Money and Luxury

The French and money have a strained relationship. They consult each other on occasion, when convenient, but in general they like to keep separate from one another. As for the French, they barely speak of money. The only way to say cheap in French is “not expensive.” A TV show I saw a week ago was a round table discussion about various topics. The first topic was about couples and their finances. The bottom featured the now-familiar scroll, bearing various ominous statistics. 30% of French couples find it difficult to stick to a budget…50% of French couples find it difficult to discuss budgets with one another…94% of French couples discuss money with one another…

That last statistic was remarkable precisely because of its unremarkability. Really? You don’t say? It seems normal to an American, even expected. But this was apparently an interesting, penetrating statistic. My boss, who produced a show called “Taboo”, on the different Taboos of French culture, mentioned that the first taboos they explored was the French taboo of money.

With seemingly mundane facts such as these—the French find it odd to discuss money—you begin to notice other things, and attach a deeper significance to them. What does it really mean that no one drives really nice cars? Renaults and old cars dominate the streets of Paris. Once and a while you’ll see an SLK Mercedes, but nothing like London, where it seems that a Rolls Royce is merely an announcement of keeping pace. To impress in London, you probably have to purchase a hover-craft.

Equally as notable is the lack of clothing hierarchy. In London, for instance, there was a definite clothing hierarchy; you could tell roughly what social position people were in by the clothes. But it seems that the French dress mainly to look cool, which of course they do well. To be honest, I’m not sure how I’d identify a rich French person on the street, whereas this task seems trivially easy for the UK or US. I think I’d have to follow a Frenchman into his house to find out whether he’s rich. But I don’t know what the luxury goods of the French are. How do they display their evident wealth? Do they not feel the need to show off?

What makes the last pair of questions so interesting is that Paris is the international capital of taste. Think of high end clothing designers. What leaps to mind? Louis Vuitton, Dior, Chanel; read: French. That’s all well and good. How about champagne, expensive champagne? Don’t be silly, the very word is French. Food? Paris is probably the food capital of the world too. The intellectual tradition of France is strong, although I’m not acquainted with its present, so I won’t comment on that. The film tradition of France used to be pervasive but seems to have tailed off. Nevertheless, if there’s a field of aesthetic endeavor, the French are at or near the top in almost all of them. Their economy caters to taste, and taste is all about attracting certain elites (from whom the populace has historically gotten their signals from, although this picture has been blurring recently).

The current dominance of French taste is the result of centuries of labor. Ever since Henri IV, who decided to employ the masses of Paris on beautifying it for the nobles, the economy has been based on producing luxuries and aesthetics. So for this reason, it becomes highly strange if the French eschew obvious displays of taste altogether.

Perhaps this is only the reaction of a philistine amongst the chosen ones. Maybe the citizens of Paris have no need to show off because they’re all united in their superior taste. The intended audience of their taste is not other Frenchman, but us, the tourists. They’re doing a good job of it, because what Scrooge doesn’t like at least a little bit of Paris? Someone who not only has no taste but doesn’t care to try. These people don’t exist at all, and so who can fail to be impressed by the taste of the French? The French don’t need to show off anymore.

This present is in opposition to the past. Today, I happened to be blessed with time on my hands. Also, I had lunch. And it was sunny. These three things haven’t been aligned together since the beginning of the quarter. So I ate and wandered in the Jardins de Luxembourg.

It was a great place to eat, and a great place to walk. But something struck me as different, different from other parks. I was sitting in a green metal chair, looking at a statue while I ate a cheesecake (that’s what I had thought I was ordering; the reality was slightly different) and thought about the question. What was so different? It was an elusive answer.

It wasn’t merely that the ornamentation of the park was baroque, that it combined a wild overgrowth with rigid planning. The luxury was there, but still, there was something different. I’ve seen luxury before in a park.

It hit me when I got up from my chair and I saw a large group of French students descend on my chair and the surrounding ones (I had been taking up three—one for me, one for my feet and one for my food—and I guess no one wanted to sit by me.) and arrange them into an oval, so they were talking to each other. The function of a French park is completely different from an English or American park.

