Dreaming of France -- Paris by Edward Rutherfurd

Please join this weekly meme. Grab a copy of the photo above and link back to An Accidental Blog. Share with the rest of us your passion for France. Did you read a good book set in France? See a movie? Take a photo in France? Have an adventure? Eat a fabulous meal or even just a pastry? Or if you're in France now, go ahead and lord it over the rest of us. We can take it.
Maybe we can all satisfy our yearnings for France, until we get there again.
I really enjoyed this novel Paris by Edward Rutherfurd. I'm not one to read straight history. I need a hook, and Rutherfurd gave me one. He entwined the stories of several families throughout the history of Paris to share major events of the city and the country of France. Some might even imagine the book a soap opera in the tradition of Dallas or Dynasty. The main focus of the book began in 1875 and continued through the 1960s. But other chapters jumped back further in history to 1261 then 1307.
I'm hoping that Rutherfurd did his research because I'm taking his word for it. I learned a lot, like why Jewish families became bankers or money lenders, since the Bible said Christians shouldn't lend money. I could picture Paris from its early incarnation with the city wall that slowly expanded. I saw the kinds of fears my Huguenot relatives must have faced living in France, wondering if they would be rounded up and forced to become Catholic or killed. I loved envisioning the construction of Sacre Coeur high up on the hills of Montmartre and even more the engineering marvel that was the Eiffel Tower. I pictured the optimistic French soldiers marching off to war during World War I in their bright blue and red uniforms before they realized that their plans for war were antiquated and they were out-gunned. The same thing happened again in World War II as if the leaders never learned from their mistakes. Throughout history, the human drama of the families kept me interested.
The book is long, 805 pages. But it's an entertaining ride.
Here's a passage of dialogue from the 1500s discussing the wedding of Catherine de Medicis daughter to Henry King of Navarre, who will become king of France.

"You have heard of the great Machiavelli, I am sure."
"Who has not? An evil man."
"He merely described the ruthless cunning, the cold calculation, the poisonings and murders that he saw all around him among the rulers of Italy -- the Florence of the Medicis in particular. our queen mother will act exactly like that."
"And so this wedding...?"
"Is a diabolical trap. Think of it. Coligny is here. Almost every leading Protestant in France has come into Paris for this wedding, along with their followers. What a chance."
"I don't understand."
"She's going to kill them all. She and the Guises."
"But there are hundreds of them."
"Thousands. It's most convenient."

Some parts of the book obviously were sad to read, but the families Rutherfurd created have hope each generation.
Rutherfurd also has an inside joke with a wink at the movie Midnight in Paris. During a scene with Hemingway and his wife Hadley, they encouraged a young American writer to stay in Paris longer.

"Don't go disappearing on us, like Gil," said Hadley.
"Who's Gil?" asked Claire.
"Oh, he was a nice young American that we all thought had promise," said Hadley. "And then suddenly he wasn't there anymore. Disappeared without a word."

 I'm not sure if Rutherfurd was correcting the record, since Hemingway's wife didn't appear in the movie and according to The New York Times, Hemingway was married and living with his wife in Paris in 1922.

If you love Paris and a good soap opera and want to learn some history, this novel is an interesting read.
This also fulfills one of my books for the France reading challenge at Words and Peace.
Thanks for joining in this week. I can't wait to see what you are sharing.

What's Your Favorite Movie?

As an adult, I don't have a lot of favorites. My kids were always trying to pin me down to my favorite color, my favorite food, my favorite child.
But I do have two favorite movies. One of them is recent and the other has been my favorite since grad school.
We've rented Midnight in Paris several times. When the Redbox dvd froze the other night, Earl pointed out that we simply should have bought the movie. I love all the scenes of Paris. We play the "I've been there" game with Grace along, and I got to play it with my friend Ruth the other night too. She hadn't seen the movie. Doesn't like Woody Allen. Doesn't like Owen Wilson.
"Yeah, but that doesn't matter. You'll like this movie," I told her and I was right.
I also love figuring out who all the historical characters are. Of course, I recognized the Fitzgeralds and Hemingway and Gertrude Stein right away. Man Ray? Luis Bunuel? I didn't know about those surrealists or American writer Djuna Barnes.
I see something different every time I watch it.
And, of course, Wilson's fiance in the movie is so dismissive of his love for Paris and urge to finish his novel. I spend the movie trying to convince the screen that he should dump the fiance.

