The Displaced Nation

A home for international creatives

Tag Archives: USA

RANDOM NOMAD: Kim Andreasson, Management Consultant

5 Comments Posted by on April 14, 2011

Kim AndreassonBorn in: Sweden
Passport: Swedish
Countries lived in: Australia(Sydney): 1988-89; USA (New York and LA): 1996-2010; Vietnam (Saigon): 2010-present
Cyberspace coordinates: DAKA Advisory (business)

What made you leave your homeland in the first place?
My parents decided to travel around the world in 1988-89 and took me along for the ride. We left a snowy Sweden in December and arrived at our first destination, Los Angeles, in 72 degrees and sunshine, staying in the Hyatt on Sunset (now the Andaz West Hollywood). We explored the city’s many attractions including Disneyland and Universal Studios. I was sold and ever since, have considered LA to be the greatest city in the world. At the same time, my curiosity was piqued and I was sold on the idea of leaving something you know well for something different. I have never looked back.

Is anyone else in your immediate family a “displaced” person?
My California-born wife is now displaced as we are living in Saigon. By the way, we first met at a Swedish restaurant in Chinatown in New York City — call it displacement in microcosm.

Describe the moment when you felt the most displaced over the course of your various travels.
I’ve been fortunate to live in the kinds of cities where it’s relatively easy to blend in. But I’ve certainly experienced some memorable cultural contrasts. Soccer (what we Europeans call “football”) is a good example. During the World Cup in 2002 I was in an Irish pub on New York City’s Upper East Side at 4 a.m. watching the match between Sweden and Argentina. I believe I was the only one there watching the game. That was a really strange feeling. By contrast, during the 2009 qualifying match, the time difference was better and there were thousands of of us Swedes watching the games at a bar near Times Square in the middle of the day. This time, I thought I was in Sweden, which was also strange, in its way.

Describe the moment when you felt least displaced.
It’s a curious thing, but it’s when I leave my adopted homeland(s) that I feel especially at home in them. If you ask me my nationality in Vietnam, I’ll always say I’m Swedish. But if you ask me when I’ve just left Vietnam, I’ll say I’m Saigonese (a resident of Saigon). I was in Bangkok recently and couldn’t stop talking about how much I preferred life in Saigon. Likewise, when I lived in the U.S. and went home to Europe, I would feel more American than European during my visit.

You may bring one curiosity you’ve collected from your travels into the Displaced Nation. What’s in your suitcase?
From Australia, a boomerang, for the symbolism of always coming back. From America, a basketball because I enjoy the game and would like to continue playing it. And from Vietnam, a business suit — you can get world-class tailoring here at a very good price.

You’re invited to prepare one meal based on your travels for other Displaced Nation members. What’s on your menu?
Without a doubt, as a Swede, I am known for my guacamole. No, really. I guess because I lived in LA for so long, I came to love Mexican food. I would prepare it for you according to a classic recipe, something like:
1 tablespoon red onion
1 tablespoon cilantro
1 tablespoon jalapeno
1 avocado
2 tablespoons diced tomato
1 pinch of salt

You may add one word or expression from each of the countries you’ve lived in to The Displaced Nation argot. What words do you loan us?
From Australia: “G’day mate” — for its friendliness.
From the USA: “Awesome” — it reminds me of how globalized LA jargon has become, courtesy of Hollywood.
From Vietnam: “Ba” — and if you repeat it three times, you get a beer (333)!

img: Kim Andreasson on his way to Bến Thành Market, in Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City) — that’s if he can navigate the intersection of Le Loi, Ham Nghi, Tran Hung Dao Avenues and Le Lai Street.

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Jamie Oliver, culinary expert — and now expat?

4 Comments Posted by on April 13, 2011

Try as I might, I can’t make out why Jamie Oliver has taken it upon himself to save my countrymen from themselves.

I understand he’s trying to start a food revolution. Not only that but I’m a supporter, having signed the online petition. After all, I lived in Japan for long enough to see that if a national diet is in essence health food, there are many fewer incidences of obesity, diabetes, and heart disease, and people live longer.

