Paris to the Moon

One of my very favorite reads of all time. Adam Gopnik has a lovely way with words, specifically words that detail everyday, real life. I have found very few writers who have such power to keep me enthralled no matter what the subject matter.

I had the privilege of hearing him lecture a few years back here in Chicago, his topic "The American Dream of Paris." His eloquence astounds me. Hearing him speak only made me wish I could read the book over and over again and forget it each time, so that I would once again have the pleasure of that first read.

The first reason this book was written, I believe, was so the author could impress all us ignorant English speakers with his knowledge of French. Actually, he should have just written this book in French and not annoyed us English speakers at all. The second reason was to greatly impress us with having the most perfect and nauseatingly adorable son ever and to tell us about every minute detail of that adorable son's day-to-day existence! Then, of course, we could all just slap our own children silly for being so entirely ordinary in comparison.

This book is so pretentious, I had trouble getting through the first few chapters, and once I reached his discussion of the variety of different wall plugs that exist in this world (which went on for PAGES), I'd had enough! Anyone who believes themselves to be so self-important that they can pass off the discussion of different wall plugs as great writing, and believes that THIS is the drivel that keeps the readers turning the pages, needs a severe reality check.

He seems to have two tasks here: bragging to the reader how much he knows, and talking about his son. The first is pretentious, difficult to read; the latter is arduous to even skim over, impossible to stomach.

With American twits like this in France, no wonder the French hate us. The writing style was also annoying and jumped from one random thought to another. I

This book was fine, but I didn't particularly enjoy it. I was certainly interested in the subject matter: living in paris, the expat life, culture clashes, etc. But the author's style is rather long-winded and unnecessarily dense; some passages reminded me of esoteric literary criticism I used to have to read in college, not particularly suited to light observational journalism. Perhaps I'm too critical as I just finished a Bill Bryson book of travel essays that were thoroughly entertaining and often LOL funny. I don't mean to say that I didn't like this book at all or that it was totally uninteresting. It just wasn't much fun.

Another thing: Mr. Gopnik often reiterated that New York was really home. He lived in Paris five years, which is certainly long enough think of a place as really home, especially when that's all your child has ever known. So for him to keep reminding us that his real home was in New York and this Paris "experience" was just a temporary experiment, I, as an expat myself, felt this made his "expat" experience seem more like an extended vacation. It's a different mindset when you know that you'll be going back to your "normal" life, home, job, friends after a few years as opposed to leaving nothing behind and having no firm plans to return. I kept wondering if he would have seen and written about Paris differently if he wasn't on a temporary assignment but thought of it as his real, long-term home.

Lastly, it felt very dated. So much of his experience was influenced by his job as a journalist, documenting of-the-moment events. Many times, I'd read something that seemed so off, but then I'd remember that he lived in Paris from 1995-2000. It may not seem like things can be so different in only 10-15 years, but they are.

(3.5) “When they die, Wilde wrote, all good Americans go to Paris. Some of us have always tried to get there early and beat the crowds.” Gopnik, a Francophile and New Yorker writer, lived in Paris for five years in the late 1990s with his wife and son (and, towards the end of their sojourn, a newborn daughter). Like Julian Barnes’s Something to Declare or Geoff Dyer’s Working the Room, this is a random set of essays arising from the author’s experience and interests. By choosing any subject that took his fancy at the time – whether the World Cup, a Nazi war crimes trial, fashion, or gastronomy – Gopnik gleefully flouts conventions of theme and narrative, yet still manages to convey the trajectory of his years in Paris, generally through his young son Luke’s development, as in “He saw, I realized, exactly the way that after five years I spoke French, which also involved a lot of clinging to the side of the pool and sudden bravura dashes out to the deep end to impress the girls, or listeners.”

Gopnik is at his best when writing about food (my favorite of his books is The Table Comes First) and bureaucracy: “The French birth certificate was like the first paragraph of a nineteenth-century novel, with the baby’s parents’ names, their occupations, the years of their births and of their emigration, their residence, and her number, baby number 2365 born in Neuilly in 1999.” It’s interesting to hear about Halloween creeping into France, as it’s also done in the UK. In places, though, this does feel exceptionally dated: relying on a copy shop to do the household bills; David Beckham only being engaged to Posh Spice at the time of a World Cup game. What’s timeless, though, are his insights about the ambivalence of the expatriate experience, which certainly resonated for me:

The loneliness of the expatriate is of an odd and complicated kind, for it is inseparable from the feeling of being free, of having escaped.

