This week at the library: sheikhs, airplanes, and VW vans

This past Thursday, some friends drove me three hours into the woods, dropped me off in the midst of some 70 strangers, and left me there. They called it "Cursillo", and it was a spiritual retreat which I liked enormously more than I would have ever predicted.  It helped that no electronic devices of any kind were allowed, so I enjoyed four days of conversations uninterrupted by phones ringing or people gazing at their gadgets.  But that's where I've been -- physically, all last weekend, and mentally, most of this week.

Before I left, I read On Saudi Arabia by Karen Elliot House, an exploration of Saudi Arabia's culture, history, and political atmosphere. The nation is one worth learning about: home to the world's largest petroleum and natural gas reserves, and a hotbed of religious violence which is simultaneously cozy with the United States despite being abusively backward in most respects. The Saudi Arabia that House unveils is one rife with contradictions and tensions, many of which are sourced in the Saudi royal family's machinations to maintain control. They constantly strengthen and attack the warring factions inside the realm for their own advantage:  supporting and promoting Wahhabism across the world, for instance, but then swiftly attacking its adherents if their actions hurt the king or his standing in the world.  Although the Saudi family would like to  be more traditionalist, not only to pacify the swelling ranks of sectarian crazies, but to increase its own power, it is forced by reality to make changes -- to allow more opportunities for women, for instance, and be more open to criticism. The Internet is a djinn in a bottle, that undermines the complete authority the Saudi  family and religious leaders once had.  Saudi Arabia is bound to change, but it's in for a troublesome future.  There's a great line in The Dark Knight Rises -- "Victory has defeated you!" --  Saudi Arabia exemplifies the idea. It is a nation utterly ruined by its prosperity:  the rulers are corrupt, the people are spoiled (not working, not wanting to do anything useful, but eager to rage against the kingdom for not giving them more), and the economy is based entirely on oil, the production of which in Saudi Arabia may have already peaked. On Saudi Arabia is definitely worth looking at if you have an interest in global affairs and politics.

I also read Alain de Botton's A Week at the Airport, inspired by his living in a hotel attached to Heathrow Airport, where he spent his days and evenings watching people as they set forth on globetrotting adventures, or returned home from the same. Although my interest in transportation might have piqued my interest in this book, its authorship made reading it inevitable. de Botton enthralls me, finding philosophical meaning in seemingly everything. I would not be surprised to learn he had once stood in the midst of a downpour, contemplating his umbrella. He makes the mundane sublime. Witness his shopping approach in an airport bookstore:

"I explained -- with the excessive exposition of a man spending a lonely week at the airport -- that I was looking for the sort of books in which a genial voice expresses emotions that the reader has long felt but never before really understood; those that convey the secret, everyday things that society at large prefers to leave unsaid; those that make one feel somehow less alone and strange.
Manishankar wondered if I might like a magazine instead."

In A Week at the Airport's scant 100-odd pages,  de Botton muses on travel, the meaning of airport food, the inevitable expectation of arriving passengers that someone will be there waiting for them, the poetry of airline food menus, our faith in technology, other miscellany. de Botton fascinates, and the photography is stirring.

Earlier this past week, I also read Through Painted Deserts, the story of of two men's journey together from Texas to Oregon in a VW bus, in which they descend into the Grand Canyon and ruminate on the Meaning of It All under the stars. I've read Miller before; he penned  Blue Like Jazz: Nonreligious Thoughts on Christian Spirituality, which left me feeling conflicted. As much as I liked Miller's conversational tone and mellow thoughtfulness, I cringed there as he continued to hit himself over the head with dogma. One of the more intriguing episodes mentioned there, his living in the woods for a few weeks,  is explored in Through Painted Deserts in more detail.  The trip takes place earlier in his life, when Miller was still a young man trying to find himself -- and he finds, on the road, that possessions and social status and all that are like, lame, man.  Through Painted Deserts alternates between low-key ramblings on life and intense summations of belief as Miller gets into simple living, mystic musings centered on the natural world, and confessions of love when he and his road-buddy aren't fixing the van and enjoying the kindness of strangers.  I found it all rather endearing. A related work would be Desert Solitaire by Edward Abbey.

Germany

Germany: Unraveling an Enigma
© 2000 Paul Nees
236 pages

If you follow European news, chances are good that you’ve heard the name Angela Merkel in recent months. Chancellor of Germany, her nation is the economic heart of Europe and essential to the eventual resolution of its debt crisis. And yet, just a little over two decades ago,  Germany was a divided nation…and a generation before, it lay in ruins, largely destroyed in a war which instigated, a war which casts a shadow over all Germans, even those born today. Germany has a long, storied, and troubled past: it is the land of Beethoven and Marx,  but also of Hitler and his ilk.  Europe and the world have been ravaged by Germany’s military in times past, but buoyed by its contributions to culture -- and it will likely continue to be a major player throughout the next century. All that in mind, what makes the Germans tick?