If I had been at an American park, I would’ve been sitting on a bench. The same for an English park. (amusing anecdote: with the exception of Hyde Park. There are flotillas of low-slung garden chairs, with canvas backs, the ones that when you sit in them, you recline so far back that you’re almost lying straight back. And these flotillas are completely open all the time. So I sit down, until I’m approached by a guy. “You need to pay” he says. Apparently this is some service that no one is informed of. So I say this and then stamp off without paying—there’s no way I’m paying for a service that I have no idea I’m signing up for).

But, in a French park, all of the chairs are light, movable metal chairs. Furthermore there is a huge surplus of them. The effect is that the park is catering groups of people to socialize. Whereas American and English parks, with their park benches, serve families.

The other important difference in a French park is the pathways. In the Jardin de Luxembourg, they are all curved, creating several interconnected bubbles, with a statue or flowers or both as the centerpiece of each oval bubble. And then that is ringed by grass and still further by those metal chairs. The overall effect is not of the traditional American park, where one is expected to play and expend energy, but of a series of interconnected outdoor living rooms.

All of this is placed in the environment of great luxury and great order. The geometry is well planned out, but you don’t realize it until you make a mental map in your head. Or until you make it to the center of the gardens, near the Musee de Luxembourg. It is a large central clearing. Facing one way, there’s the Musee, a large building in the French style, with those distinctive slanted roofs, bay windows, and emphasis on clean horizontal lines. Facing the other, there are these rows of trees forcing your perspective either towards the outlying avenue or towards the Musee. I became overwhelmed at this point, and wished for a God’s-eye view, so that I could take in the whole intricate geometry all at once.

To connect back to the earlier issue, this is showing off at the highest order. Hyde Park gives off an almost Victorian purity. “Run,” it seems to command. American parks often echo this sentiment. “Be productive.” One remembers that the parks were often founded as a way to give the lower classes a diversion from the drink. A paragon of taste the American parks are not (except, of course, for Central Park). But the French, in their infinite aesthetic vision, decided differently. And who can countermand them? After all, they are able to make a living off of making a good living.

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For the tennis aficionados in the audience: there are hard courts in the Jardins de Luxembourg. The tennis players looked OK, nothing great. Interesting was that no one used a two-handed backhand; everyone favored the one-handed. And considering that the one-handed backhand looks much more beautiful, that seems like a typically French decision.

Also, in terms of recreational activities, there was also a space reserved for petanque, which seems highly similar to bocchi ball. Hilarious was the over-the-top reactions by one bald guy. World War III, I swear. This is coming from a guy who’s fought World War III a few times over himself.

****

“Traiteur Libonais!” or “Traiteur Italien!” screams out at you every few blocks or so. The visual resemblance to “Traitor” is off-putting, but it’s an establishment that actually turns out to serve food. It’s slightly more expensive than a patisserie and less expensive than a restaurant, but pretty good quality. My dictionary gives the definition of “caterer,” but this doesn’t seem quite right. They operate like delis, almost. They serve large amounts and small amounts well, and have tables too.

But what’s most interesting is the proliferation of different small niches. Everyone’s a small-time operator, and very rarely is there a comprehensive store. What might be handled by a trip to Wegmans or Wal-Mart or something in the US would be handled by five different stores in France.

****

There has been a strange invasion of Houston Astros hats in the past few days. This can only be chance.

****

Oh, I finished the Emperor’s Children. It gets better, I guess—the prose gets slightly less awful. But then you begin noticing the dialogue, which is awful. Memo to Claire Messud (who’s been Booker shortlisted so she probably doesn’t give a shit about me): Americans do not refer to cigarettes as fags. This is a very simple error to correct. But this very simple error is emblematic of larger errors; she seems to have a British manner of speaking stuck in her head—the characters speak so formally to each other, and are so stilted! Anyway, some things are interesting in the book, and I finished it oddly quickly for a book with so many flaws. I’d probably be more angry about the experience had I not bought it used.

****

Tomorrow, the semi-finals for rugby. People are excited. I know I am.