There are times, as one reads about the uninsured and the armed and the executed, when French anti-Americanism begins to look extremely rational.

It is soup, beautiful soup, that I miss more than anything, not French soup, all puréed and homogenized, but American soup, with bits and things, beans and corn and even letters, in it.

“We have a beautiful existence in Paris, but not a full life,” Martha said, summing it up, “and in New York we have a full life and an unbeautiful existence.”

I must thank my Goodreads friend Ted Schmeckpeper for passing this book along to me.

I can't say enough positive things about this book. Such intricate descriptions of such small things... you can savor it the way the French would want you to. It's a story of a beautiful life in a far away place-- but Gopnick tells it in a way that makes it so accessible (sometimes even ordinary) that he achieves an intimacy that I have not experienced in most books I've read. He also offers a social lens that is stimulating as well as enlightening.

I purposefully took forever reading this book because I didn't want my trip to France to end!

متاسفانه من این کتاب رو بخاطر اسمش خریدم. چون از بچگی آدم خیال‌بافی بودم و حتی دوست خیالی داشتم فکر میکردم که خیلی میتونه کتاب جالبی برام باشه. به نظرم اصلا ربطی به عنوانش نداشت و جستارهایی در مورد مشکلات و مسائل اجتماعی و سیاسی بود و خیلی برای من خسته‌کننده بود.
به نوعی همانطور که پشت جلد نوشته شده این جستارها شرح احوال و حکایت ما هستند در روزگار
_شلوغی های شهر
_شور و ملال تماشای فوتبال
_ حرافی‌های روی مبل روانکاو
_جهانی‌شدن و واهمه‌هایش
_ترس از فناوری‌های جدید
_پایان دوران طلایی پیاده‌روی
_تاریکی که پیدا نیست از زمان می‌آید یا مکان
_ذائقه‌های جدید و دعواهای قدیمی
_گرفتن گواهینامه برای ماندن در ترافیک

کتاب شامل ۹ جستاره و موضوعات خیلی متنوعی رو شامل می‌شه. تمایزی که نسبت به باقی کتاب‌های جستار نشر اطراف داره، رویه‌ی علمی‌تر و تحلیلی‌ترِ نویسنده در مواجهه با موضوعات کتابه.
مثلا در یکی از جستارها آدام گاپنیک راجع به شکل‌گیری ذائقه‌ی خوراک آدم‌ها حرف می‌زنه و از سه رویکرد مختلف و با نمایندگی سه نویسنده-محقق به موضوع نگاه می‌کنه و جستار خیلی به
essay
شبیهه. یک نیمچه مقاله با رویکردی تحقیقی و تحلیلی.
یا مثلا در جستاری دیگه راجع به نفوذ اینترنت در زندگی ما و تاثیرش بر روان و رفتارهامون صحبت می‌کنه و سه نوع رویکردی که نویسنده-محقق‌های اخیر نسبت به این ماجرا داشتن رو شرح می‌ده و در نهایت قضاوت‌های خودش رو هم می‌گه.

از طرفی جستاری هم راجع به فوتبال توی این کتاب هست که کاملا شخصیه و اتفاقا برای من از جذاب‌ترین‌ها بود و توش نظرشو به عنوان یک آمریکایی -که معمولا عاشق فوتبال آمریکایی یا هاکی یا بسکتبال و بیسبال هستن تا فوتبال معمولی- راجع به فوتبال می‌گه. این که اولش به نظرش ورزش کم هیجان و احمقانه‌ای میومده و تصمیم می‌گیره یکی جام‌جهانی رو کامل ببینه و کم کم از فوتبال خوشش میاد و علت این خوش اومدن رو شرح می‌ده. چه زیبا هم می‌گه! یه جا می‌گه تکنیک‌های طلایی بازیکن‌های فوتبال رو، بازیکن‌های مثلا رشته‌ی هاکی در آمریکا با بسامد خیلی بیشتر انجام می‌دن و اونجا یه امر عادیه، ولی توی فوتبال با یک لایی زدن کل خبرنگارها و فوتبال‌دوست‌ها از خود بی‌خود می‌شن. بعد می‌گه که این اتفاق مثل پرفورمنس آرت‌های این روزها می‌مونه.

«جادوی رونالدو هم شبیه شاعرانگی پرفورمنس‌آرتیست‌هاست: واقعا وجود دارد ولی فقط وقتی که پس‌زمینه‌اش ملالی بی‌حس‌کننده باشد.»

