Time for Dinner

“The lady is a tramp...She gets too hungry for dinner at eight.” So sang Sinatra. If the lady in question were a tourist in France, her “tramp” status would be hard to maintain. She would have to wait for dinner at eight. Most restaurants don’t even open their doors until 7:30. Even that time is approximate. On a recent visit to Marseille we showed up punctually. Initial signs looked promising. Other diners were already seated. Closer inspection revealed that this was the staff. They were enjoying their own dinner, in no hurry for customers to come through the door. Faced with two different signals, a written one which said that the restaurant opened at 7:30, and a live tableau which said, “7:30 really means closer to 8:00” we opted to follow the latter. Returning, after a leisurely 20 minute walk around the port we were the first arrivals.

Even if the doors really opened at 7:30, being “too hungry for dinner at eight” would remain a problem. Service is relaxed and cooking takes time. This is disconcerting for Americans who always hear the clock ticking. Such habits can only lead to frustration for visitors to France. A good meal involves waiting. Waiting, first for the server, often there is only one, to approach and take orders. Then, waiting for the appetizer to be prepared. Then, well the pattern is pretty obvious. In an unexpected twist, the server does not even hurry along the check. This would be rude to guests. Often, it is the clients who have to ask for the bill. There is certainly no question of someone swooping down and taking away the plate of one diner while the others are still eating. This abusive custom, signalling “we just want to maximize lucrative efficiency by moving people in and out as quickly as possible” is so prominent in the U.S. that its impoliteness often goes unnoticed. Dining in France definitely does not represent what Americans would call an efficient maximizing of time. Heaven forbid restauranteurs should be seen as trying to move as many people as possible through the dining area to maximize profits. We have even been refused entry into what was an empty restaurant. Very sorry, says the maitre d’, but all our tables are reserved. What he means is that, although it is 7:30 now, at 9:00 the tables will be all taken. Letting us in might mean that a table would still be occupied at 9:00. There is no question of letting that happen.

The whole intersection of time and food famously marks a significant difference between the U.S. and France. There are cultural markers for the differences. One was the 1950s game show “Beat the Clock.” Contestants had to perform challenging tasks as a large clock ticked off the seconds. Time, it symbolically said, was something to be occupied by frenetic activity. A city favored by Sinatra, Las Vegas offers another important symbol. There, the natural cycles that were the original markers of time have mostly been obliterated. 24/7 is the rule 365 days a year. Day and night do not matter. Nor do the seasons. The notion of limits, patterns or cycles that depend on the natural order of things has been overridden. Not surprisingly, the city is renowned for its “all you can eat” buffets.

In such a setting, agricultural practices that serve as the base of any culture (itself an agricultural word) are ignored. The farmer must pay attention to nature’s own measures of time. Day and night, along with the seasons, do matter. Life must adjust to a chronology dictated by something other than human will. When cultivation and growth of foodstuffs can be ignored, when money is earned simply by exchanging money, then thinking solely in terms of clock time rather than nature’s time becomes possible.

Most of us have not gone so far as Las Vegas in forgetting our natural setting. We still retain some sense of the agricultural cycles. We can imagine a world which at least has pockets when “beat the clock” is not a preoccupation. The leisurely pace of evening then becomes something to be welcomed. An an oncoming temporal expanse, it can be viewed as a gift. As a gift, it is meant to be savored, not seen as a constraint within which as many tasks as possible have to be accomplished.

Disappearing Smokes

Tobacco and thought go together. At least, they once did. Solving a crime, without his pensive pipe, would have been impossible for Sherlock Holmes. How many French philosophy books would have remained unwritten without smoke-filled cafés ? Still, times change. Now it is sickess and smoking that go together. Gone are the role models with pipes in their mouths or nicotine stained fingers. Gone also, even here in France, are the smoke-filled cafés. Outlawed also are advertisements for tobacco products.

Sometimes, though, good intentions have unintended consequences. In their zeal to uphold the advertising law, or, more likely, in their fear of lawsuits, some individuals have pictorially altered history. In 1996, 20 years after his death, a stamp was issued to honor André Malraux, the author and former minister of culture. A famous photo was used. Those familiar with it noticed a particularity. Something was missing. When the photo was taken, Malraux had just about finished a cigarette. Its remaining centimetres, in the original, were still obviously clamped between his lips. Through the magic of photo alteration, the postage stamp Malraux morphed into a model tobacco-free individual.

