“How to be Parisian Wherever You Are” (2014) is a book by Anne Berest, Audrey Diwan, Caroline de Maigret, and Sophie Mas. In addition to stuff on food, fashion, dating, navy blue, and so on, it dishes up sarcasm, snobbery and paradox – which is, according to Berest and her girl gang, part of being a Parisienne. It is both description and specimen at the same time.
Excerpts:
- Everything you do should seem effortless and graceful.
- Be your own knight in shining armor.
- Yes, the Parisienne often comes from somewhere else. She wasn’t born in Paris, but she’s reborn there.
- Paris is a land of exile … the fruit of successive waves of immigration that enrich and enliven the city.
- Josephine Baker didn’t merely adopt French nationality she embraced the heart and soul of the country as well.
- laughing at yourself is better for your health than crying (especially in the absence of any other sport).
- She doesn’t carry an enormous designer bag. But she might have a newspaper under her arm. She might mention Sartre or Foucault in a conversation.
- Give yourself over but don’t give yourself away.
- When it comes to revealing herself, she follows one golden rule: less is definitely more.
- The writer Madeleine de Scudéry … drew a map of an imaginary country called Tenderness. In order to reach the city of Love, one had to pass through several small villages, each one a new step toward winning the heart of one’s beloved. … Even today, the Map of Tenderness lives on subconsciously in the heart of a Parisienne.
- you don’t need anyone else to be happy. But you have to admit that, with him, it’s better.
- Say “The Search” (when referring to Proust’s “In Search of Lost Time”).
- THE BOOKS YOU HAVE READ, LOVED, AND WHICH ARE A PART OF YOUR IDENTITY:
- The Stranger, Albert Camus
- The Elementary Particles, Michel Houellebecq
- Belle du Seigneur, Albert Cohen
- Bonjour Tristesse, Françoise Sagan
- Madame Bovary, Gustave Flaubert
- Foam of the Daze, Boris Vian
- Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov
- The Flowers of Evil, Charles Baudelaire
- Journey to the End of the Night, Louis-Ferdinand Céline
- Swann’s Way, Marcel Proust
- enjoy the face you have today. It’s the one you’ll wish you have ten years from now.
- Take time to take time because nobody else will do it for you. And don’t forget to daydream in the bath, just like when you were little.
- Just because you have only one life doesn’t mean you should be afraid of wasting it.
- Go to bed with all your jewelry on, but having taken all your makeup off.
- Be thankful that you always wear nice lingerie – you never know what might happen.
- France can be separated into two geographical categories: Paris, and the provinces.
- For her, the country[side] is nothing more than the sum of its missing parts. … she likes things natural, but not nature itself. If her cheeks are rosy, it’s only because she’s wearing blush.
- What a joy to find some grace and courtesy in this world of brutes.
– Abagond, 2019.
See also:
- books
- Black France
- also Paris:
- how to be more like:
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well i’ve read 4 of those books, in english of course
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Sweet…a nice starting point for an American such as me that’s been bludgeoned recently by American political claptrap-crap.
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Cultural differences aside, I like what these authors have to say. It sounds like a very good read.
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If you want tone Parisien, stop bathing.
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Being Parisian is overrated.
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Rule#1: continue oppressing África
https://afrolegends.com/2017/05/01/the-11-components-of-the-french-colonial-tax-in-africa/amp/
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It’s true that there is much anti- African oppression in Paris.
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@ Alberto Monteiro
Thanks for sharing that article. It compliments a group of articles I read recently about the CFA franc. The CFA franc is a currency used in 14 African countries.
In one article from the site, Africa is a Country, Senegalese development economist, Ndongo Samba Sylla, lays out the history of the CFA franc and how it is used by France to financially prop itself up at the expense of former African colonies. Sylla also discusses strategies for exiting the CFA franc. The article is a long and deep read.
https://africasacountry.com/2019/07/confronting-monetary-imperialism-in-francophone-africa
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@ Alberto Monteiro
And yet at the same time, despite France’s undeniable colonialism and racism (and burning banlieues), Black Americans in Paris, like James Baldwin, Gordon Parks, and even Ta-Nehisi Coates, say they felt free in Paris in a way that was impossible in the US.
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Abagond, your naïveté never ceases to amaze me. Baldwin et al had the silly notion that ‘racism’ is the main source of evil in the world. As long as white people called them sir and eschewed the crude behavior they were used to they returned the favor by not inquiring too deeply into French practices. one Black American expat who didn’t go along with the gag was William Gardner Smith.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Gardner_Smith
The article Monteiro links to commits two errors in the following paragraph: “For historical comparison, France made Haiti to pay the modern equivalent of $21 billion from 1804 till 1947 (almost one century and half) for the losses caused to french slave traders by the abolition of slavery and the liberation of the Haitian slaves.”
1) France didn’t make Haiti pay $21 billion. They demanded 150 million gold francs, and threatened a naval blockade if it was not paid. Haitians had made preparations for such threat by building several forts under the leadership of Dessalines and Christophe, but they were no longer in charge when baron Mackau showed up on the shores of Haiti. The will to resist had dissipated under the the leadership of Pétion and Boyer. Boyer willingly agreed to pay. He and Pétion were members of the French force sent by Napoleon to overthrow Louverture and restore slavery.
2) “Haitian slaves” is an oxymoron since the whole point of founding Haiti was to prevent Napoleon from restoring slavery on the territory.
Africans followed the ‘Haitian’ model for the same reason Boyer did. “… because most of the Francophone leaders were trained in France; sometimes they even had seats in the French parliament; and those elites would afterwards rule the newly independent African countries…”
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