Paul Nee’s attempt to answer that question comes in the form of a cultural analysis, an exploration of the German character which seems to be largely written for Americans interested in doing business in America, but his guide concerns Germany as a whole. Even the latter two-thirds of the book focused on business and economics -- explaining both the social market system as well as Germany business culture, exploring practices in the United States and Germany which might be at variance with one another -- are fascinating, as they build on the general themes which Nees set forth at the opening. There, he explores the German mind, elaborating on convictions that most Germans share. He not only identifies the concepts, but demonstrates how they are interwoven throughout Germany society. In the section titled "Ordnung muss Sein", for instance, he shows how the concept of good order manifests itself not only in politics, but in the way people relate to their possessions  a shoddily maintained car is unthinkable. The picture of the Germans which emerges from the book is that of a intense, serious, and passionate people.

Nees' book is similar to Sixty Million Frenchman Can't Be Wrong, which tries to explain France to Americans. Nees is (suitably, for his subject), more "solid": he concentrates on a few ideas and explores them thoroughly.  Although seemingly targeted toward businessmen, its thorough thoughtfulness recommends it to anyone with a curiosity about Germany.

Sixty Million Frenchmen Can't Be Wrong

Sixty Million Frenchmen Can't Be Wrong: Why We Love France (But Not the French)
© 2003 Jean-Benoît Nadeau & Julie Barlow
351 pages

France stymies Americans. They eat what they want, but seemingly don't get fat. Their government is happily involved in health, education, industry, and business, but they have one of the most robust economies in the world. How do they do it? What makes them tick?  Jean-Benoît Nadreau and Julie Barlow were dispatched by a government foundation to find out just that very thing. Having lived in France for several years and made a study of it, they represent their findings in  the fascinating Sixty Million Frenchmen Can't Be Wrong: Why We Love France but Not the French

All of Gaul, Julius Caesar wrote, is divided into three parts -- and so is this book. The first examines the personal aspects of French culture:  notions of privacy,  the importance of language,  the art of cuisine, the deep connection the French have with their land. Part II, "Structure", examines the culture of civics and governance,  and part three demonstrates how those elements of French culture are adapting to the future.  Although it covers a wide range of topics, the editing is such that the three parts fit neatly together to present a solid and comprehensive picture.  That picture is formed in part by the centrality of the State. Although Americans might interpret a central state as a an overwhelming powerful central government, the State is more fundamental in France. It is not an outside thing that people relate to: it is the environment. France is the state: its very creation, a pillar of order erected from the chaos of feudalism.  The French republic is not a federation of provinces and cities it is the Public Thing in itself, wielding enormous power and expressing that through a strong military or money but through the way it enmeshes itself in the lives of the French, creating in part the French culture itself. Most striking for me was the use of language:

When French mayors talk about their constituents, they never use the word 'citizens'. No one talks about the 'citizens of Lyon' or 'the citizens of Toulouse' Mayors speak of their administrés, (literally, their 'administereds'). The French can only be citizens of one thing, the one and indivisible Republic, and that entity 'adinisters' them at the local level through mayors." p. 146

Although in America the state mostly exists as an apparatus for economic interests, in France it seems to exist more for the public welfare, not just business. The idea is at least easy to take seriously, as the French government takes an interest in the lives of its people, providing plenty of support for new parents.  What a delightfully exotic idea to American ears, that the state is there to enhance the quality of life!  Quality is another strong theme --- the opening sections address the French fondness for grandeur and eloquence. Life is to be savored, not merely purchased. Another choice quotation:

‎"The way the French see it, the economy should serve the social well-being of the country, not the other way around. Former prime minister Lionel Jospin is famous for having said "Oui à l'économie de marché, non à la société de marché" (Yes to a market economy, no to a market society)." (p. 276)

The powerful State and the emphasis on quality are joined in the French attitude toward education: there exist in France several academies which exist just to produce an elite caste of people to ensure that this powerful state is being run correctly. The civil service is fashioned along the lines of an army, and this elite is its officer corps. Americans who see higher education as elitist would be positively scandalized by the idea that the French seek to create it deliberately, but in France governance is too important not to be taken seriously.

In general,  the French way is presented as neither better nor worse than the English and American systems, but simply different. I for one am both attracted and disturbed by the aspects of French culture revealed here because of the varying attitudes I have for individualism and the role of the state. One can't deny the results, though, and after reading this and various other works about French culture I can't help but think they have better priorities.

And with that, my reading and reviews for Bastille Day is finally done. Until next year, anyway!