My long-term favorite movie is Room With a View. I find myself quoting this movie or thinking of scenes in this movie all the time. Just this morning I said, "I can't go running at you now, can I?" quoting the Helena Bonham Carter character as she encourages her fiance, Daniel Day Lewis to give her a first passionate kiss.  I think of our French friend Maguerite as the proper maiden aunt Charlotte Bartlett and wrote in my memoir how the family dreaded her visit at the vacation house in Corsica, just as they dreaded having "Poor Charlotte." The movie is so witty and clever, plus it has the first full-frontal male nudity I ever saw in a movie when the men are skinny-dipping in a pool and Helena Bonham Carter, her mother and fiance are walking past. Another hilarious scene. And I frequently find myself wanting to call out "Truth, Beauty..." the motto of the young George Sands character, who yells this from a tree, before the branch breaks and he takes a tumble to the Tuscan countryside. Tourists are mocked. Romances are mocked. The idea of raising children in the countryside to maintain their innocence before sending them on a world tour to finish them, seems like what we might have done with Grace. See how I've embraced this movie.

How about you? Do you have a favorite movie? Why is it your favorite?

Ah, One Night in Paris

Tonight, my husband is alone in Paris, and I'm a little worried.
Oh, I'm not worried that he might find a sweet French woman to entertain him; I'm worried about him finding his way alone in Paris without someone who speaks French, even as poorly as Grace and I do.
I think every time he has ever been to France, from the first time with me in 1991 through his current trip with Grace, he has always been accompanied by someone who speaks a little French. Don't get me wrong, he can make hand motions and say "allons-y" with the best of them. He can order tea or wine, and he can read the Metro signs. Still, I worry that, having left Grace at her host home and having consumed much wine, he'll wonder over for one last look at the Eiffel Tower. And, without me there to protect him, he'll be in danger of falling for the sad faces of the gypsies holding tightly wrapped babies. Or maybe he'll decide to buy some tiny Eiffel Tower replicas from the African hawkers. How many places will he wander before he returns to the hotel I found for him in the 1st arrondisement?
Perhaps I wouldn't think anything about it, if long ago, on my way home from three months in France, I hadn't run into an American guy who cut short his trip to Paris. I met the guy in the airport in New York. I sat, wearing a pink cotton skirt with a very high waistband, pink fishnet ankle socks and white kitten heels, and read a book, until a guy's tales of woe reached my ears. He had been in Paris for the first time. He'd been in the Champs de Mars near the Eiffel Tower when he was robbed of all his money and his passport. As soon as he could, he hightailed it home. He hated Paris.
I was dumbstruck. How could that be? I had traipsed about the city alone, flirting with Argentenian sailors and ignoring the propositions of men along the street, even ducking into a church during mass one day to avoid a very persistent man.
I've always felt safe in France, and maybe the fact that I never considered being in danger has always kept me safe.
But tonight, while Earl is alone. Well, I'll have to trust that he can take care of himself, for just this one night.
And tomorrow, I'll see him at the airport and he'll be home.

Earl and Grace self portrait in Paris -- 26 hours after leaving home.

Midnight in Paris Review

Manifique! Superbe! Charmante!
Imagine a movie filled with images of something you love and long for. I saw another reviewer explain that Paris is the main character in this movie, and I have to agree. The movie begins with shots of famous Paris monuments and tourist attractions.
At first, Earl elbowed me each time he recognized something in Paris -- Monet's gardens, the green metal book stalls along the Seine -- until I threatened him. After all, we had visited most of those tourist attractions.
I'm not a Woody Allen fan, but I loved this movie. From the previews,I could see that Owen Wilson, who plays Gil the main actor, yearned for Paris. He plays a writer, so already here is another connection. A writer who loves Paris -- I felt I could relate.
What I didn't get from the previews was that Gil goes back in time to the Roaring 20s, the time when Paris teamed with American writers like Fitzgerald, Hemingway and Stein; painters like Picasso and Dali; along with surrealist filmmakers.
The frenetic Gil itches to be in the Paris of the 20s until he is transported and finally learns that people, maybe writers and artists and philosophers, long for that time in the past when things were better. Yet each time period wishes to have experienced a previous, better time period.
It made me think of an episode of Mad Men where Don pitched the Kodak slide carousel. He explained, "...in Greek, nostalgia literally means the pain from an old wound. It's a twinge in your heart far more powerful than memory alone."
Perhaps people are always nostalgic for that time they can't recapture. They remember it as a superior time.
I wonder if Woody Allen is nostalgic for a simpler time, or maybe, like me, he simply loves Paris and wanted to showcase it in a movie.
I'm so glad that he did.