Malraux’s contemporary, the philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre, consumed avidly things that were not great for his health : barbituates, pipe tobacco, alcohol of all sorts and, of course, cigarettes. Rarely were mouth or hand free of some instrument for smoking tobacco. Yet, in publicity photos for an exhibition devoted to him by the French National Library, a new Sartre appears, one whose lips and hands are tobacco-free. The malign product, à la the Malraux stamp, had been photoshopped out of existence. This time the result was somewhat clumsy. The erasure is glaring. Sartre’s right hand, positioned around a cigarette, now seems strangely contorted.

One way to avoid publicizing tobacco without deletions is simply to ban tobacco-including photos altogether. That is what happened to a publicity poster for a movie released last Wednesday, a biography of Coco Chanel. The film’s publicists released a picture of Audrey Tautou playing Chanel. She is luxuriating in bed, cigarette in a carefully posed hand. This was too much for the Paris subway authorities. The photo was simply banned. Others posters, tobacco-free to be sure, reluctantly supplied by the film’s promoters, now adorn the corridors of Paris’s public transportation system.
Of the various ways to alter visual history, perhaps the clumsiest involved the alteration of photos for a retrospective celebrating the films of Jacques Tati. Tati was a sort of 1950s Mr. Bean. He played an unflappable sort, someone whose customs and habits belonged to an earlier era. Sweet, innocent comedy resulted from this befuddlement at the new world. His most famous creation was a character named Mr. Hulot. Hulot is immediately recognizable because of his trademarks : trench coat, umbrella and pipe. Yes, horror of horrors, in 1958 Mr. Hulot smoked a pipe. Indeed, Mr. Hulot would just not be himself without the pipe.
What to do with the publicity photos for the 2009 retrospective? Go the Malraux and Sartre route and photoshop the pipe out of existence ? Find a photo of Mr. Hulot without a pipe, Audrey Tautou style ? Neither, it turns out. In what has to be the worst of all choices, the picture has been altered by adding something. The pipe’s stem remains what it alway was. In place of the bowl at the stem’s end there now stands a colorful pinwheel. Yes, a pinwheel. One has to wonder whether the designers of the revised image meant to make a mockery of the whole photo-alteration enterprise. Whether they did or not, that is the result.

The most famous "pipe that's not really a pipe" came from the paintbrushes of René Magritte. In the late 1920s he exhibited a canvas depicting a smoker’s pipe. Underneath are the words, “this is not a pipe.” Magritte wanted to prod reflection on the relation between art and reality. The recent “pinwheel-means-this-is-not-a-pipe” alteration could serve to prod a similar reflection, this time about tensions between public health and historical reality.

Roman Remains

“There is as much history underground as there is above ground.” So, our Avignon tourist office guide informed us. This year Avignon commemorates the event that has marked its history more than anything, the arrival, in March 1309, of the first pope. Six more were to follow. The move of the pope from Italy was not the move of a single individual. A retinue of cardinals followed. Being in proximity to the pope meant being in proximity to power, after all. For Avignon, the result was a 14th century urban renewal of sorts. The existing structures, many wooden and typical of the earlier centuries, were razed. Room had to be made for the new sumptuous homes of the new elite. Whatever vestiges of the Roman city that had thrived on the banks of the Rhone were now put to a new use: they became quarries as the stones that once marked Roman greatness became building materials for the city’s new rich and powerful.

Unlike Nimes with its intact Roman arena or cities like Orange and Lyon in which there are still recognizaable Roman legacies, Avignon is left with about a dozen random pieces gathered together on a street corner near the opera house (see picture above). Developing its power as a new (papal) Rome, Avignon lost its heritage as descendant of (imperial) Rome.

That’s too bad because one treat of visits to France is the ability to touch the Roman inheritance. A memorable moment for me involves what is essentially a trench. It is found near the Cathedral in Narbonne. Within the trench: an uncovered section of the Via Domitia, Rome’s first road in France. It stretched from Spain to Italy. Parts of today’s French highway system retraces sections of the Via Domitia. The movement of information has always been important, and, well before our wireless networks moving through the air, there was something more tangible: a system of roads.

