Okay.That was easy...I loved it♥

اولین جستارخوانی رسمی من :))
عالی بود.تا به حال نشده بود از کتابی همزمان درس بگیرم و حس کنم چقدر به تفکرات من نزدیکه (نمیخوام اغراق کنم،بخش هایی از کتاب بود که از سطح دانش من بالاتر بود اما بازمممم تونسته بود بره داخل ذهنم و زیر و بم همه چیز رو دربیاره)
نویسنده به شکلی بی طرف،تمام جبهه ها رو قضاوت میکنه.پارادوکسه...کل زندگی پارادوکسه.اگه این قضاوت ها نباشه که "من" وجود نداره.
کلام دیگه ای نیست.جز اینکه این کتاب رو بخونید.

فصل های موردعلاقه ام:
صندلی راننده/مرد به دکتر مراجعه میکند

فصل دشوار کتاب:
چهره ها،جاها،فضاها

پی نوشت:ممنون از کسی که با این کتاب من رو با این سبک نوشتار آشنا کرد

The already huge number of books that are personal memoirs by Americans and Brits living in France is ever growing. Typically, these are written by women and involve a lot of observations and comparisons about French fashion, etiquette, and cuisine. Adam Gopnik, a New York journalist who lived with his wife and small son in Paris, 1995-2000, covers these topics also, but his essays not only have a more analytical and intellectual tone than most, but they also cover several cultural differences that most women do not address. The title to Gopnik's book comes from a 19th-century engraving (he includes a picture of at the book's start) showing some Parisians waiting to board a train that will follow a track that rises through the sky to the moon above. To me, this suggests that Parisians may be traditionalists, but that they also have a spirit of adventure. Gopnik doesn't shy away from grittier aspects of modern-day Paris, including the fact that the banlieuor surburbs are populated largely by North African and other minority immigrants, that violence there is pandemic, and the police have all but disappeared. On a lighter note, he writes about the joy of taking his toddler son Luke to the Jardin de Luxembourg, where they see the cirque d'hiver, a real organ grinder, and ride the carousel where Luke can literally grab for the brass ring. (Of course, videocassettes from friends in New York introduce Luke to Barney--exactly what his parents wished to avoid--and soon Luke and his group of young French friends all adore the purple dinosaur.) "Whereas the French think they're superior by birth, Americans think they're invulnerable by right" (27), Gopnik states. He describes how ridiculously difficult it is to find a decent apartment in Paris. "What is hidden away elsewhere (like, say, adulteries) are all out in the open here; while things that are all out in the open elsewhere are hidden away here (like, say, the way you get an apartment)" (27). Another difference in attitude is phone and parking etiquette. "Parisians love phones, but don't use answering machines the way Americans do to screen calls. “If you call people and they're home, they answer. They have the same law-abiding approval to these calls that Americans have to parking. You park where you're supposed to park, whereas people in Paris will park anywhere" (56). He notes the gaunt, Gallish figure of Père Noël compared to the jolly, fat American Santa Claus, and is bewildered that French Christmas tree lights must be dropped on to the tree like a lasso, "Roy Rogers style." "If the continued existence of Christmas tree light garlands, even though they're obviously impractical compared with strings, is proof of the strength of cultural difference, their ability to get themselves tangled is proof of cultural universality" (92). When American Halloween comes to Paris, Gopnik observs that "the essentially creepy necrophile nature of the holiday, invisible to Americans, was harder to hide from the French" (93). He noticed that at a Halloween party in Paris, the French kids "just didn't get it." He compares two cultures' attitude toward retirement. "In France, there is no retirement anxiety, the feeling that if you stop working, you stop living. . . . and no great Florida-style gulags for the elderly. Old people in Paris are out and about like everyone else. The humilations visited on old people in America--dressed up like six-year-olds in shorts, t-shirts and sneakers imploding with rage--are not common here. The romance of retirement is strong" (72). Gopnik's essays that analyze haute couture and haute cuisine, are, in my opinion, slightly less interesting, although I did appreciate his point that soups in France are nothing but luscious purées, and that he longed for American-style soups with lots of bits of recognizable things floating in them--"beans and corn and even letters" (96). His point that quality cuisine is slowly disappearing from France because of the invasion of American fast food is a sobering one. Also, his research about the history and appeal, past and present, of the famous cafes, the Brasserie Lipp, the Deux Magots, and the Café de Flore is impressive. Gopnik devotes an entire chapter to the convoluted process of getting into and researching at the Bibilothèque Nationale. He also pays the obligatory tribute to France's excellent (and virtually free) health care system. "There are times one reads about the uninsured and the armed and the executed when French anti-Americanism begins to look extremely rational" (258). Another essay examines the ridiculous process of trying to get a American-style gym membership in Paris, where the theory seems to be that two gym visits per month are more than enough. "The absence of the whole rhetroic and cult of sports and exercise is the single, greatest difference between daily life in France and daily life in America" (65). French women are confident that all weight problems can be solved by lotions, he says. "Exercise is considered a last resort" (65). (Actually, we know that French women are, on the average, 20 pounds lighter than us American women, not because of any lotions, but because they eat more intelligently). As for Americans jogging in Parisian parks past statues of French literary luminaries, Gopnik notices, "The trouble was that the great men seemed to look out disdainfully from their pedestals at the absurdity of Americans running today in order to run more tomorrow. Get drunk instead, Baudelaire seemed to counsel, intelligently, with his scowl" (305). When Gopnik's wife Martha becomes pregnant with their second child, another cultural difference becomes evident. ""In New York, pregnancy . . . is a medical condition that, after proper care by people in white coats and a brief hospital stay, can have a 'positive outcome.' In Paris, it is something that has happened because of sex, which, with help and counsel, can end with your being set free to go out and have more sex. In New York, pregnany is a ward in the house of medicine. In Paris it is a chapter in a sentimental education, a strange consequence of the pleasures of the body" (301). After their daughter is born, and Gopnik notices he has become an embarassment to five-year-old Luke (an immigrant dad who speaks French with an accent), the family decides to head back to life in New York City. Martha later sums up the basics of the cultural difference she now notices. "I've had a beautiful existence in Paris, but not a full life, and in New York we have a full life and an unbeautiful existence" (336).