But why is Jamie Oliver, of all people, leading this campaign? That’s the part I haven’t been able to fathom. Before going to Japan, I lived in Britain, where Oliver was known as the “naked chef.” Call it a lack of imagination but somehow I never anticipated that the face of the Sainsbury’s grocery-store chain would someday transform himself into a food activist and arrive on my shores. What happened?

Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad Oliver has decided to export his food revolution. For me, his confrontation with the stony-faced lunch ladies at the school in Huntington, West Virginia — which has been called the unhealthiest city in America — goes down in the annals as reality TV at its finest.

(I’m still not convinced those ladies aren’t actors.)

And now that he’s back for a second season of his “food revolution” show, which premiered last night, I’m enjoying seeing him take on the members of the Los Angeles school board, next to whom the West Virginian women seem warm and welcoming. LA is the second-largest school district in the nation, serving over half a million processed meals every day.

I note that this time, Oliver brought his wife, Jools, and their four young children, to live with him in LA. Is he planning to become an expat? Stranger things have happened…

I can’t really explain why Oliver would choose to displace himself and his loved ones in the service of America’s overfed youth, but I can offer some half-baked ideas:

1) He doesn’t like being less well known than Gordon Ramsay.

Ramsay surpassed Oliver some time ago in terms of earnings and visibility. Indeed, last night’s show offered evidence of this in a scene involving Dino Perris, the owner of a fast-food drive through in Glassell Park, a working-class neighborhood in LA. Perris said he’d never heard of Jamie Oliver and thought he might be that “rude guy.”

The only thing wrong with this theory? Ramsay is best known for swearing a blue streak and Oliver for interacting with kids like the Pied Piper of Hamelin. Apples and oranges.

2) He is descended from missionary stock (hahaha).

In other words, it’s in his DNA to make converts beyond his own shores.

This theory, however, doesn’t hold water when you study Oliver’s family tree. Most of his people hailed from Cornwall and his great-great grandfather John Oliver was a Royal Navy seaman who did time in prison — not exactly the ingredients from which a food evangelist emerges.

3) He is escaping from Britain because his popularity is on the wane.

His fellow Brits have grown tired of seeing him running around in his green pea costume, so he is seeking a fresh audience.

At first this theory seems quite palatable. Most Americans probably don’t know this, but there was a backlash against Oliver’s “school dinners” program in the UK. It reached its peak when two mothers at a school in South Yorkshire started delivering junk food from local shops through the school fence, claiming that their youngsters didn’t want to eat the celebrity chef’s “overpriced lowfat rubbish.”

Still, I can’t believe that Oliver was ever put off by people who cooked up stunts that are, in effect, straight out of his manual. He loves nothing better than stirring the pot, and besides, he achieved what he wanted: the UK government established the School Food Trust, dedicated to improving the quality of food in the nation’s schools.

Okay, so I have no idea why he’s here. I might as well chime in with Jon Stewart, who, when Oliver appeared on his show last week, summed it up as follows:

You have come to this land you and you would like to help us become healthier, better people. Good luck with that.

And if Angelenos start throwing rotten tomatoes at him, I hope he has the good sense to move across the Pacific. Rumor has it that obesity rates among children in Asia are rising with the invasion of McDonalds, KFC, Pizza Hut, and so on.

If that doesn’t make him fed up, I don’t know what will.

Question: What do you think has made Jamie Oliver cross borders, and would you like to see him become an expat in the United States?

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Mobile in America

5 Comments Posted by on April 11, 2011

Today we welcome Mandy Rogers to The Displaced Nation as a guest blogger. She wrote this post in response to Kate Allison’s “The Domestic Expat.”

I don’t always understand what people are saying. I’m temperamentally unsuited to the noise and lack of personal space. I don’t think I’ll ever completely fit in. What am I?

A Mississippian in Manhattan!

My husband, Kary, and I moved to New York City two-and-a-half years ago, when we were in our early thirties. Until then, we had spent our entire lives in Mississippi. We loved it and had a great community of friends, whom we still miss.

Making the move

What possessed us to pick up stakes and try out life somewhere else?

