France, as a center of wealth and culture, has for many years been a destination for immigrants, allowing it to absorb outside influences and, as a result, continually reinvent itself. Although some immigrants, especially those of North African origin, have had difficulty integrating into French life, there is a more hopeful side to this story. As in the United States, many people in France are committed to their country’s tradition of human rights and being a safe haven for foreigners. And France benefits economically and culturally from the energy and talent of its foreign-born citizens, as well as those who, despite being born in France and thus being French, are sometimes seen as other because of their family origins.

Such is the theme of this week’s featured pop star, Souad Massi. Born in Algeria in 1972, Massi had an eclectic musical background. Her parents loved traditional Algerian, French pop, and American soul music. Several of her family members played jazz. She learned guitar at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Alger and soon became known as a modern, passionate singer—a politically dangerous image at the time in Algeria. After an artistic director of Universal Music discovered her in 1999 at a French festival of Algerian women, she moved to France. Her music—usually in Arabic, sometimes in French, and occasionally in English—has been described as a blending of Algerian, French, and “Anglo-Saxon” musical traditions.

Below is a video of Massi singing “Talit El Bir.” It’s a longer, more developed version of a song that appears on her third Album, Mesk Elil (“Honeysuckle,” 2006). The lyrics are in Arabic, and she begins by saying in French, “Vous nous aidez un peu si vous avez envie. Je force pas.” (“Help us a little if you feel like it. I’m not forcing anyone.”)

Once upon a time, back in the ‘80s, Katerine Gierak was just a young girl in Paris. At five years old she enrolled in her first music class. Soon she started playing the flute and studying music theory. Then she took up the classical guitar, followed by the electric guitar. From 1999 to 2005 she studied music at the Sorbonne, hoping to become a music teacher. But she failed the CAPES, a French exam for teachers, and instead of accepting the failure as a temporary setback, she changed careers. She became a rock star.

Now heading the band Mademoiselle K, Katerine Gierak is a popular and distinctive voice in contemporary French rock. Here is a clip of her 2006 song “Jalouse” (”Jealous”) from the album Ça Me Vexe (”That Upsets Me”). Below is a translation of the lyrics.

Clip : “Jalouse”, Mademoiselle K. Roy Music
envoyé par roymusic. – Regardez plus de clips, en HD !
Jalouse

By Katerine Gierak
J’suis jalouse à en faire trembler les gens
A faire trembler mes jambes
J’ai plus qu’à plonger en silence
J’pourrais flotter inerte, tu t’en balance
Et ça me ronge, ça me pourrit
Ça me rend dingue, ça me fout en l’air
Quand je sais que tu t’envoies en l’air
De l’air, de l’air, de l’air

Et même si j’le savais pas
J’imagine tout, c’est encore pire
Tu pourrais tomber amoureux
Recommencer une vie à deux
Plus tu la désire et plus j’expire
Et ça me ronge, ça me pourrit
Ça me rend dingue, ça me fout en l’air
Quand je sais que tu t’envoi en l’air
De l’air, de l’air

Jalouse, jalouse
J’suis jalouse à en faire trembler les gens
Et même si c’est moi qui casse
J’m'en fout, j’veux pas qu’on me remplace
J’suis jalouse à en faire trembler mes jambes
J’m'écraserai bien sur l’autoroute
Mais tu t’en fout, t’es déjà loin . . .
Le pire, c’est d’être déjà trop loin

Est-ce que parfois des idées noires
Te traverse sans crier gare ?
Moi, j’en ai un peu tous les soirs
Pourvu que le temps les écrases
Est-ce que tu penses encore à moi
Comme je pense encore à toi ?
Est-ce que tu souffres autant que moi ?
Si c’est moins, j’te le pardonnerai pas

Jalouse, jalouse
Et même si c’est moi qui casse
J’m'en fout, j’veux pas qu’on me remplace
Non, j’veux pas qu’on me remplace
J’veux pas qu’on me remplace
I’m so jealous I make people tremble
I make my legs tremble
Now I only have to dive into silence
I could float without moving, you couldn’t care less
And it eats away at me, it rots me
It makes me crazy, it fucks me up
When I know you’re screwing someone
Air, air, air . . .

And even if I didn’t know it
I imagine everything, it’s even worse
You could fall in love
Start again the life of a couple
The more you want her, the more I die
And it eats away at me, it rots me
It makes me crazy, it fucks me up
When I know you’re screwing someone
Air, air, air . . .

Jealous, jealous,
I’m so jealous I make people tremble
And even if I was the one who split up
I don’t care, I don’t want someone replacing me
I’m so jealous I make my legs tremble
I’ll even crush myself on the highway
But you don’t care, you’re already too far away . . .
The worst, it’s to be already too far away

Do dark thoughts sometimes
Cross your mind without warning?
Me, I have a few of them every night
Hoping that time crushes them
Do you still think of me
Like I still think of you?
Do you suffer as much as I do?
If it’s less, I won’t forgive you

Jealous, jealous
And even if I was the one who split up
I don’t care, I don’t want someone replacing me
No, I don’t want someone replacing me
I don’t want someone replacing me

Have you ever wondered what it’s like to be at a French rock concert? Well, here you go: Matthieu Chedid, better known by his stage name M, singing “En tête à tête” (about five years ago in Paris). One of France’s most extravagant and innovative rock stars, M combines the driving, rhythmic motion of rock with the elegant evenness of the French language.

