Monsieur Mediocre

Monsieur Mediocre
افزودن به بوکمارک اشتراک گذاری 0 دیدگاه کاربران 4 (1)

One American Learns the High Art of Being Everyday French

مشارکت: عنوان و توضیح کوتاه هر کتاب را ترجمه کنید این ترجمه بعد از تایید با نام شما در سایت نمایش داده خواهد شد.
iran گزارش تخلف

فرمت کتاب

ebook

تاریخ انتشار

2019

نویسنده

John von Sothen

شابک

9780735224841
  • اطلاعات
  • نقد و بررسی
  • دیدگاه کاربران
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نقد و بررسی

Kirkus

March 1, 2019
An American in Paris reflects on fantasy and reality.When journalist von Sothen moved to Paris with his pregnant French actress wife, he counted on staying only a few years in the legendary city of beauty and sophistication. Now, 15 years later, he makes his book debut with a deft, shrewd, and entertaining take on his adoptive home, a place far different from how it is conveyed in winsome movies like Amelie and books like Peter Mayle's sun-dappled A Year in Provence. Living in the multiethnic, economically diverse 10th arrondissement, von Sothen has observed at close hand homelessness, vagrancy, crime, and the plight of undocumented immigrants and refugees. Yet his Parisian community has felt safe, without the "palpable aggressiveness" that he sensed on his visits to America. In France, social programs provide for free or subsidized child care; free health care, including a doctor who will come to your home 24 hours a day; a good local public school; and laws that ensure affordable housing even in areas that are being gentrified. Although in some Parisian neighborhoods "streets were cleaner and ruined lives were less in your face," the author prefers the gritty 10th to posh arrondissements that he once assumed were "the embodiment of French wonderfulness." He skewers some of the customs that also once seemed enviable: long, frequent vacations and long, highly choreographed dinner parties. Every six weeks, schools have two-week breaks, during which working parents sign their children up for some extracurricular activity that will occupy them--or else depend on grandparents, "flown in like the Army corps of engineers," to supervise. The summer break requires "planning as early as Christmas time" and vacationing--sometimes awkwardly--"en groupe" with assorted other couples. The presidential race between Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen gives the author a chance to ring in on the "disenchantment and disillusionment" of French voters, who, he reports with admiration, "in the end, found their true north."A witty, incisive portrait of contemporary France.

COPYRIGHT(2019) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.



Publisher's Weekly

April 8, 2019
Vanity Fair writer von Sothen delights in this wry narrative about the gritty, grumpy realities of being an American adjusting to the Gallic lifestyle. In lighthearted essays, von Sothen describes how his life changed after marrying a French actor named Anais, who convinced him to move to Paris, he deadpans, by “shooting me in the neck with a dart gun and bundling me off.” But, as Anais is “technically a countess” and has an 18th-century country home in Normandy, he acknowledges his landing was nicely cushioned. His quippy observations of 15 years living in France include the French way of overpreparing for trips (“Vacations are not just times to relax in France, they’re subtle status symbols”), his linguistic shortcomings (“I speak French like Arnold Schwarzenegger speaks English”), and discovering that Fox News had reported that his Paris neighborhood was a “No-Go Zone” because of Muslim riots (while “my neighborhood wasn’t a ‘caliphate of Paristinians’... it wasn’t a cake walk either”). Von Sothen does a nice job of not just listing culture-clash gags (he works sometimes as a stand-up comic and this style of humor is apparent throughout) but showing the ways in which a person can adapt over time, such as how he vowed to become an “engaged citizen” when Emmanuel Macron was elected president. With self-deprecating humor, von Sothen wonderfully gives an insider’s take on living life as an outsider.



Booklist

April 15, 2019
Usually the only child winding his way through the chic parties his parents often hosted in their rambling D.C. brownstone, journalist von Sothen learned early on how to feel at ease while totally out of his league. This comfort in cluelessness, he thinks, serves him well in Paris, where he's lived for 15 years with his French wife and their two children. From his distinctive, insider-outsider perch, he sets out to write against the American "infatuation with keeping France a quaint and charming dollhouse," instead relating the daily humdrum of kid-toting, the changes in his neighborhood and himself after the 2015 terrorist attacks, and the unwritten yet unwavering policies for those famous six weeks of vacances. Von Sothen is both laugh-out-loud funny and tender, the latter especially in poignant essays about his parents, an artist and a newsman, who had him late in life. The problem, if it can be called one, is that even without fantasy, von Sothen's Paris comes across as pretty fantastic, a vibrant, genuine place he clearly feels lucky to call home.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)




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