A very uneven book - some essays are excellent, heartfelt, incisive, clever - others are smug, condescending, boring - the book does not ultimately come together as a unified whole. And, in the end, I just don't entirely trust Gopnik - in some of his other New Yorker essays when he touches on subjects about which I have some in-depth knowledge (such as C.S. Lewis, Christianity etc.), I often find he leaps to unwarranted and seemingly pre-determined conclusions - and so I am skeptical (perhaps unfairly so) of some of his judgments and evaluations in Paris to the Moon.

Love, love, love! Adam Gopnik is my language hero. This book is important for really having a sense of the piscine before reading Life of Pi. Prompted desire to visit public pools in Paris; and appreciation for NYT article about public pools in New York City last summer...perhaps less applicable to any inspiration-potential regarding public pools in Raleigh, NC.

What a priviledged crank. His recent column in the New Yorker about eating locally makes me glad that he is aware of the effects of the world around him but he doesn't seem to appreciate so much of what he has. He was involvement in the bistro takeover and the gym were the highlights of the book, with his difference as the American, but really were these the only times he actually did anything in Paris, other than go to the carousel with son and eat out? I want the New Yorker to sponsor me to live in Florence for five years! I would probably enjoy meeting him as he is very entertaining but he's a lot of work.

I really liked reading this book. Gopnik is a wonderful writer, he still writes frequently for The New Yorker, and is always worth reading.

Mostly the chapters could be read at random. There is a progression in them as his son Luke ages from one year old to six (1995-2000), and thus grew from a toddler to a youngster in Paris (there were a few visits back to the States). In some chapters Gopnik's family, especially his son, play major roles (see particularly the delightful chapter The Rookie). In most their role is minor or almost non-existent.

Some of the incidents and episodes are hilarious. Two I remember are the adventures he has in signing up for a gym membership, and his description of the Bibliotheque Nationale, where Gopnik actually wanted to do research, as well as just look around. The former deserves an extended quote (from the chapter The Rules of the Sport). Gopnik at first has no luck at all finding anything like the gyms Americans frequent.

Finally, someone suggested a newly opening "New York-style" gym, which I'll call the Regiment Rouge ... One afternoon Martha and I walked over ... At the top of a grand opera-style staircase ... were three or four fabulously chic young women in red tracksuits - the Regiment Rouge! - that still managed to be fairly form-clinging. The women all had ravishing long hair and lightly applied makeup. When we told them we wanted to abonner - subscribe - one of them whisked us off to her office ... (she told us) they had organized a special "high intensity" program in which ... you could visit the gym as often as once a week.
... though she had a million arguments ready for people who thought that when it came to forme, once a week might be going overboard, she had nothing at all ready for people who thought once a week might not be forme enough ... (we told her that) some New Yorkers ... arranged to go to their health club every morning before work. She echoed this cautiously ... They rise from their beds and exercise vigorously before breakfast? Yes, we said weakly. That must be a wearing regimen, she commented politely.
... then she said wonderingly, "Ah, you mean you wish to abonner for an infinite number of visits?" ... she arrived at a price for an infinity of forme ... She opened dossiers for both of us; you can't do anything in France without a dossier opened on your behalf.
... A few days later I went back again to try to use the gym, but ... I was stopped by another of the girls in red tracksuits ... it was necessary that one have a rendezvous with a professeur. When I arrived the next day for my rendezvous, the professeur - another girl in a red tracksuit - was waiting for me ...
"Aren't we going to demonstrate the system of the machines?" I asked.
"Ah, that is for the future. This is the oral part of the rendezvous, where we review your body and its desires," she said. If I blushed, she certainly didn't.