Below are the lyrics and a translation.

En tête à tête

By M
Ce matin j’lui presse des oranges
   mécaniquement
Les yeux encore un peu brouillés par le sommeil
J’me trouve nez à nez avec ce vers qui ne rime
   à rien
C’est vrai ce week-end je suis seul
   avec moi même

En tête à tête avec moi-même
Souvent j’me tâte pour trouver le thème
En tête à tête avec moi même
J’ai pas la force de dire je je je . . .

Il faut aimer pour comprendre
Nous aimer pour nous comprendre
Mieux aimer pour mieux comprendre
C’est vrai ce week-end je suis seul
   avec moi-même

En tête à tête avec moi-même
Souvent j’me tâte pour trouver le thème
En tête à tête avec moi même
J’ai pas la force de dire je je je . . .
En tête a tête
En tête a tête
En tête a tête
En tête a tête
En tête a tête
This morning I squeeze oranges
   without thinking
My eyes still a little blurry from sleeping
I face with this line that rhymes
   with nothing
It’s true I’m alone this weekend
   with myself

All alone with myself
I often hesitate to find the theme
All alone with myself
I don’t have the energy to say I, I, I . . .

We have to love to understand
To love ourselves to understand ourselves
Loving better to understand better
It’s true I’m alone this weekend
   with myself

All alone with myself
I often hesitate to find the theme
All alone with myself
I don’t have the energy to say I, I, I . . .
All alone
All alone
All alone
All alone
All alone

France has an environmental movement of its own, and in the last European legislative elections, in 2009, Les Verts (“The Greens”) won 16 percent of the vote in France. Today the country is aswarm in things écolo (“environmental”) and bio (“organic”). It even has a kind of “Al Gore” in the writer and television producer Nicolas Hulot, who has been successful in pressuring French politicians to address environmental issues and is well known for his book and film Le Syndrome du Titanic (click here for the trailer).

If France had an environmental anthem, it might be “Respire” by the French trio Mickey 3D. Led by singer and songwriter Mickaël Furnon (whose nickname is Mickey), the group released its biggest hit, “Respire,” in 2003 on the album Tu vas pas mourir de rire (”You’re Not Going to Die of Laughter”). This simple, upbeat, but gloomy song blends eerily with the animated video the group made for it.

Below are the video, the lyrics, and a translation (note: in France baby boys are said to be found in a cabbage patch).

Respire

By Mickey 3D
Approche-toi petit,
Ecoute-moi, gamin.
Je vais te raconter
L’histoire de l’être humain.
Au début y avait rien,
Au début c’était bien.
La nature avancait,
Y avait pas de chemin.

Puis l’homme a débarqué
Avec ses gros souliers.
Des coups de pieds dans la gueule
Pour se faire respecter.
Des routes à sens unique
Qui s’est mises à tracer.
Les fleches dans la plaine
Se sont multipliées.

Et tous les éléments
Se sont vu métrisé.
En deux temps trois mouvements
L’histoire était pliée.
C’est pas demain la veille
Qu’on fera marche arrière.
On a meme commencé
A polluer les déserts.

Il faut que tu respires,
Et ça c’est rien de le dire.
Tu vas pas mourrir de rire,
Et c’est pas rien de le dire.

D’ici quelques années
On aura bouffé la feuille.
Et tes petits enfants
Ils n’auront plus qu’un oeil
En pleins milieu du front.
Ils te demanderont
Pourquoi toi t’en as 2.
Tu passeras pour un con.

Ils te diront comment
T’as pu laisser faire ça.
T’auras beau te défendre
Leurs expliquer tout bas,
T’est pas ma faute à moi,
C’est la faute aux anciens.
Mais y aura plus personne
Pour te laver les mains.

Tu leur raconteras
L’époque où tu pouvais
Manger des fruits dans l’herbe
Allonger dans les prés,
Y avait des animaux partout
Dans la forêt.
Au début du printemps
Les oiseaux revenaient.

Il faut que tu respires.
Et ça c’est rien de le dire.
Tu vas pas mourrir de rire,
Et c’est pas rien de le dire.
Il faut que tu respires,
c’est demain que tout empire.
Tu vas pas mourrir de rire,
et c’est pas rien de le dire.

Le pire dans cette histoire,
C’est qu’on est des esclaves.
Quelque part assassins,
Ici bien incapables
De regarder les arbres
Sans se sentir coupable,
A motié défroqué,
100 pour cent misérable.

Alors voilà, petit,
L’histoire de l’etre humain.
C’est pas joli joli,
Et j’connais pas la fin.
On est pas né dans un chou
Mais plutot dans un trou
Qu’on remplit tous les jours
Comme une fosse à purin.

