
The French and Their Food
Why, after a valiant effort to make five-course meals twice a day
for two decades, I decided to throw in the towel
The Frenchwoman
Why no self-respecting Frenchwoman would be caught
dead in a suit and tennis shoes
The French and Sex, Love, and Marriage
Why it is easier to write about the French and sex than
about the French and money
The French and Money
An attempt to unravel the complex and unfathomable
relationship of the French to their finances
The Parisians
How an lowan fends for herself among the inhabitants
of the City of Light
Politesse
The French, polite? What to do and not to do in polite society
School Daze
A reflection upon the French educational system. In other words,
why do all these kids look like anemic hunchbacks?
Why I’ll Never Be French (But I Really Am!)
Why, never having been able to form a proper French r or u,
I conclude that I’ll always remain an “inside outsider”
Acknowledgments
French Toast owes a great debt to many people. My French family generously included me in their lives from the very beginning. Thanks to my mother-in-law, I learned how to cook a few decent meals. My sister-in-law, the epitome of French chic, taught me a lot about the French-woman, which is why I use her as an example so frequently.
My American family—the late Doris Welty-Bury; Miriam Welty Trangsrud and Chuck Trangsrud; John Welty; Ward, Jane, and Ryan Welty—has always supported me in every way, beginning with my mother, who very wisely never tried to keep me at home. This book was an attempt to explain to them what it’s really like to live abroad.
Many people helped with this book in different ways and I apologize to anyone I may have left out inadvertently. Bob and Ann Campbell, Sarah Colton, Dorie Denbigh, Martine Gérard, Mercedes Guerric, Richard Hill, Fred Painton, Ron and Betty Rosbottom, Nancy and Pierre Sayer, and Jan Tabet proffered pertinent, judicious, and sensitive observations. Judy Fayard unwittingly inspired this book—as European editor of the now-defunct European Travel & Life, she asked me to contribute articles on life in France, large parts of which appear in two of the chapters of this book. Jayne Binet, Jill Bourdais, Dr. Hiraoki Ota, and Alain Schifres graciously agreed to be interviewed. Janet Thorpe, Nancy Sayer, and Marcia Lord generously took the time to proofread the manuscript. French Toast owes its name to the late Lambert Mayer and his friends at Trim International and Business Wire. My gratitude to my agent, Regula Noetzli, for her efficiency, and my editor, Karyn Marcus, for her enthusiastic support.
Finally, my expert adviser and partner, Philippe Roche-fort, has borne with me through thick and thin. He has grappled with my gripes, listened for hours on end to my opinions of the French school system, proofread my copy, worked the Mac (which I treat as a glorified typewriter), caught errors, and let me interview him. Without him, French Toast would never have seen the light of day. Nicolas, Benjamin, and David, the three Roche-fort sons, were of constant inspiration and help with this project. They, too, were interviewed and helped me with their considerable computer skills, but mostly they were what they are: really fine young men and great company.
This book was definitely not written by a committee. The opinions in it are, as they say, mine and mine alone.
French Toast
Introduction
Cultural Differences—Forever Fresh
When French Toast was published thirteen years ago, I was both gratified and surprised by how quickly it found its niche. As one amused reader passed it on to another, it became clear that it appealed to a range of sensibilities: those interested in France, those interested in living in France, those interested in an American living in France, those interested in an American married to a Frenchman and who had two children, plus the challenge of French in-laws who didn’t speak English. Although all of them got a laugh from it or even maybe learned something from entering “my world,” the ones who identified the most furiously with my little tale were, understandably, like me: women who had married a Frenchman and who were living in France trying to cope with the issues of cultural adjustment which one can blithely ignore when a tourist. One of the many letters I received was from a woman who, like me, was an American married to a Frenchman and living in France. “All this time I thought that I was crazy or my husband was,” she penned. “But after reading your book, I see that what I thought was sheer insanity can be chalked up to all those cultural differences. Thanks for allowing me to breathe deeper and relax.”