The engineering prowess of the Romans is not just well-known. It is still widely feted. One of the towns near our village has “Roman” in its name, Vaison la Romaine. It is also home to a bridge built in the first century. Wherever one goes in this area one hears the story of the 1992 flood, a devastating one that killed over 30 people. The swollen river, loaded with mud and debris tended to take down everything in its path. Not the Roman bridge, however. Even 2 millenia after its construction, it held fast against the ravages of the flood.
When we visited the nearby Abbaye of Senanque, our guide insisted on its Roman roots. She pointed overhead to some stones in the vault that had shifted during an earthquake. The Abbey, founded in 1148, survived the earthquake with no major damage. Why? The guide explained that the people who designed it had studied, and copied, Roman building techniques. Not surprisingly, the lovely, graceful and peaceful architecture of the 11th and 12th centuries is known as “Romanesque.”
The most important Roman legacy is Europe itself, at least as a necessary, though not a sufficient condition. From England to Romania the contours of Western Europe are those of Rome. Intellectually, Europe is also the descendant of Rome, but with important intervening steps. The part of the Roman Empire that is the Europe we know was first touched by medieval Scholasticism and its emphasis on reason as correlative to religion. This opening fostered universities and eventually, two more defining moments for shaping European identity, the Reformation and the Enlightenment. Some of the better distinguishing marks of European identity are the result: liberal ideals, republican governments, tolerance, economic prosperity. In those parts of the old Roman empire where the subsequent movements were lacking, counter-reformation Spain for example, or north Africa, the cultural benefits were either delayed or are only tangentially present. Ultimately, the communication network made up of roads led to the communication networks made up of books , scientific inventiveness and reforming ideas. This legacy makes the trench uncovering the Via Domitia a site worth preserving.

School Food

It was the best of cuisines. It was the worst of cuisines. Apologies to Dickens, but these modifications of his famous opening have traditionally told a culinary tale of two cities, Paris and London. Over the last several decades, things have changed somewhat. England has some celebrity chefs who have brought good cuisine to the kingdom. One, Jamie Oliver, has even spearheaded a campaign to transform that area famous for tasteless food: the school cafeteria. Not only was the food bad, but downright unhealthy. At least that was the case before Oliver began to exhort his compatriots in favor of healthy eating. His exhortations bore fruit, so to speak. School dining was nutritionally improved.

But stereotypes and ingrained habits die hard. Instead of being grateful, many pupils rebelled. There were boycotts of the new food. Why? Students preferred the older fare. Why eat vegetarian pizza, barbeque pork, fish, broccoli, salad, and fruit, when the memory of and taste for chicken nuggets, and fish and chips remained fresh? One British newspaper noted that demand for school lunches had dropped by 20% after the kitchen reforms were enacted.

Parents got into the act as well. Surprisingly, they intervened on the side of the “worst” cuisine. The new policy, some said, provided their children with overpriced food, “low-fat rubbish.” Wanting to be good parents, defined obviously as giving their children whatever they want, the adults circumvented the school fare by hand-delivering the high fat convenience food preferred by their offspring. Like deprived prisoners the youngsters reached through the school fence, eagerly grasping the familiar fare.

On this side of the channel, there have recently also been school-cafeteria boycotts and protests. These, though, have tended to lean in the “best of cuisines” direction. The boycotts and demonstrations were tame fare compared to the occupation of factories, keeping bosses locked in their offices, and mass street demonstrations that afflict the industrial sector in France. Typically the cafeteria-related protests were accompanied by a demand for meetings with local officials and a specific list of sought-after reforms.

Last November in nearby Pernes La Fontaine students simply refused to eat the cafeteria food. Unlike the British students, this was not an “I want my fish and chips” boycott. The problem was simply taste. Main dishes still partly frozen and unripened, hard fruits were the primary complaints. School officials explained that, because the cafeteria was undergoing renovations, food had to be brought in by an outside contractor. The boycotting students got to meet with the mayor and the town official in charge of education. Things have been quiet since then.

More recently, in Marseille, parents and students organized a protest picnic under the leadership of a group called, for some reason unknown to a foreigner like myself, “gathering of squash” (les courges associées). They too were complaining about cafeteria food. The nutritional value was okay, they admitted. The problems are (1) it tastes bad, and (2) things could even be better. Specifically, they asked for more local and organic items on the menu. Right now our children have to put up with “industrial eating” said one of the parents. For an alternative meal they had brought some pan bagnats, fruits, and salads.