در جستاری دیگه راجع به سرشلوغی نیویورکی‌ها می‌گه. بچه‌ی نویسنده به شکل جالبی دوستی خیالی داره که از لحاظ مشغله‌ی مثل نیویورکی‌هاست. یعنی دختر همش با تلفن با این دوست حرف می‌زنه و بهش می‌گه که کی وقت داری همو ببینیم و بعد دستشو می‌ذاره روی میکروفون گوشی و به مامانش می‌گه: یه جلسه‌ی مهم داره و نمی‌تونیم همو ببینیم.
جدا از این که این اتفاق چقدر عجیبه، نویسنده راج�� به زندگیش توی نیویورک شرح می‌ده و این که فضای مجازی دوست‌های ما رو زیاد کرده و ما وقت نداریم و همش می‌دویم و در نهایت باز هم انتخاب می‌کنیم توی همین شهر بزرگ زندگی کنیم. متنی که برای تهران‌نشین‌ها هم می‌تونه هم‌ذات‌پندارانه باشه.

جستاری راجع به رانندگی یاد گرفتنش‌! باز هم یه جستار بامزه و شخصی از مصائب رانندگی و علت‌های یاد گرفتن رانندگی و تاملاتی که راجع به این مسئله می‌شه داشت.
جای دیگه‌ای از اعتصابات فرانسه می‌گه و در جستاری دیگه راجع به راه رفتن انسان می‌فلسفه.
در جستاری درباره‌ی جغرافیا و شرایطی که بر انسان تحمیل می‌کنه صحبت می‌کنه و این که اصلا این رابطه کدوم طرفه‌س و کدوم علته؟ تاریخ و فرهنگ و جغرافی از چه سمتی به هم مربوطن؟ و در این جستار هم مثل چند مثال دیگه‌ای که زدم از دو یا سه کتاب مهم که به این مسئله پرداختن استفاده می‌کنه و نظریات این کتاب‌ها را رو به روی هم قرار می‌ده و سعی می‌کنه به سنتزی در این مسئله برسه.

جستار اخر هم بسیار زیبا بود و ماجرای تراپی شدنش توسط یک روانکاو فرویدی رو تعریف می‌کرد. شرح جلساتشون و چیزهایی که از این ماجرا دستگیرش شده بود و در نهایت یک پایان آروم. آیا روانکاوی برای ما جواب میاره؟ سوالی که خود نویسنده هم داشت و می‌خواد باهامون در میون بذاره که این جلسات طولانی و گاهی دو یا یه سه بار در هفته چه عایدی‌ای براش داشته. در ابتدا هم مخالف چنین رویکردی در روان‌درمانی بوده ولی در انتها می‌بینیم که همچین هم حق باهاش نبوده.



این مجموعه رو دوست داشتم و از خوندنش لذت بردم. جاهای مختلفی خوندمش. ماجرا اینطوری بود که یه روز صبح تنها بودم و تعطیل بود و گفتم یکم برم دوچرخه سواری. در نهایت به سمت کتابفروشی دی رفتم و دیدم که به‌به، چه قیمت خوبی داره. این هم مسئله‌ی جالبیه که کتاب‌های یک یا دوسال پیش که قیمت‌هاشون اون موقع بالا به نظر میومد، این روزها خوش‌قیمت به حساب میان و با خوشحالی از قفسه‌ها جداشون می‌کنیم.
کتاب رو گرفتم و رفتم ناهار خوردم و همونجا کمی خوندمش. عالی بود.
مکان دیگه‌ای که خوندنش رو برام لذت‌بخش می‌کرد هم کافه بود. کافه‌ای که با الف می‌نشستیم توش و گاهی می‌رفتم طبقه بالا و در کنار قفسه‌های کتابش روی مبل نیمه‌نرمش می‌نشستم و آفتاب میفتاد روم و جستار رانندگی رو اونجا خوندم.

Shallow observational comedy that lacks both humor and observation, full of anecdotes about trying to buy appliances or Christmas tree lights in a new country, coupled with overly-precious tripe about raising a son. Comparing this to "A Moveable Feast" is an insult both to Hemingway and to feasts. Sprinkled in the book is pretentious callbacks to a seminar given by Baudrillard that Gopnik first both mocks and then adopts. There are only so many times I can hear variations on the phrase "There is no Regulon in the Semiosphere," and Gopnik drastically overestimates that number.

I love Paris. I wanted to read a book about loving Paris. This is a book about Adam Gopnik loving himself, in Paris. Hard pass.