Kary and I met in the marching band at Mississippi State. I played the flute and he the trumpet. We both landed jobs at the university immediately upon graduation. But there was something in each of us, a kind of restlessness. We knew we couldn’t be content with staying in Starkville forever. Was it a passion for travel or a fear of growing too complacent? Perhaps a bit of both…

There was also a practical reason for making the move. I’d gone back to school in my late twenties to do a masters in landscape architecture. I discovered I really enjoyed doing projects involving public spaces, such as parks, gardens, and streetscapes. Public green space isn’t a priority in Mississippi, where most people have their own land.

During my graduate studies, I’d taken a road trip with Kary and my sister to New York City, visiting Central Park, Paley Park, and Bryant Park. The amount of green space was a surprise to me. It’s something my mother, another garden lover, noticed during her first visit to the city, too.

In the end, it all happened rather quickly. Kary was offered the first job in New York he applied for. He actually got it via Twitter!

We packed up our belongings in a rental car — our cocker spaniel, Callie, in her seat belt harness and our three cats in their carriers — and traveled over three days to our new home in the Big Apple, staying in pet-friendly hotels along the way. (We’d flown out to find an apartment just beforehand, signing a lease for one in Brooklyn, which several of our friends had recommended as a great place to live.)

When we first moved, I didn’t have a job so spent the time exploring gardens and parks in Brooklyn, the Bronx and Staten Island. Even now that I’m working for a landscape architecture firm in Manhattan, I escape to the Brooklyn Botanic Garden whenever I can to see what’s in bloom. My dad gave me a membership there just before he died. We had a complicated relationship so it’s a nice reminder of him and our common love of gardens.

The adjustment process

People still ask me: where are you from? They usually guess North Carolina or Georgia; no one has guessed Mississippi yet.

I’m still picking up new vocabulary and pronunciations. “House-ton” instead of “Hue-ston” Street; standing “on line” at the grocery store (in the South we say “in line”).

And I continue to be amazed that the number of people living in Brooklyn equals the entire population of Mississippi (2.5 million). No wonder one of our most difficult adjustments has been to the noise and (by our standards) overcrowding.

Still, there are lots of things we love in this part of the world, beginning with the climate. Thunder and tornadoes are much less frequent here. And believe it or not, even after this rough winter, we still can’t get enough of snow.

We’ve adjusted very quickly to living without a car. You can see and experience so much more on foot than behind the wheel. That said, I usually did most of my singing in the car, and I miss that! (I don’t sing around my apartment too much, as the neighbors could hear me.)

And, although the South is renowned for its hospitality, I am often surprised by how much nicer, friendlier, and helpful New Yorkers are than they are given credit for being.

Moving right along…

Despite these many “likes,” I don’t think we’ll ever be true New Yorkers. To this day, I always relish running into other Southerners. The past two years, Kary and I have attended the annual picnic held in Central Park for folks from Mississippi. There’s always a blues band and plenty of fried catfish, sweet tea, and other Southern delicacies.

Not all Mississippians have exactly the same values, but each of us knows what it was like growing up in that neck of the woods, and it gives us a powerful bond.

During the year, Kary and I congregate with fellow Mississippi State alumni at a local bar to watch our alma mater compete in football or basketball. We’ve made some new acquaintances that way, such as a native New Yorker who went to MSU in the 1970s to run track.

Like most expats, Kary and I debate about the right moment to move on and where to go next. Will we try the West Coast, or consider moving back south? Every time I visit Mississippi these days — I’ve been back three times since we left — I realize how much I’ve missed its hospitality, beautiful forests, and tranquility. Plus it’s been nice catching up with family and friends over hearty Southern meals.

Still, the hot, humid summer would take some getting used to again. And now that we’ve been bitten by the travel bug, we’re contemplating our wish list again. We visited San Francisco last year and liked what we saw.

Being mobile in America — it’s a trip, in more ways than one. Tell me, why do so many Americans seek adventure overseas when it’s perfectly possible to be an expat here?

Question: Can being an “expat” within your own borders be just as enriching as becoming one by crossing borders?