Bringing up Bébé

Bringing up Bébé: One Mother Discovers the Wisdom of French Parenting
© 2012 Pamela Druckerman
304 pages

When Pamela Druckerman moved to Paris to start a life with her new husband, she noticed something rather odd about French children: they behaved. Long accustomed to the whining, shrieking, squirming, picky eaters in the United States, she couldn’t help but wonder how the French did it…especially seeing as they didn’t seem to be harsh disciplinarians. Indeed, the children seemed to enjoy a fair bit of leeway…but then again, they also seemed to merit it. Druckerman flinched when a group of children ran ahead of their teacher on a busy sidewalk, but the teacher wasn’t bothered in the least – nor should she have been, since the children stopped at the crosswalk to wait for her, just as the teacher knew they would. The French and their children seem to have made a golden peace with one another…but how?  When Druckerman’s own marriage produced a baby, she began finding out how. Bringing up Bebe is the delightful result of Druckerman’s observations and direct experience with childhood and parenting in France, reflections with a lot of offer parents wondering what kind of approach to take with their own bébés.

Although at times Bringing up Bebe seems like a straightforward story of what happens when an American woman raises a child in France (Druckermen comments on her daughter Bean's early bilingualism, freely mixing English and French in the same sentence), the chapters are organized more by subject, following Druckerman's move to Paris and her following pregnancies.  The chapter titles ("paris is burping") establish Druckerman as a storyteller with a quirky sense of humor, ever entertaining to read. The sections cover diet, disicipline, daycare, food culture, language, and so on, but there are at least two concepts which emerge as a foundation of French parenting and are reference throughout. The first is that of 'éducation:   according to Druckerman, the French treat babies not as angry and hostile things that need to be tamed, but as little tiny people who simply need to be taught what is right. They communicate constantly with babies in the belief that the infants can understand them. (This seems dubious to me, but given that humans are social creatures, such communication can't help but be healthy.)  What's interesting is that since babies are regarded as people in their own right, they're expected from the start to conform to certain conventions of society, like the idea that you are just one person among many and are not the center of the universe, even if the only thing you can do is lie in your crib, wait for your cells to divide, and ocassionally fill your diaper. One parenting trick Druckerman learns early on is "The Pause": instead of running every time a baby cries, French parents wait a few seconds to see what happens. Often, the baby will go back to sleep (or was merely making noises in her sleep in the first place), and it is believed the delay between the baby crying and the parents responding establishes in the baby's mind that she is not the center of the universe.  Although children are granted certain indulgences for being young, in general they are expected to conduct themselves in a civilized manner, and are constantly groomed in this direction in every aspect of their lives. "The Pause" also teaches babies patience, and patience is emphasized so consistently that it allows children to dine with their parents in an adult restaurant, sitting for hours and behaving themselves.  'Education' is constantly enforced, not by punishment but by communication.

Children respond to this, partially through a second concept --  the cadre, or framework.  This establishes a few firm rules that are never to be violated, while giving children a free hand everywhere else. For instance, French parents teach their children that adults must have time to themselves, so the children are made to go to their bedrooms at a certain hour...but they are not forced to go to bed if they are not sleepy. The children thus learn to entertain themselves instead of constanting demanding their parents' attention.) The cadre allows children to explore and learn about the  world on their own, but within certain safe limits.  They are treated like adults who simply need to be taught the right thing, and they grow into adults who do it.

Although I'm not a parent, nor do I anticipate becoming one at this point in my life, I found much to appreciate here. The French parenting approach is in line with my own values, and seems quite sensible.  Definitely entertaining and nicely written: those who are interested in considering it as parenting advice might want to read customer reviews at Amazon or some other place to get an idea for how successful the approach has been in other people's lives. I bought this book to start off my Bastille Day reading set, and it's definitely a keeper.

French Lessons

French Lessons: Adventures with the Knife, Fork, and Corkscrew
© 2001 Peter Mayle
227 pages

Peter Mayle is to be envied. Some people's work involves overseeing hundreds of people and managing the affairs of a business that skirts bankruptcy other day. Some put their life in peril, fighting fires or confronting criminals. Some are pushed to their physical limits putting in long hours on the factory floor.  Mayle, on the other hand, must roam France and subject himself to its most extraordinary pleasures, then regale readers with stories of  this most dreadful task. Mayle is an author who loves France, and after dining with him vicariously through French Lessons, it's easy to understand why. How can one resist a people who love food this much? A retired barfly refers to cuisine as the religion of France, and it's a religion that's quite robust. Mayle visits festival after festival celebrating local delicacies -- truffles, snails, vintage wine -- and immerses himself fully in the traditional celebrations of these foodstuffs. It's either the French gift for cooking or Mayle's for writing, but he does manage to make the task of delivering a slug from its shell sound not only fun, but appetizing. Part of the fun of the book is that Mayle always finds someone passionate to dine with, and they both drink themselves silly.  Although the book seems written mostly to entertain,  Mayle's emphasis on eating quality food for pleasure supported the principles Mireille Guiliano demonstrated in French Women Don't Get Fat.  This is a quick, zesty, and entertaining read.