(The equally funny description of the Bibliotheque appears in the chapter Lessons From Things.)

This is really a must-read if you, an American, find yourself posted to Paris (or elsewhere in France) for an extended period of time.

On the cover of Paris to the Moon, Alain de Botton lauds the work as "the finest book on France in recent years," but of course he can't say why in the space of that sentence. Paris to the Moon may be the finest expatriate book of recent years, and it's a worthy update of the American-moves-to-Paris trope of which Hemingway makes up the cornerstone.

Adam Gopnik is a writer's writer, and a thinker's writer. Every inch of this book betrays careful attention to detail, editorial prowess, and the calculated pacing of a writer who knows what it's like to read a beautifully told story. Best of all are the observations. It's funny that de Botton's review is on the front page, because as a (Swiss? Switzerman? - a man from Switzerland), he's not exactly in the innate position to judge a narrative based almost entirely on the idea of a North American transplant to France.

The meatiest parts of the book (and to my mind, the best) are the areas in which he attempts to explicate and label the vague sense of "foreign-ness" the French feel for Americans and the Americans feel for the French. He notes that each country has some sort of cultural affinity blended with animosity for the other, but that the basis for these contrasting sentiments is rather unclear. That's where Gopnik shines - pinning down the myriad ways in which issues which could face us all are handled differently by each culture.

Take, for example, the hilarious bit about the magazine fact-checker. The French interviewees in the story are mystified and somewhat aghast that a publication should check their facts. Gopnik hits on the realization that to the French, facts are what theories are to Americans - imagine, if you will, a "theory checker" following up on interview subjects in the US. If the French are surprised at being held to the letter of their factual assertions, Americans would be equally surprised to be held to the logic of their theories.

That's just one example of careful surveying and exploration of cultural differences between our two nations. I picked up this book as a new parent expecting to hear an awful lot about raising a small child in a foreign land, but enjoyed it as a reader and student of history, because the place figures in this book far more than the characters.

My husband and I decided to be appropriately literary on our last trip to Paris -- he took Hemingway, I took this book because I love travel memoirs. The basic premise is that Gopnik, a writer for the New Yorker, flees to Paris with his family to save his young firstborn from the insidious influence of Barney the dinosaur.

It's well written, more complicated sentence structure than my usual vacation reading but engrossing. It travels an arc beginning with successfully conveying his naivete about the French and ending with his acknowledgement that he now understands very little about the French but more than when he started. It was a lovely accompaniment to a trip in which I think we learned a teeny bit more about the French, or at least about their obsession with reservations for lunch. It would also be a different, more sophisticated choice for an armchair traveller.

I love Paris, I love this book, reading it made me want to climb into a baguette-shaped rocket and shoot to the moon in it

"هیچکس برایش مهم نیست! آدم‌ها مشکلات خودشان را دارند! اشکالی ندارد. معنی‌اش این نیست که تو نباید کارت را انجام دهی؛ معنی‌اش این است که باید آن را، یک جورهایی، محض خودش و بدون هیچ خیال باطلی انجام دهی. صرفا بنویس، صرفا زندگی کن و خیلی به خودت اهمیت نده. هیچ کس برایش مهم نیست. همه اش سربه‌سر گذاشتن است."

Enjoyed this more and more as it went on. I've always like Gopnik, but early in this book, he seems overly fixated on sounding clever, which is unnecessary—he's naturally clever. As the book progresses, his tone is more relaxed and funny. Also, it begins as a series of (fairly disjointed) essays, but knits together nicely later when he spends more time on his family and personal experiences in Paris.

This is a Did-Not-Finish book.

I recently vacationed in Paris and was looking for a good menoir. This was a slow start snd it never engaged me. The book began with an academic overview of how Americans perceive the French and why we desire to live there, but it was a weakly developed explanation.

There are other books about French expats that are worth the read. This is not one of them