Both the British and the French cases indicate the importance of habits and proper habituation if nutritious and delicious eating is going to be the rule. One commentator writing in response to the Jamie Oliver campaign said blithely “most children are able to distinguish between 'healthy' and 'unhealthy' diets from an early age.” Such a claim ignores two important dimensions. First, humans are creatures of habit, and habits have to be cultivated. They cannot be magically willed into existence, even if, rationally, someone is able to distinguish between healthy and unhealthy diets. Second, the impact of advertising on children cannot be ignored. It is this social force, rather than the family, which too often is the most important shaper of habits in children.

Jamie Oliver, representing the “best of cuisines” can only hope that the next generation of parents will succeed in instilling healthy eating habits. The “gathering of squash” group in Marseille appears to be there already. Hopefully, they will continue to succeed in keeping the “worst of cuisines” at bay.

Bonjour, Human Being

Many years ago as a student in Switzerland, I approached a clerk and asked where to find something. The clerk looked up, paused, and said “Bonjour,” letting me know that human beings don’t just blurt out questions to one another. First, there is an acknowledgement of common humanity. This is signaled by a polite greeting. Bonjour always comes first. Then comes whatever question is at issue. Each time we cross the Atlantic my wife reminds me to set aside my American “cut to the chase,” “it’s just business,” “speed it up” attitude. This should be exchanged for the more Europe-appropriate etiquette that recognizes others, not just as instruments serving a particular function, but as fellow human beings. As a special reinforcement, the guidebook we brought with us this time even includes the following advice: “In shops, be prepared to say bonjour before asking what you want, then merci when you receive your change, and au revoir, bonne journée when you depart.”

Still, even armed with such reminders, old habits die hard. Several days ago, I found myself at an information desk in an Avignon bookstore. The person in front of me asked about a book and the clerk dutifully checked the store’s computer. Then, it was my turn. “What about this book, "I asked, giving author and title. Pause. A look right in the eye from the clerk: “Bonjour, Monsieur.” Ouch. I had done it again; violated a simple rule of courtesy. Clerks are persons, not just objects serving a function.

It’s a hard habit to break. After all, I’m from a culture where even clerks might find it annoying to waste their time with a greeting. Getting directly to the issue at hand is simply more convenient and efficient. Besides in the U.S. the customer is always right and it is the worker (bank teller, post office clerk, department store salesperson, check-out person) who is always to be complained about. Between the American shopping place where a polite greeting is not only expendable but a kind of time-wasting annoyance and the European one in which person-to-person recognition of common humanity is absolutely essential, there is a great gap. Habituated in the former, it’s hard to adjust to the latter.

The gap was not always so great. When I returned from my year as a student in Switzerland, my main concern was finding a summer job. First stop: the local factory and its personnel office. Today, “personnel” offices have all but disappeared. They have been replaced by something called the office of “human resources.” Iron ore is a resource. Lumber, tin, bauxite and granite are resources. Brought into a factory, they serve perfectly good instrumental functions. There is no need to spend any time greeting them. How did it happen, how did we allow it to happen, how exactly did persons come to be dropped into the category of resources? “Personnel,” is a perfectly fine word for the working men and women who make an enterprise function. It brings with it a special advantage, reminding us that we are dealing with persons. How do we define persons? Individuals who deserve a “good morning” or a “hello” as a first form of contact.

Strawberry Festival

In mid-March our fruit vendor began promising “local strawberries soon.” The ones on offer thus far had been Spanish. It turns out that the general area hereabouts, the Comtat Venaissin, is a sort of strawberry fields forever. Well, not forever. It’s only been since the late 19th century, and it only lasts for a brief time in early Spring. Before the late 1800s, silk worms and a red-dye producing plant, garance in French and “madder” in English, were major agricultural enterprises. (The red coats of British soldiers fighting in the American revolution were colored with a madder-produced dye). With the rise of synthetic substitutes, the need for silkworms and madder dropped significantly. What to do? Someone thought of planting strawberries. The area now supplies about 4% of French consumption.

