Sixty Million Frenchmen Can't be Wrong: What Makes the French So French?
By Jean-Benoit Nadeau and Julie Barlow
3.5/5
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About this ebook
Jean-Benoit Nadeau
Canadian journalist-author JEAN-BENOÎT NADEAU is an award-winning contributor to L’actualité. Writings with his life partner, JULIE BARLOW, have appeared in the Toronto Star, the Ottawa Citizen, Saturday Night, The Christian Science Monitor and the International Herald Tribune, among others. In 2003, Nadeau and Barlow published their critical and popular success, Sixty Million Frenchmen Can’t Be Wrong. They live in Montreal.
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Reviews for Sixty Million Frenchmen Can't be Wrong
109 ratings7 reviews
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Wide-ranging look at all aspects of modern French life. Most interesting is how the state has come to dominate and be accepted as the dominator. Also, how much Napoleon did to lay the foundations, shaky through most of the 19th and half of the 20th centuries, ready for de Gaulle to complete the structure after WW2. These French generals knew a lot more than bang-bang shoot-shoot. The authors talk of the French lack of interest in overseas (evident in their relative low numbers as international tourists), but this does not accord with their desperate rearguard fights to hold onto Indochina and Algeria, nor with Louis XIV's and Napoleon's costly attempts to dominate Europe. Seems to me the French have been just as expansionist as the Brits, just didn't have the same eagerness for sea battles and banking. Tricky to grasp, but important, is how the Revolution eliminated many social structures with emphasis on égalité. Result: you are defined as a citizen of the French state with all that demands and provides. Ethnicity, religion and the rest are cleared away. This has created special difficulties for the Muslim population, which is both large and unassimilated, clinging on to a separate identity. The book is now more than a decade old but this accounts much for current difficulties. A chatty conversational style makes for easy reading in what is really quite a complex and fact-filled analysis. A few facts inevitably miss the mark: e.g. Novartis is a Swiss company, not french at all, Tarot is not a card game.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Written by Jean-Benoit Nadeau and Julie Barlow, this book tries to explain why so many people love France but not the French. An interesting book, although a bit dry at times, it travels through the reasons the French are just worlds away from any other country.It starts out with French history and how the French people are ingrained in their history even when they are moving forward and becoming more modern. The French hold their elite up and expect them to be better (grandeur); going as far as to create elite schools just to make some people better than others. The book also covers the wars France was involved in, including WWII where they persecuted their Jews before Germany could. Explanations of the various forms of government explain why the French are more than ok with one large governing body and ok with being taxed on everything. Overall, the system works even if it looks unwieldy to everyone else. Most people are covered for medical and unemployment and retirement in France.This book doesn't explain everything about France but it's pretty close. A good introduction into why the French are the way they are and why they are not necessarily what we think they are.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5This was a fun introduction to French culture. The two authors, Canadian journalists who relocated to France for two years, set out to explain why the French are the way they are, and why Americans and the French often have so much trouble getting along. There are chapters dedicated to the influences of World War II and the war with Algeria, chapters dedicated to the education system, and sections dedicated to the French insistence on precision in language, their ideas of personal space, and their opinions on which topics are appropriate to discuss in public and which are not. Nadeau's writing style is clear and lively and punctuated with personal anecdotes.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Nadeau and Barlow embark in a thorough journey to determine what make the French tick from a North American perspective. This book has become somewhat of a bible for North Americans who wish to experience France and with reason. The book is carefully crafted into various themes, easy to read and well-researched. The authors are careful to stay objective but occasionally interject making their effort personable. This last edition dates from 2002, but I feel it is still largely applicable. I hope they continue to update their work: I would be interested to find out their take on Sarkozy and the new shift in French politics.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5I enjoyed reading this book. It is written by a Canadian husband and wife team, the first is French and the second is English. They spent two years in France to explore and understand the country. The country is enigmatic for North Americans, with a large bureaucracy and a top-down style but actually results in a very good economy. The most original idea is that the French are the aborigines of France, the sense that the people had a continuous history back to prehistoric times. The authros take you the relationship with the land, le terroir, the existence of privacy in ones life , the desire for grandeur, and their art of rhetoric. Also covered are the problems with wars, algeria, and political stability over the centuries; the legacy of the French Revolution, the training of an elite, the respect for an overarching state, etc. This book should be read for those in the Western hemisphere who cannot penetrate continental ways, particularly in its Gallic form.