I loved the idea of enabling this reader to “relax” and enjoy herself and not get bogged down in the craziness of life in a foreign culture. In fact the main reason I wrote the book was to explain cultural differences to myself and to try to cool down about Things the French Did That Drove Me Insane and get beyond the question of “Is my French husband nuts or is it me?” From the way the French drove and the way they colorfully insulted each other to the cold way Parisian mothers didn’t greet me in front of the school to . . . well, for the rest, you can read the book. . . . At the time I wrote this, though, I was having such a hard time that there seemed to be no alternative; either I wrote down all the things I found “funny” and couldn’t get used to—or I left the country before my frustration turned to hostility. Since I didn’t want to leave, I decided to jot down every single aspect of French life that seemed odd, curious, or mysterious—and the list turned into the book French Toast. It was a good thing for me and, I’d like to think, for some of my readers. Not only did I cool down, but I’ve also enjoyed li
fe in France in a much different and fuller way than I ever expected. Yes, the French are “funny”—but so are we. . . .
Every year I’m asked to speak to groups of newly arrived Americans and Europeans who don’t know what to expect in this very different country where the ways of acting and behaving seem to be so much more important than elsewhere. “Live and let live” isn’t really a French thing to do. If I lived in Finland or Brazil, I doubt I’d get as many calls for help as I do in France where there’s a much greater chance that someone not in the know can make a big gaffe. I shudder to think of all the ones I made early on, many of which are set in stone forever in this book.
I was far from imagining that my interest in cultural differences, an interest stemming from my very practical concern about trying to fit into French society, was shared by thousands of people, who either have come to France as tourists or who have never come at all. The reaction to French Toast proved to me that Americans, whether Francophiles or Francophobes, are simultaneously intrigued, intimidated, or incensed by the French. The same goes for the French who are simultaneously in admiration of, fascinated and/or repelled by the Americans.
Scores of books written by academics and journalists have tried to get to the bottom of this mutual fascination—some would say this mutual love-hate. A handful of books, such as mine, have been written by the Total Immersion people, Americans who have married French people and lived their lives in France and whose views are necessarily different because they are writing from their own experiences and not from theory.
I always think about this when my Francophile friends come to visit. Some stay a few days or a week, others, especially the ones who are professors on sabbatical leaves, for much longer. On one hand, since they don’t live here all the time, they are less blasé, less jaded. They’re thrilled to discover that special goat cheese they’d never seen or tasted before. They go gaga over the Paris shopping and cultural scene. They wonder why the French seem to spend so much time in cafés and why they always seem to be on strike (well, so do I). But the ones who stay around long enough find themselves alternately admiring of, mystified by, or simply ticked off by the French way. My book was an effort to figure out why. . . .
A Personal Tale
Let’s face it: being married to a Frenchman and feeling the imperative need to figure things out in order to fit into his world was a powerful motivating factor. Unlike an academic grappling with arcane points of French history or philosophy at a safe intellectual remove or a tourist struggling to order from a menu, I was here for the long haul. I needed to buy groceries, needed to understand what my mother-in-law was saying to me (hoping it was nice), needed to make appointments to see the doctor and the plumber, and when I got the appointments, understand what they were saying. Not only did I need to talk to and understand these people in French—I needed to answer them in French. And when, many years later, I was able to do both of those with ease, I needed to go a step further. I needed to figure out the unspoken language, the language of nuances and codes that is so important in France. For by then I had learned that in France what is not said is often as important as what is said.
After I married, I quickly moved from the status of College Girl on a Fling in Paris to Wife of a Frenchman, complete with French in-laws. I suddenly found myself in a small Paris apartment, my dreams of a huge American house left by the roadside. I found myself racking my brains to figure out what to serve my French in-laws for dinner and made a lot of mistakes which I recount in the chapter on French food. The biggest challenge of all, though, came when we decided that our children would attend French schools. If it’s the penultimate chapter in the book, it’s because the French educational system had me totally stymied. I solved that one quickly: since my French husband survived it, he got to deal with it. It turned out to be the best decision I ever made. And here’s a nice end to the story: my two sons survived the French system! The one who went the prépa and grandes écoles route is now a software engineer in Montreal (nicely combining the French and English speaking parts of his life). His brother, who wanted nothing to do with the grandes écoles, studied philosophy at the Sorbonne and has just published his first novel with the prestigious French publishing house Gallimard (think Camus, says the proud mother. . . . ). And in one of those ironic twists of fate, the son I thought was my little American turned out to be TOTALLY French, and the son I thought was TOTALLY French turned out to be much more American. Fortunately, my stepson, Nicolas, a neurologist in Marseilles, is a bona fide Frenchman, so no surprises there!