Mandy doesn’t have a blog but you can follow her on Twitter: @mandyluvsplants

img: Mandy (right) and a friend she ran into at a Central Park picnic for Mississippians in New York. Mandy’s comment: “My friend still lives in Mississippi but was here with her daughter, who was attending the picnic as part of her duties as Mississippi’s Miss Hospitality. My mom says I can’t go anywhere without running into someone I know — I guess she’s right!”

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A week in tartan

11 Comments Posted by on April 7, 2011

Scotland Flag from PhotoEverywhere.co.uk – CC license

It’s time to celebrate all things Scottish. Dunk Walker’s shortbread in your tea, deep-fry a Mars Bar, eat chicken tikka masala. Read Robert Burns, watch Billy Connolly.  Drop into conversation that your great-great-grandmother came from Dundee (actually, she did). Whatever you do, though, make sure you do it in tartan.

In 1982, New York City Mayor Ed Koch declared July 1 as Tartan Day, a one-off celebration of the 200th anniversary of the repeal of the Act of Proscription — the law forbidding Scots to wear tartan. Following this, Scottish-Americans lobbied the Senate for official recognition of Tartan Day, until eventually, in 2008, President George W. Bush signed a Presidential Proclamation making April 6th a day to

“celebrate the spirit and character of Scottish Americans and recognize their many contributions to our culture and our way of life.”

— which, naturally, entails a long parade through the streets of New York in an attempt to out-do the other Celts’ celebrations on March 17.

Not just New York, either. Tartan festivities are held throughout the rest of the USA, plus Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, although the last two stick to July 1 for their day of plaid fabric observance. Even Scotland joins in the fun.

However, do the U.S celebrations really “celebrate the spirit and character of Scottish Americans” as President Bush said? The key word in that phrase is, perhaps,  “Americans.”

As Scottish expat and travel writer/blogger Aefa Mulholland says in her interview with Scotland’s Daily Record:

“People [in America] have very different views of Scottishness from what most people in Scotland would have today. Scottish-Americans tend to remember and celebrate Scotland the way it was when they left it.”

But that’s simply the way of the expat world: homesick for a place which doesn’t quite exist any more — only in memory.

On another note — it’s strange that a law banning an item of clothing should have such far-reaching celebrations. Certain U.S. towns currently making the wearing of saggy pants a criminal offense should perhaps ponder this point, for the benefit of future generations.

Question: Which style of dress would you like to see commemorated every year?

image: Scotts_flag by www.photoeverywhere.co.uk
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The domestic expat

2 Comments Posted by on April 4, 2011

A photograph on a Minnesota news website showing a street in Brooklyn, NY, has the caption:

A long line of Minnesota expats wait to enter the “Minnesota State Fair Affair.”

Meanwhile, on a classified ads website, someone from Wales is looking for other Welsh expats to meet in a pub – in Winchester, England.

While convention and Wikipedia define an expatriate as:

any person living in a different country from where he or she is a citizen

it seems that this definition is being gradually challenged, as shown by these two examples. You no longer need to cross borders to be an expat. You can be a domestic expat. A fish out of water in your own country.

Leaving aside the touchy debate of whether Wales and England are separate countries – for the purposes of passport control and this article, they both come under the umbrella of the United Kingdom – this challenge, upon consideration, is perfectly reasonable.

An intrinsic part of expat life is culture shock, which is, says the University of Northern Iowa College of Business Administration,

the trauma you experience when you move into a culture different from your home culture.

It has several stages:

Excitement/fascination – ignoring small problems; a sense of being on extended vacation;

Crisis period – when difficulties arise, the new country turns out to have feet of clay, and you realize you can’t go home;

Adjustment – a change from negative attitude to positive; rediscovery of sense of humor;

Acceptance/adaptation – a sense of belonging in, and adapting to the new culture;

Re-entry shock – upon return to the original country, when the whole process starts again.

In her 2002 article, What To Expect When You Relocate, Achievement Coach Nancy Morris says:

Surprisingly to many, culture shock can show up even when relocating from one region to another within our own country – we assume ‘culture shock’ only occurs when moving to a completely different country.

