French Books and Dirty Looks

I’ve dusted off some French literature that I’ve somehow avoided or missed. I warn you now: I don’t distinguish between prose and comics. If you just don’t want to read anything, I can’t help you, though I have compassion for you. It looks as if I may get to teach in Lacoste, France, this winter. Over the summer I haven’t had much luck learning French. Fortunately, I don’t think I have to be a French master, though I wish I were. There are translations. I confess that I’ve only read translations. I know there are plenty of French books, but for some reason, these all go together in my head.

I enjoyed Balzac’s Père Goriot. The class distinctions of Paris and the grinding elitism of the “one percent” of that time have an eerie resonance with today. Zola’s Germinal also left a lingering impression. The story centers around a Povençal coal mine in the late 1800s and a miners' strike. The fate of the horses used by the miners in that story is chilling.

The title, Germinal, is based on the post-Revolution calendar, by the way. In 1793, with the Revolution under way, the French decided to abandon the Gregorian version and create a new one with the autumnal equinox as the beginning of the new year. Germinal was the seventh month on that calendar and was what would be March 22 to April 20 on the old calendar. Germination occurs in the spring, so it makes sense, right? The revolutionary calendar, designed to correspond more with the Roman Republic, however, was abandoned in 1806. Now, let’s zoom ahead to the twenty-first century.

David B.’s graphic novel Epileptic, published in 2005, has a style and development that might remind you of Marjane Satropi’s Persepolis. David B., in fact, was a major influence on Satropi’s. Epileptic does what a comic can do best: it pushes moments hard and makes them memorable. Epileptic is an autobiographical account of a person growing up with a severely epileptic brother. The more I read these stories the more I want to learn French. Having had a couple of stories of my own translated into other languages, I know that certain elements, even with the best translations, lose some of the nuances. In comics, where the image and the text work together, that can be quite important. It isn’t necessarily a happy story, so don’t go there looking for a big grin.

Here’s another book, Guy Delisle’s Pyongyang: A Journey in North Korea. I didn’t know what to expect when I wandered into this book. Again, it is an autobiographical comic about Delisle’s time spent working with North Korean animators.  I think the book is a great read for a couple of reasons. First, it’s hard to know about North Korea. There’s what the media says about North Korea, of course, but never trust what the media says. Reading the story is a learning experience. One review of the book mentions Delisle’s “cynical compassion.” If you ask, what does this book have to do with France? I’d say that’s it. I think of “cynical compassion” as something French, as opposed to dry cynicism, which is British, or dripping sarcasm, which is American. Of course, those are gigantic generalizations on my part. The second point about this book, however, is compassion. Everything should be viewed with compassion, no matter what it is. That doesn’t mean it has to be good or we have to like it. Part of what we discover, is what we always discover when we explore countries that we love to disparage, that there are people living there, actual people. Of course, Delisle only gets so close to the North Korean’s in Pyongyang. The lack of trust is mutual. Unlike so many of the other books I’ve mentioned so far, Pyongyang uses compassionate humor. It will make you grin. The light caricature and animated style of the art make the book a quick read.

Of course, I’m reading all of these in translation. On another much lighter note is A Year in Provence, written in English by Peter Mayle, a recounting of an English couple that learns French and moves to the Luberon Valley. The events seem to take place in the 1980s and the chapters are months of the year, the regular months that is. The story is quite humorous. Mayle laughs with, not at, the characters there, always an important distinction.

I don’t mean to write a summer reading report, or a review. Others have discussed these works more thoroughly than I. None of these books are new. When was the last time you thought about Balzac? It’s amazing how two hundred year old books can feel contemporary. The more I read these books, the more it becomes obvious that there’s nothing new. Greed and pride and stupidity weren’t invented in the year 2016, though there times I could swear that they were. Compassion and humor have always been around too, though they may be dormant for various periods, under the ground, like cicadas, or coal miners. I hope to try to remember compassion and humor if I make it to France. I’d like a reason to be less cynical. If you want any advice on what to read, take a look at some of these books. Or maybe you’ve already read them and you’re wondering if it’s okay. It is. If you don’t want any advice, fine with me.  Love to all.

Mark