Just in case anyone thinks that I’m the only one in my couple who’s on the alert for cultural differences, I should add here and now that my French husband has his own personal laundry list of how the Americans are different. That would make a separate, and very entertaining book. Only one problem: for all the faults they have, the French have one quality we Americans don’t. Ready? Since they live in a society where criticism, although painful, is seen as necessary and even a path to improvement, they are more inured to it. They can dish it out in spades but some of them at least are able to laugh when their foibles are pointed out, even by a foreigner—whereas I highly doubt that a book by a French person pointing out the “oddities” of Americans would be seen as anything more than Gallic arrogance (an expression, by the way, that has become a tired cliché and not always appropriate). Food for thought . . . and correct me if I’m wrong.
Since this is a personal tale, there are a couple of caveats. First of all, readers are advised that this is MY life and MY tale, and in no way “the truth about the French.” It is my reaction to France and the French based on where I come from and who I am and where I am in France and with whom. The book would have been quite different had I been a New Yorker marrying into a rural French family, or a Southerner marrying into an artistocratic French family, or a Catholic or Jewish or Muslim American married to a French Muslim or Jew from the countryside. But that’s not the case. I am a WASP (a term our politically correct language still allows), born and raised in the heartland of the United States, married to a Frenchman from a traditional Catholic family, who was born and raised in Paris with parents whose families came from the isolated mountainous Auvergne region of France and the foie gras land of Périgord in the southwest.
My husband was born in Paris and is very Parisian, and Parisians, like New Yorkers, are NOT like people in the provinces. They have a different way of speaking, acting, walking, talking. Like all big-city people, they’re in a hurry. They can be cold and nasty but, if you get to know them, can be (almost) warm and funny. Since Paris is made up of little villages, if you stick around your arrondissement long enough, you’ll get to know the baker, the butcher, and the fromager. If you’re a tourist passing through, you won’t see this “neighborly” aspect of the French. Speaking of French neighbors, I’ve had a smattering of just about everything, low to high social class (a Marquise!), rich, poor, noisy, quiet. The only thing my various neighbors had in common was their discretion. In Paris most people simply want to avoid each other (although I’ve heard of entire buildings in which the neighbors exchange recipes and keep each other’s children—I keep HOPING I’ll end up in a place like that). Note to all those who think I write from the point of view of the American who’s never frequented any parts of Paris other than the Latin Quarter or the chic West of Paris, I’ve lived in the ritzy 16th and upscale Neuilly, the staid 7th, the intellectual 5th, the “normal” 15th, and now the working class going bourgeois bohemian 20th. Et oui!
And now let’s go one further. I’m from Iowa. This is odd, definitely odd, non? Even in the States, people would ask me “how I got out.” (Funny, huh? I walked out, barefoot, I tell them.)
Criticizing the French
When, as sometimes happens, the French accuse me of criticizing them (which they rarely do, since as I mentioned above, they are more used to giving and taking criticism in a culture that values it), I just repeat their own expression “qui aime bien cha
tie bien” (“the more you care about someone, the harder you are on him”).
It’s easy, sometimes too easy, to criticize a foreign culture, to use it as a scapegoat. BFT (Before French Toast) I did that a LOT. The writing of French Toast taught me that before automatically criticizing it’s preferable to try to understand—which is what I encourage the newly arrived to do. There definitely was an AFT (After French Toast) in which I controlled, or at least tried to, my kneejerk reactions and finally accepted the fact of “when in Rome.” Of course when some bureaucratic jerk is bawling you out or some salesperson is filing her nails instead of serving you, it’s hard to stand there and tell yourself to understand. . . .
Things I Still Don’t Get
In case I’m giving you the mistaken impression that writing French Toast cleared up all the little mysteries of French culture and that I have gently fallen into a Pollyannish state of beatitude, let me clarify. The fact that I understand the French concept of laïcité doesn’t mean that I understand why the French sabotage their own universities with useless strikes, why they’re letting the Sorbonne go down the drain, why they want to cut your head off if you stand out, why they don’t encourage their young people to stay in, not flee, France, why they tax the rich . . . and the list is long.
I still don’t understand (but do admire) how the French can be so comfortable with ambiguity. We Anglos want detailed instructions and procedures. The French don’t feel uneasy if there aren’t any. For example, one recent weekend my husband and I traveled to Marseilles to attend the year-end concert of the dance school our little seven-year-old granddaughter is in. We were told that it was quite an event, that it would take place in a beautiful old theater in the town, so we packed a change of clothes to look decent and off we went.
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