The berries produce early. They have varietal names like garriguette, ciflorette, pajaro, (the “Carpentras Strawberry,”) and nayad. Nature is typically loaded with such diversity. It seems to disdain single versions of anything. This problem of the “one and the many” has occupied thinkers for a long time. Plato formulated the issue in his “theory of Forms.” There are many varieties (of strawberries, grapes, apples etc.). We can still identify them as part of single families. They are many yet they are one. The only way Plato could express this was to say that it seemed as if there were a “Form” for each family. That template then served as the model for individuals who exemplify it in various ways. None of the instantiations match the blueprint perfectly, an impossible feat since the Form contains all of what differentiates each variety from the next.
When it comes to judging quality, we often make a similar move, but this time identifying one variety as the ideal. We, who live normally in upstate New York, tend toward the wild strawberry that grows in the Adirondack mountains as our exemplar. It is low to the ground, small, red, full of juice with a special sweetness. This Adirondack strawberry has practically nothing in common with its gigantic, much dryer, much less flavorful, cousin found on supermarket shelves in February.

If we refer to the Adirondack Strawberry as “A” and the February grocery store one as “F,” then we have a sort of quality continuum. Where do the Comtat Venaissin strawberries fall? Thus far, the variety we have sampled, ciflorette, rates a sort of B/B+. The berries are full of natural sugars and have a texture and ripeness that move them close to “A.” Some are quite large, have a crown that is white, and a kind of empty center when opened. These traits all tug toward “F.” Not too far along this way, but enough to keep them one step removed from the Adirondack exemplar.
We got our first real taste of the local produce last Saturday when nearby Carpentras held its annual Fête de la Fraise. The previous week, asking about the festival, we had been told “Oh there are booths all around town.” The actual festival turned out to be one rectangular set of tables. Staffing the tables were various vendors and exhibitors. Strawberries abounded. There were also wines, candies, chocolates, syrups and preserves. A flowing fountain of warm chocolate was available for dipping. Strangely, when the exhibitor running the fountain handed out chocolate covered goodies, it was marshmallows, not strawberries, that he favored.

The Fête began with a ceremony during which two important guilds, that of strawberries and that of wine, held a joint event. They celebrated the “marriage” of local berries with local rosés. This was a colorful event. Participants were dressed in fruit-appropriate red and green. The afternoon was marked by a demonstration on how candied strawberries are made, samplings of crêpes, pastries, candies and the chocolate fountain. The “swinging uncles” (les tontons swingueurs) provided dixieland jazz accompaniment. One tall creature, (the “good fairy”?) circulated, waving her strawberry wand to bring good wishes and good luck to those assembled.

The stars of what is after all a marketing event were the fruits themselves. If there is a Platonic Form for strawberry one of its definite components is flavor. Indeed, the French name “fraise” is a cognate of “fragrance.” That’s lovely and it leaves an English speaker with the question: How does straw figure in the Form of this fruit?

Illegal Hospitality

A recent heartwarming television news story was about a rabbi. He joined a humanitarian interfaith mission into Gaza. His appearance at the border caused no small amount of consternation. Lower level Hamas guards were puzzled. An hour later the police chief arrived, assuring the visitors that he was there personally to guarantee their safety. After all, they were guests.

From a different war-torn part of the world, former Navy Seal Marcus Luttrell’s book offers another account of generosity. Wounded and desperate after a devastating attack by the Taliban, Luttrell comes across men from a nearby village. They take him in, and following a strict code of hospitality, protect him from the Taliban.

Today, hospitality is mostly understood in terms of the “hospitality industry.” Traditionally, hospitality was a practice deeply connected to civilized life itself. Bedouin hospitality is renowned. The Hebrew scriptures praise people like Lot, who protects visitors from his immoral neighbors. Classical mythology involved “theophanies,” gods disguised as visitors. Ovid’s story of Baucis and Philemon, the poor couple who shared their meager provisions with the shabby looking twosome knocking on their door is among the most famous. The Gospel of Matthew indicates how individuals deserving the reign of heaven will be greeted with the words “I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me,…” The moral imperatives of hospitality were played for great humor in an early Buster Keaton film. The main character is a guest in the home of his family’s sworn enemies. They are committed to revenge, but hospitality prevents them from doing so while he is in their home. Such injunctions and practices face a difficult challenge in a world of high unemployment, criminals in immigrant communities, scarce resources, and an unending flow of desperate people determined to cross borders. What to do? Elected officials are committed to limiting entry and expelling as many illegals as possible. On the other hand, citizens attuned to the older moral code feel a compulsion to provide food, shelter and help.