If you’ve ever moved from London to Newcastle, or from New York to Alabama, or from Toulouse to Paris, you’ll know she’s right. All the symptoms above can be yours, and you don’t need the inconvenience of an international flight to get them. A domestic flight will do it – or, in the case of our Welsh example, a short trip along the M4.

Nancy Morris goes on to say that

moving to a new cultural environment can turn from culture shock to “self-shock”.

During most of life’s transitions – changing jobs, divorce, bereavement – we have a tendency to question ourselves, and who we are. Surrounded by familiar family, friends, environment, we are usually able to make sense of this question and find an answer, even as we struggle to accept the change in our lives. When the change is cultural, however, acceptance is more difficult. As Morris puts it:

At home we have a mirror which helps to validate and re-affirm us. Within a new environment, the mirror no longer exists. So, at a time when you are seeking the answer to the “who am I” question, your surroundings are asking “who are you?”

Surrounding yourself with culturally familiar people – those with the same accent as you, those who feel as displaced as you; in other words, expat communities – is just one way of putting that mirror back in its place.

And it doesn’t matter you’re an Englishman in New York, or a Welshman in Winchester.

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Displaced by choice, architect comes to aid of compatriots displaced by fate

Leave a comment Posted by on March 31, 2011

The word “displaced” connotes being forcibly removed from one’s home or homeland. Fleeing from war or natural disaster, displaced people have little in common with the expats we encounter at the Displaced Nation, most of whom have voluntarily chosen a life of displacement and adventure.

Japanese architect Shigeru Ban belongs in the tradition of Japanese fashion designers and other creative people who have chosen to live outside their native land, gravitating to artistic enclaves in Paris or Manhattan.

But if Ban is displaced by choice, he does not hesitate to help his countrymen who’ve been displaced by fate. When an earthquake struck Kobe in 1995, Ban was there, building emergency housing for survivors with beer-crate foundations and walls made of recycled cardboard paper tubes. (The paper tube is a Ban speciality. He got the idea of using paper tubes after observing the solidity of rolls of fax paper and experimenting with the idea for several years.)

And now Ban is in Japan again, lending a helping hand to those made homeless by the Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami. He is building simple partitions to place between families who have been evacuated to gymnasiums and other large-roof facilities. He hopes that by enjoying more privacy, they will experience greater peace of mind.

Ban prides himself on the ability to work quickly and well when the exigency of circumstances demands it. Asked in a March 24 New York Times interview to comment on why in the wake of disaster, innovative ideas designers present for shelters never get built, he said:

We don’t need innovative ideas. We just need to build normal things that can be made easily and quickly. A house is a house.

And if you’re lucky enough to land in one of Ban’s shelters, it’s a house that brings you one step closer to having a home again.

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CONTEMPORARY DISPLACED WRITING: Fury — Salman Rushdie

Leave a comment Posted by on March 30, 2011

Continuing with our look at writing concerned with expat experiences, when I first moved to the US, spending my time in New York and Philadelphia, I found myself often thinking about the following extract from Salman Rushdie‘s novel, Fury.

There’s just something about this piece that sits absolutely right with me. It conveys so well the Gulliver-esque excitement and fear that I felt when first having to navigate New York; and how, when listening to the locals talking, their inflections and pronunciations sounded to my ears so utterly confusing, and thrilling, and also…oddly bovine.

When he left the apartment nowadays he felt like an ancient sleeper, rising. Outside, in America, everything was too bright, too loud, too strange. The city had come out in a rash of painfully punning cows. At Lincoln Center Solanka ran into Moozart and Moodama Butterfly. Outside the Beacon Theatre a trio of horned and uddered divas had taken up residence: Whitney Mooston, Mooriah Carey and Bette Midler (the Bovine Miss M). Bewildered by this infestation of paronomasticating livestock, Professor Solanka suddenly felt like a visitor from Lilliput-Blefuscu or the moon, or to be straightforward, London. He was alienated, too, by the postage stamps, by the monthly, rather than quarterly, payment of gas, electricity and telephone bills, by the unknown brands of candy in the stores (Twinkies, Ho Hos, Ring Pops), by the words “candy” and “stores”, by the armed policemen on the streets, by the anonymous faces in magazines, faces that all Americans somehow recognized at once, by the indecipherable words of popular songs which American ears could make out without strain, by the end-loaded pronunciation of names like Farrar, Harrell, Candell, by the broadly spoken e’s that turned expression into axpression, I’ll get to the check into I’ll gat that chack; by, in short, the sheer immensity of his ignorance of the engulfing melee of ordinary American life….