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A comprehensive book about France from a different perspective, that of 2 Canadians, one from Quebec and one from Ontario. Very interesting read from non-US authors whose research is thorough and accessibly presented. That said, this book will appeal more to the Francophile who wants to dig deeply into the roots of French society, politics and culture, and who is not looking for travel logs, house-restoration tales, or the woes of English-language speakers in France. Densely populated with statistics and inside information, the book may not be finished by those who are looking for a 'lighter' read. But a good addition to the library of books about France.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5by Ruth: The book really is as interesting as the title would lead one to believe, though honestly it plumbs such depths that I still don’t feel as if I have begun to grasp all of its implications. But it has provided us with a helpful framework to begin to understand how the French are different from us as Americans, and why we can’t begin to understand their thinking and perceptions by analyzing them through our “American glasses”.The French SpiritWritten by a Canadian duo, Jean-Benoit Nadeau and Julie Barlow, which spent two years living in and studying France, the book is divided into three main sections: spirit, structure and change. In the first section on the French spirit, the authors undertake the task of explaining some of the intricacies of French culture and how so much of France’s modern orientation and worldview is derived from her long history. How her passion for the land and her sense of nobility go all the way back to the days of feudalism (when, I might add, no one but some Indians were running around in North America).The authors relate how attached the French are to rhetoric and how much they value the process of developing thoughts more than the ultimate goal of getting to a solution. In a chapter titled “Private Space,” the authors describe the French notion of public versus private, including what sorts of things the French would consider acceptable for public conversation (e.g. politics) and what topics would be considered completely taboo (e.g. religion) to their way of thinking. The authors also dealt with World War II and the Algerian Conflict and explored the many ways in which those major events have defined more recent French culture and thought.The French Structure The second division of the book identified the basic governmental and sociological structures upon which modern France is built. This section was especially helpful to my understanding of how France operates. Though it may seem paradoxical when one considers the significance of the French Revolution, the authors recount that the French have kept an undeniable attachment to absolutism. “The French, it seems, can’t resist making kings” (p. 118). The authors also observe how, unlike North Americans who build entire platforms around the notion of keeping the government out of their business, “the French look to the State for answers to everything” (p. 127). This section contained descriptions of the French judicial system, educational system, and their view of their own language. (“Anglo-Americans consider language a tool, but the French regard it as an accomplishment, even a work of art. … It’s their national monument” (p.162).) As a future immigrant to France, I found the topic of assimilation to be especially interesting. The authors explain that because the French are so committed to the concept of the State (l’Etat), they are consciously committed to ignoring facts like one’s ethnic origin or religious affiliation. “Once you’re French, you’re nothing else. This attitude means the State doesn’t give—or really permit—anyone to have any other identity” (p. 139). Of course, where the rub comes in is in the fact that if one’s devotion to one’s ethnic origin or religious affiliation is perceived to be stronger than one’s commitment to the State, then you may be perceived to be at odds with the State, which necessarily puts you at odds with the common good of the entire French people.Future ChangeThe final section summarizes the French worldview as presented in previous chapters. Here are some highlights (taken from pp. 283-85): -Because of their centuries-old attachment to the land, restriction is their second nature, not expansion.-The French glorify what’s elevated and grand, not what’s common and accessible.-They value form as much as content.-The French don’t just glorify their élite; French society needs a clearly identified élite.-They affirm the State’s role in virtually everything—culture, language, welfare, and the economy.-The French have learned to live with the idea that they are neither the biggest, nor the strongest, power on earth. But they still believe they are the best.The authors conclude by showing that the French are becoming more flexible than they used to be, recognizing the necessity of change in order to accommodate relationships with the European community and the world at large.“One thing is certain: France is not what it used to be. France has never been what it used to be, and it never will. So we might as well enjoy it while it lasts” (p. 343).