On April 8 here in France there was a symbolic protest that brought to a head the contrast between governmental responsibility for controlled borders and the ancient code of hospitality. 5500 citizens turned themselves in for the crime of having provided services to undocumented aliens. Their goal: point out the iniquity of a law that criminalizes such help. In a heated response, the minister of immigration insisted that the law was not applied against people who were merely providing some comfort or aid to illegals. On April 30 the Socialist party will introduce a motion to alter the text of the law. The modification will explicitly decriminalize assistance aimed at “preserving either the physical integrity or the dignity of an outsider.”

Who are the people providing aid and what kind of aid do they offer? Sometimes they are just carrying out ordinary functions. One nun, asked about civil disobedience, was puzzled. What’s that, she wondered. When told that giving shelter and food to the people she had just helped was civil disobedience, she was at first stunned. Then, she sort of shrugged and resolved to continue following her conscience. Not surprisingly, some of the main groups devoted to helping are religious. There are “Catholic Aid” and the “Protestant Federation for Mutual Aid.” Among non-religious groups, the most prominent is the “Education Without Borders Network” a group that focuses on migrants with children.

Water and food provision is high on their list of activities. They also find shelter for families, bring home dozens of cell phones in order to recharge them, serve as translators in medical offices and get legal help. One task involves regular trips to airports where they can obtain baby strollers left behind by passengers. These are then distributed to illegals with children.

Politically, the individuals seem pragmatic, not ideological. Motivation is mostly humanitarian or religious. Someone is thirsty, someone is hungry, I can help, so I do. One of the active individuals put it this way: “I tell the undocumented aliens that it would be good if they returned home because France cannot accommodate everyone.” Asked why she risked prison for her activism, she replied “we can’t just let people die by the side of the road. It’s a matter of solidarity. We don’t think about whether it’s legal or not, we just follow our heart.”

Market Day

It’s an assortment unlike any to be found in the U.S. There is donkey salami, horse meat, duck paté, goat cheese and wild boar ham. Olives of varied hues and seasonings are available, as are spices in burlap sacks, and pastries from the Middle East. Eggs are sold next to a sign listing the hatch date. Oysters, mussels, scallops and squid are abundant. The usual produce is also available: tomatoes, carrots, lettuce, celery (buy only as many stalks as you want), endive, scallions and leeks.

Want the food already cooked? No problem. Two purveyors will scoop up plastic containers of paella from what looks like a huge wok. Roast chickens are available. Turkey legs, quails, and smoked meats are also turning on spits. A Thai woman serves up Asian specialties. One truck dispenses pizzas. If food is of no interest, maybe woven baskets will draw attention, or maybe tablecloths and place mats. Used books are available along with CD’s. Several vendors sell knives of every shape and size. One guy, flying an American flag, offers what seems to be army surplus. Leather goods abound, along with ceramic pots, t-shirts, hand crafted wooden spoons, forks, salad bowls and cutting boards. For those whose hungers are spiritual, one display features bibles and various religious pamphlets.

Men go back and forth into the back of a truck. It turns out this is a “dressing room.” They are trying on pants. Wearing their new purchase, they might want to stop by a florist, picking up a bouquet for their wives. Feeling generous, they might want to drop a Euro or more into the container of a street musician or mime.

Although the assortment might sound odd to Americans, it’s just another day at an open-air market in Provence. Such markets represent a historical relic, a sort of living fossil. The local town of Carpentras claims that its market dates back to the 12th century. Visitors entering the town of Sault are greeted by a sign that reads: Open Air Market Every Wednesday Since 1515.

Not surprisingly the size and scope of the market depend on the weather. While “hypermarkets” (what “super centers” are called here) benefit from heating and air conditioning, the outdoor market is completely dependent on the elements. In our village the market is just now, as Easter approaches, achieving its full and varied complement of stalls. In January and February, it was composed mostly of a loyal base of food vendors.

As the number of stalls grows so does the crowd of shoppers. This is a vacation area, where the population triples in the summer. Already, as the Easter vacation kicks into gear, we are noticing that the shoppers have moved from uniformly French to a polyglot set of folks.