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Miracle Whip as the new Marmite? It would take an act of God…

5 Comments Posted by on March 29, 2011

News has just reached the Displaced Nation — via a dog-eared copy of the Village Voice dated March 7 — about a new commercial for Miracle Whip that is in fact a rip-off of Marmite’s “love it or hate it” ad campaign. (Marmite of course being the savory spread made from waste yeast from the brewing industry, on which millions of Brits are weaned at an early age.)

Like Marmite before it, Miracle Whip is asking: do you love the not-quite-mayonnaise or hate it?


Kraft, the citizens of the Displaced Nation would like you to know: we are aware of your craftiness and we think it’s pretty cheesy of you to produce such a blatant imitation of Unilever’s brilliant Marmite campaign.

We also think it’s too bad that your marketing people didn’t consult with any Brits who are living in the United States, or they’d have set you straight on where Marmite belongs in the pantheon of branded foods: i.e., far above Miracle Whip.

Take, for instance, Kate Allison, a member of the Displaced Nation team. She chose to call her personal blog Marmite & Fluff. Marmite stands for Kate’s British heritage, while Fluff represents the past fifteen years she has spent living in the United States.

Notably, Kate decided to elevate Durkee-Mower’s Marshmallow Fluff — not Kraft’s Miracle Whip — to the level of her beloved Marmite because she believes the Fluffernutter sandwich has the same iconic status for American children as Marmite on toast does for their counterparts in Britain.

Another example is Lucy Sisman, a British resident of Manhattan who edits WWWORD.com, a site for anyone who uses, abuses, loves and hates the English Language.

Lucy includes the Marmite jar in her recent post listing objects from her kitchen cupboard that belong to the leave-us-as-we-are-hall-of-fame for their genius packaging. (Traditionally, Marmite was supplied in an earthenware pot, on which its glass, and now plastic, jars are modeled.)

Hmmm….when was the last time any of us heard an American wax nostalgic about a Miracle Whip jar?

Of Kraft’s many food products, only the Oreo comes anywhere near to arousing the kinds of passions that Marmite does, if expat blogs are anything to go by. But one doesn’t sense that Oreo lovers sit up and take umbrage whenever Kraft introduces a new variety, such as mini Oreos, chocolate creme Oreos, golden Oreos… Not so with the Marmite minions. Kate, for instance, had this to say of some new-fangled Marmite combos:

I thought Marmite and Fluff sandwiches were bad. Now I’ve discovered you can buy Marmite chocolate. And champagne Marmite, anyone? Or Marmite with Marston’s Pedigree?

Besides Oreos, Americans abroad also say they miss Kraft’s macaroni-and-cheese mix — though a surprising number go on to say that their nostalgia dissipates with each successive bite.

Robyn Lee, a foodie who lived in Taiwan as a kid, described her first experience with Kraft’s mac-cheese in a post for Serious Eats last October:

The first time I tried the iconic American foodstuff was in middle school when I was living in Taipei, out of some desperate longing to eat something American. It was an exciting experience, until I ate it.

Compare this to what Kate says about her favorite yeast sludge: “Isn’t the point of Marmite that it overrides all other flavours?”

Love it, hate it, or find it insipid? Kraft should have included a third option when tweaking the Marmite ads for Miracle Whip.

Question: Does Marmite stand alone, or are there other branded foods that inspire intense nationalistic feelings, which in no way diminish upon becoming displaced? (On the contrary, absence can make the palate grow even fonder…)

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French woman falls in pool, dies of shame

Leave a comment Posted by on March 28, 2011

The first day of spring brought strong rains to the LA area, causing rock slides in Malibu and closing parts of the Pacific Coast Highway.

