nerd, and a vegetarian to boot. But in Paris I felt different. I wanted to talk, drink, smoke, party. I wanted to know myself in connection with others. For the most part it was easy to do, because a number of us in Paris that summer, especially those I was meeting at Danielleâs, were newly hatched from the cocoon of university life and restless to take on the world. Words erupted from our mouths. It wasnât conversation, exactly. More a series of monologues, with all of us showing off what we knew, what we loved, what turned us on, intellectually speaking. Ideas as sexual foreplay.
HE : What I find interesting about Nathalie Sarraute is that she writes and rewrites what sheâs written in careful analysis of the very language that sheâs used.
SHE : I know what you mean. She lets one line drop and hang there on the page for the momentary experience of the imaginary event.
HE : Totally. Sarraute succeeds in isolating fiction like an island in the stream of the everyday.
SHE : Like, this is true to what Barthes says in his From Work to Text: the status of writing has to undergo a change that radically alters its function in the past from communication of ideas from author to reader. Itâs the linguistic unit of the text that matters. The word. You know?
HE : Right on. Hey, can I have your number?
There were no Braques or Matisses among us, no Joyces or Pounds either. But Paris had identified in us a need to bolster our own frailties with magnificence, with brilliance. We were all going to write a book one day, or create a museum-worthy painting. We really believed it. The bravado of our shared youth made us think it infinitely possible. Most of us just didnât know how to go about it yet, and so we continued to pontificate on the meaning of art, as it related to our own as-yet-to-be-formed lives.
But although we were linked by a belief in Paris as the center of the creative universe, the more we sought out each otherâs company, the more we drifted away from the city, from having a real experience of it. These Thursday-night gatherings were filled with Anglophones, never any French people. Everyone spoke English, myself included. To my shock and dismay, I seemed to have forgotten most of the French I had learned in school. I had dropped it as a course of study after first year university, as it had been hard and I worried the best I would get for all my effort was a B-plus grade. I justified my decision by thinking I would become bilingual after moving back to Paris, where I assumed Iâd speak French with the natives all day along. Wrong. Parisians didnât readily speak with non-Parisians. Besides, I was spending all my time with people from my side of the pond. I spoke English with Danielle, and with Tom, who didnât know one word of French except bonjour, and he pronounced it bum-jewer, making it sound like an insult. Occasionally I went with him to one of his hot-spot assignments, one memorable time being the opening of the nightclub Les Bains Douches, where, weirdly, a child performer wore a gold lamé suit and sang âBlue Suede Shoes ,â but in French. Tom wouldnât have known what the kid was singing if it werenât for the familiar rockabilly beat. But he didnât care. The drinks were on the house, and he ordered one after the other in English. He also spoke English to the taxi driver who drove us back to Rue de Fleurus where, once we were upstairs, he plaintively asked if I would go to bed with him. I said no, the universal word for rejection, and fell asleep on his floor. Later I asked him why he didnât try to speak French, even a little. âWhy bother?â he shrugged. âItâs an English-speaking world.â I saw him, and indeed the rest of us imported Paris-worshippers, as islands of ironic resistance in the French capitalâopen to the myth of Paris as city of art, but closed to its everyday realities, its
HE : What I find interesting about Nathalie Sarraute is that she writes and rewrites what sheâs written in careful analysis of the very language that sheâs used.
SHE : I know what you mean. She lets one line drop and hang there on the page for the momentary experience of the imaginary event.
HE : Totally. Sarraute succeeds in isolating fiction like an island in the stream of the everyday.
SHE : Like, this is true to what Barthes says in his From Work to Text: the status of writing has to undergo a change that radically alters its function in the past from communication of ideas from author to reader. Itâs the linguistic unit of the text that matters. The word. You know?
HE : Right on. Hey, can I have your number?
There were no Braques or Matisses among us, no Joyces or Pounds either. But Paris had identified in us a need to bolster our own frailties with magnificence, with brilliance. We were all going to write a book one day, or create a museum-worthy painting. We really believed it. The bravado of our shared youth made us think it infinitely possible. Most of us just didnât know how to go about it yet, and so we continued to pontificate on the meaning of art, as it related to our own as-yet-to-be-formed lives.
But although we were linked by a belief in Paris as the center of the creative universe, the more we sought out each otherâs company, the more we drifted away from the city, from having a real experience of it. These Thursday-night gatherings were filled with Anglophones, never any French people. Everyone spoke English, myself included. To my shock and dismay, I seemed to have forgotten most of the French I had learned in school. I had dropped it as a course of study after first year university, as it had been hard and I worried the best I would get for all my effort was a B-plus grade. I justified my decision by thinking I would become bilingual after moving back to Paris, where I assumed Iâd speak French with the natives all day along. Wrong. Parisians didnât readily speak with non-Parisians. Besides, I was spending all my time with people from my side of the pond. I spoke English with Danielle, and with Tom, who didnât know one word of French except bonjour, and he pronounced it bum-jewer, making it sound like an insult. Occasionally I went with him to one of his hot-spot assignments, one memorable time being the opening of the nightclub Les Bains Douches, where, weirdly, a child performer wore a gold lamé suit and sang âBlue Suede Shoes ,â but in French. Tom wouldnât have known what the kid was singing if it werenât for the familiar rockabilly beat. But he didnât care. The drinks were on the house, and he ordered one after the other in English. He also spoke English to the taxi driver who drove us back to Rue de Fleurus where, once we were upstairs, he plaintively asked if I would go to bed with him. I said no, the universal word for rejection, and fell asleep on his floor. Later I asked him why he didnât try to speak French, even a little. âWhy bother?â he shrugged. âItâs an English-speaking world.â I saw him, and indeed the rest of us imported Paris-worshippers, as islands of ironic resistance in the French capitalâopen to the myth of Paris as city of art, but closed to its everyday realities, its
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