That markets continue to exist is, in one way surprising. They cannot compete with the low prices of the big chains. One day, accepting a sample, we loved the taste of an organic sheep cheese from the Pyrenees. Buying a smallish slice lightened our wallet by 20 Euros, about 26 dollars. It’s hard to get away with a piece of fish for under 10 Euros. We have learned to be careful about weights. 450 grams, for example equals about one pound. 300-350 grams of fish filet is ample for two. Small goat cheeses, not necessarily organic, offer a good bargain. We have also been known, occasionally, to content ourselves with just a few ribs of celery.

The markets also do not provide what is uniformly a local product. Oranges in January do not come from local growers. Nor do the tomatoes, strawberries, canteloupes and lemons. Salami vendors and olive oil purveyors consistently offer, by contrast, their own wares. Cheese purchased from the merchants may not be their own, but has been selected from producers who care about quality more than quantity.

So, what is the draw that keeps 21st century people attracted to an ancient practice. Partly it has to do with supporting the vendors, small business people whose daily treks from market to market keep them self-employed. Partly it is the quality of the products. For us this is especially true of the cheeses, the salamis, and the fish. The markets also offer something humane. They personalize time, offering a rhythmic pulse that marks the passage of a week less mechanically than do calendars and clocks. Finally, since humans are social creatures, markets represent an opportunity for gathering and festivity, dimensions absent from the hurried and harried crowds at hypermarkets.

French Democracy/American Capitalism

In the early 90s, living in Lyon, we attended a PTA-type meeting for our sons’ school. Someone suggested that to get the attention of the authorities, maybe we parents ought to hold an administrator hostage. “Sequester” was word used. This was not a serious suggestion. Still, it seemed strange that it would be made at all. That was because we knew little about French worker movements. “Sequestering” occupies a special place in the strategy of social confrontation.

The recent economic crisis has made this clear. In mid-March an executive of SONY was held captive by workers. This was followed by “sequestering” at both Caterpillar and 3M. As if to show how they were equal opportunity sequesterers, a French company for luxury products, PPR, was also targeted. An executive had just gotten into his car when the vehicle was surrounded by activists unhappy about the announced layoffs of 1200 colleagues. The detainees are eventually released, usually after a day or two, either via police intervention or after some sort of agreement has been negotiated.

For an American, this strategy and the general public’s tolerance of it raise the obvious question: why is this so different than in the U.S. where even plain old strikes do not gain widespread public support? Part of the answer involves the tension between democracy and capitalism. In that tension, France leans heavily in one direction and the U.S. in the other.

Ideally, democracy and capitalism ought to get along just fine. Both prize freedom. Democracy emphasizes social solidarity, the common good, a government of the people, by the people, for the people. Capitalism offers itself as an economic system that provides the most rational manner for distributing goods and services. In other words, it provides the means whereby the common good becomes realizable in material terms.

Tensions arise when a few key phrases of Adam Smith, capitalism’s founding figure, are made axiomatic, specifically “self-interest” and the “invisible hand.” In its most extreme form, capitalism claims to function best when (1) its leading figures aim only at achieving their own interests, i.e. return on investment; and (2) it is given a free pass from the oversight of democracy’s elected representatives. The common good is not ignored. Rather it is acknowledged by the claim that a sort of magic wand, the “invisible hand” will automatically allow self-interest to result in the common good.
In a democratic republic, elected representatives, seeking to represent, assume a responsibility to monitor, in the interests of their constituents, the workings of the market. Rather than giving a free pass to the economic sphere, they believe that here is an area replete with issues of special significance to their constituents: workplace safety, wages, benefits, stability of employment, pollution. Thus the tension: democratic sentiments propel toward interference with the marketplace; straightforward capitalism insists on complete autonomy.

Unless one is an old-fashioned Communist or a new fashioned member of the French Anticapitalist Party, there is a felt need to make some sort of successful marriage out of the democracy/capitalism couple. But how are they to get along? What compromises must each make? There are no easy formulas for getting the mix right. Between complete autonomy and rigid, wide-ranging oversight there exist plenty of intermediary slots.