It was an eventful time for Corine, a French expat in LA. As reported in her March 21 post to her blog, Hidden in France:

Yesterday, at precisely 8 p.m. Eastern Standard time, in pitch darkness and 50 degree temperature, dressed in head to toe rain suit, boots, plastic pants and all, I fell, headfirst, into my pool.

At the time of taking this rather ignominious plunge, Corine was attempting to put garden hoses into the pool to syphon out some of the water, which was already overflowing and creeping towards her house. She was freaking out about the possibility of damage to her wooden floors.

How did the normally tres chic Corine end up making such a faux pas? (The title of this post comes from Corine’s own tweet.) She blames her klutziness on the combination of bad vision and the fact that someone had moved the pool to the left by a couple of feet.

Still, all’s well that ends well. Despite bruises to her self-esteem (and self?), Corine was happy to report that her floors remained undamaged, the “tsuna-mini” having been averted. Comme il faut…

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CLASSIC EXPAT WRITING: The French as Dostoevsky Saw Them — Saul Bellow

Leave a comment Posted by on March 22, 2011

Renting an apartment in Paris was not a simple matter in 1947, but a good friend of mine, Nicolaus, had found one for us on the right bank, in a fussy building. I had brought a new Remington portable typewriter, which the landlady had absolutely demanded as a gift. She had to have the rent in dollars, too. Francs would not do. It was a steep rental. Nicolaus, however, said the apartment was worth the money. He knew Paris, and I took his word for it. Nicolaus spoke French perfectly. People from Indianapolis take to French quite naturally; I have observed this time and again. He was a perfect Frenchman, carried a pair of gloves and drove a French car. He was annoyed with me when I asked my landlady how one disposed of the garbage in this apartment. “In France,” he said to me severely, detaining me in the chilly dining-room, “no man would ask such a question. Garbage is not your concern. You are not supposed to know that garbage exists. Besides, ordures is not a nice word.”

“Oh,” I said. “I’m sorry. I suppose I shouldn’t have asked.”

The landlady now brought forth her inventaire. An amazing document! A catalogue of every object in the house, from the Chippendale chair to the meanest cup, fully and marvelously described in stiff, upright, copious letters. We started to go through the list, and moved from Madame’s room, a flapper’s boudoir of the ‘twenties, backwards to the kitchen. Madame read the description and displayed each article. “Dining room table. Style Empire. Condition excellent. Triangular scratch on left side. No other defect.” We finished in the kitchen with three lousy tin spoons.

“Ah,” said Nicolaus, “What a sense of detail the French have!”

I was less impressed, but one must respect respect itself and I did not openly disagree.

As soon as Madame left, I turned a somersault over the Chippendale chair and landed thunderously on the floor. This lightened my heart for a time, but in subsequent dealings with Madame and others in France I could not always recover my lightness of heart by such means.

Depressed and sunk in spirit, I dwelt among Madame’s works of art that cold winter of 1948. The city lay under perpetual fog and the smoke could not rise and flowed in the streets in brown and gray currents. An unnatural medicinal smell emanated from the Seine. Many people suffered from the grippe Espagnole — all diseases are apt to be of foreign origin — and many more from melancholy and bad temper. Paris is the seat of a highly developed humanity, and one thus witnesses highly developed forms of suffering there. Witnesses and sometimes, experiences. Sadness is a daily levy that civilization imposes in Paris. Gay Paris.? Gay, my foot! Mere advertising. Paris is one of the grimmest cities in the world. I do not ask you to take my word for it. Go to Balzac and Stendhal, to Zola, to Strindberg — to Paris itself. Nicolaus said the Parisians were celebrated for their tartness of character. He declared that it would be better for me to feel my way into it than to criticize it. Himself, he was a connoisseur of the Parisian temperament. I was lacking in detachment, he said. To this accusation I confessed and pleaded guilty. I was a poor visitor and, by any standard, an inferior tourist…

Click here to read the full article at The New Republic.

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