French in Action Newsletter #14, Winter 1999

A French Affair, by Michael Kenyon

A book review by Pierre Capretz

Recently, by pure chance, I came across a wonderful little book called A French Affair by Michael Kenyon (St. Martin's Press, 1993). In it, an Englishman, a writer, who has taken his family to live in Cahors, describes his encounter with France and French culture and language. Does this sound familiar? Since Peter Mayle's A Year in Provence, at least a hundred writers have embarked on similar journeys, picking up and leaving New York or London, setting out to inhabit some sun-drenched destination-be it Provence or Tuscany-where old farmhouses and olive oil abound. So you're probably thinking: "Can this story be told again and still be interesting?" The answer in this delightful book is an unequivocal oui. Kenyon's style and story are perfectly charming, as humorous as Mayle's accounts of his own adventures in Provence, and reveal perhaps a somewhat deeper, more penetrating insight into French culture than that found in Mayle's masterpieces.

To give you an idea of how accurate Kenyon's perception of French culture is, let me say that he notices and remarks on almost all the points featured in one lesson or another of French in Action! While the book is filled with images of Cahors and the Lot-truffles and prehistoric caves, cèpes and confit and foie gras, and a half a page on cassoulet-its subject is not limited to that region. Everywhere, you will find charming anecdotes of Kenyon's encounters with France and its people set throughout the country, more than one of which will call to mind the escapades of the heroes in French in Action.

Here are just a few examples:

• Kenyon racks his mind to decide which apéritifs would be typically American just as Mireille tries to find a typically French one . . . and like Mireille he finally settles for kir.
• As a Sorbonne student heading to Les Deux Magots, he goes to Boulevard Saint-Michel, the "'Boul' Mich' (as we locals called it )," says Kenyon.
• Negligently, he throws names like "Sartre" and "Lacan" into conversation and does not fail to allude to Hugo's daughter drowning in the Seine.
• He is familiar with the Porte d' Orléans and ten-speed bicycles.
• He knows people who do own a four-hundred-year-old stone farmhouse.
• An obvious lover of cheese, he expatiates on camembert, cantal and roquefort.
• Helping his daughters with their homework, he finds out all about French schools. (He has registered them in the school closest to their home "inquiries having revealed that no school stands out above others and that no school is to be avoided at all cost.")
• He encounters some difficulty in helping them to translate Caesar from French into Latin and realizes the importance of the baccalauréat, "the exam you must pass if you are to go on to college or do anything orthodox and salaried with your life."
• He patronizes Prisunic, just as Mireille does.
• He becomes fully aware of the typical attitude of French men toward women and vice versa.
• He gets help with a pneu crevé from a native, observing that "Pneu is a fine word to say because you explode the p, or at any rate pronounce it, which we don't with our dismal "pneumatic" and "pneumonia."
• He talks about rabbit hutches and HLM and names his aristocrat . . . Hubert.
• He has understood everything about the baffling distinction between tu and vous.
• He comments about tinned peas, "which the French claim upset the liver, but eat anyway."
• He warns against the perils encountered in uncorking champagne.
• He shares Tante Georgette's objection to raw lamb : "French restaurant lamb is raw. The only time we ordered lamb . . . we steeled ourselves, sweating from our temerity, to ask if the lamb could go back and have heat applied. The waitress blanched, gathered up the lamb, and treated us like grubs for the rest of the meal."

There are so many common points between A French Affair's and French in Action's views of French culture that you would almost think that there is some literary influence between those two chef d'oeuvres, which is not the case. No, it is just a case, let us modestly surmise, of les grands esprits qui se rencontrent. . . . A French Affair was published after French in Action, so the hypothesis of its having any influence on FiA has to be discarded. And it is unlikely that Mr. Kenyon learned French with FIA; when he ventures to quote a phrase or two in French, you suspect that his grasp of the language is not quite up to the level one would expect from someone who has mastered all of French in Action's fifty-two lessons. At least it is certain that he has not gone as far as Lesson 36: he wonders at one point how to say "rusty" in French. Even if his French were as rouillé as Robert's Japanese, Mr. Kenyon's understanding of French culture is as brilliant as his talent.

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