Not surprisingly, French politics and attitudes tend toward the democatic end while American attitudes lean in the capitalist direction. The early 21st century may bring about a double move toward the middle. Opinions in the U.S., reacting to the economic crisis, are becoming more favorable to elected representatives tinkering with the economic sphere. In France, a center-right government has been trying for several years to move in the opposite direction. The election of 2007 brought to power a candidate, Nicolas Sarkozy, who promised reform, i.e. loosen economic regulations, abandon the 35 hour work week, allow people to work more overtime, introduce rules minimizing the impact of strikes, reduce the highest tax bracket.

Recent mass demonstrations, occupation of factories, and the “sequestering” of executives seek to force the French president to reverse his plans. So far, he has maintained his determination of moving more toward toward the capitalist end of the continuum. Whether his determination will survive the economic crisis remains to be seen.

Camus and Gaia

The village of Lourmarin is today famous as the home of Peter Mayle, chronicler of life in Provence. Before Mayle another writer had a home there: Albert Camus. Since the reason for this stay in France is to research Camus, it was natural to visit his gravesite.

Camus and Mayle may both be writers who had homes in Lourmarin, but there the similarity ends. Mayle humorously describes local customs. His works float on the surface of things. The challenges of contracting local help to build a pool is about as deep as it gets. Camus’s works, on the other hand, take us to the depths of what it means to be human. More than anything, he was a searcher, writing to explore fundamental questions. Although Camus was a foe of organized religion, his fellow Nobelist François Mauriac referred to him as a typical homo religiosus, someone concerned with questions of ultimate significance.

Who was Camus? He is a Nobel Prize winner (1957) whose first novel The Stranger was an international best seller. He envisioned a three-tiered cycle of works. The first was to focus on what he called the “absurd.” The second would be built around the theme of “revolt.” The third was to explore “love.” The cycle was never completed. On January 4, 1960 Camus was killed in a car crash. He was 46.

Such an early demise left much unfulfilled promise. Camus’s works all revolve around three pivots: the natural world, the gods, and human beings. For the ancient Greeks and Romans, the three realms were intertwined. Nature was full of portents, symbols, meanings. The gods were not only plentiful but a real presence in the nature of things, like Helios, the sun, Poseidon, the ocean, and Gaia, the earth. Humans, somewhere between, felt connected to both nature and the gods. Life may have been hard, but this was our home and if only we would read aright the signals from nature and the gods, things would go well.

In modernity, the intertwining fell apart. Nature, described by natural science, became a realm of impersonal forces, mere matter in motion. The gods became God the outside designer, a kind of clockmaker who fashioned his invention and then let it run on its own. Later, this god was dispensed with altogether. Humans, now alienated from both other dimensions, felt like strangers in a strange world. This situation was what Camus highlighted by the term “absurd.”
Camus's works experiment with what it might mean to alleviate the absurdity by embracing fully one of the three realms. His play Caligula explores the ramifications of taking on the role of the missing gods. Caligula, the emperor, is all-powerful. The result: random murder and continuous suffering for his subjects. In The Stranger, Meursault aligns himself with the indifferent working out of things characteristic of the natural world. He is a decent enough sort, responsive to simple pleasures (“I like café au lait”), and subject to whatever causal influences come his way. At home in the world, he is a stranger to society and its artificial ways. He is also incapable of love (unknown in nature’s realm of indifferent causal relations) and capable of murder (if the right causal forces are at work).

It is in The Plague that the human need for meaning and purpose is embodied in the “revolt” of the main character. Unlike Meursault, who lets himself be drawn completely into the natural realm, Dr. Rieux’s slogan is “I work against creation.” Relief of suffering is his goal. He is the most sympathetic of Camus’s characters. Still, in the end, Dr. Rieux admits having no real reasons for choosing to help people. With no guidance from either the gods or from nature, we are left with gratuitous, groundless resolve. For a heroic figure like Dr. Rieux, this works well. As a general motivating context for doing good, this leaves much to be desired.

Camus thus leaves us with stalemates. So long as nature, the gods and humans remain disconnected this is inevitable. Dr. Rieux is a hero, but there are no deep reasons for choosing, as he does, to heal pain. In the early 21st century when science itself has returned to the ancient language of Gaia, it may be that the ruptures defining the “absurd” will themselves begin to be healed. Then, perhaps, working reasonably with creation, not against it, will once again define good.