Il faut que tu respires,
Et ça c’est rien de le dire.
Tu vas pas mourir de rire,
Et c’est pas rien de le dire.
Il faut que tu respires,
C’est demain que tout empire.
Tu vas pas mourrir de rire,
Et ça c’est rien de le dire.

Il faut que tu respires.
Il faut que tu respires.
Il faut que tu respires.
Il faut que tu respires.
Come closer, little one.
Listen up, kid.
I’m going to tell you
The story of humankind.
At first there was nothing,
At first it was fine.
Nature was moving on
Without even a trail.

Then man showed up
With his enormous shoes.
Some kicks in the face
To gain respect.
One-way streets
That began to be drawn.
The arrows in the field
spread right along.

And all the elements
Were thought to be tamed.
Then before you knew it,
The story had turned.
Tomorrow’s not even close
To when we’ll return.
We’ve already begun
polluting the deserts.

You have to breathe,
And that’s easy to say.
You’re not going to die of laughter,
And that’s not easy to say.

Sometime in the future
This will all be our fault.
And your little children
Will have just one eye
In the center of their forehead.
They’ll ask you
Why you have two.
You’ll look like an idiot.

They’ll ask you how
You could let this happen.
They’ll be no point in defending yourself,
Explaining to them softly
That’s it’s not your fault,
It’s the fault of your ancestors.
But there will be no one anymore
To wash your hands.

You’ll tell them about
The time you could
Eat fruit in the grass
Lying down in the meadow,
Animals everywhere
In the forest.
At the beginning of spring
The birds would come back.

You have to breathe,
And that’s easy to say.
You’re not going to die of laughter,
And that’s not easy to say.
You have to breathe,
And tomorrow it’ll get worse.
You’re not going to die of laughter,
And that’s not easy to say.

The worst of this story
Is that we’re each a slave,
In some sense a murderer,
Now fully incapable
Of looking at trees
Without feeling guilty,
Half given up,
100 percent miserable.

Well, there it is, little one,
The story of humankind.
It’s not really pretty,
And I don’t know the end.
We’re not born in a cabbage
But rather in a hole
That one fills everyday
Like a pit of manure.

You have to breathe,
And that’s easy to say.
You’re not going to die of laughter,
And that’s not easy to say.
You have to breathe,
And tomorrow it’ll get worse.
You’re not going to die of laughter,
And that’s easy to say.

You have to breathe.
You have to breathe.
You have to breathe.
You have to breathe.

Rare among contemporary French singers, Vanessa Paradis has a following in the United States, partly because she is the longtime partner of actor Johnny Depp, with whom she has two children. Paradis and Depp divide their time between Los Angeles and the south of France and also have property elsewhere. Depp was the cover artist for Divinidylle, her 2007 CD.

Paradis, now 37, has been famous for years as a singer and actor in France. Her first hit, “Joe le taxi,” was released in 1987 when she was 14 years old, and it became a number one song in 25 countries. She was instantly a kind of French Lolita, adored and scorned by the French public. Years later she is now often seen as a chic French rocker.

Here is Paradis doing an acoustic version of “Dans mon café” (“In My Coffee”) from her album Bliss (2000). The concert took place on November 22, 2009, in the historic Parisian theatre La Cigale. Before singing, Paradis says,

Vous me donnez soif . . . [from someone in the audience: “à ta santé] . . . merci . . . Cette chanson est dédiée à tout ce qu’on le sait . . . l’incendie prend dans leurs cœurs. On va laisser le feu les envahir, sans faire des dégats, sans extincteur, sans eau.

(You make me thirsty . . . [from someone in the audience : “to your health”] . . . thank you . . . This song is dedicated to everything we know . . . the fire takes hold in our hearts. We’re going to let the fire invade us, without damage, without an extinguisher, without water.)

Below are the lyrics and a translation.

Dans mon café

Lyrics by Didier Golemanas
Tu es le clown dans mon café
Le ballon rouge sur mon nez
Le magicien auditionné
Au plus grand cirque jamais monté

Des trapézistes s’sont ramassés
Des lionnes, de tigres dépareillés
Tu es le seul dans mon café
L’seul numéro qu’j'peux pas sucrer

Mais qu’as-tu fait des plus futés
De ceux qui me faisaient du thé
Du lait dont j’aurais dû douter
Le bel autodafé
Le bel autodafé
Que t’as fait lá
Dans mon café

Tu es bien le diable embarqué
Pas besoin d’me l’faire remarquer
La cuillère a beau tourner
T’es toujours là dans mon café

Même si j’ai pas fini d’jongler
Si j’ai pas assez répété
Avec toi c’est les yeux fermés
Tous ces couteaux qu’tu vas m’lancer

Qu’as-tu fait des plus affutées
De celles qui t’as jamais plantées
Des feux de bengale de chak’ côte
Le bel autodafé
Le bel autodafé
Que t’as fait lá
Dans mon café . . .
You are the clown in my coffee
The red balloon on my nose
The magician auditioned
at the largest circus ever erected

Trapeze artists fell down
Lions, tigers mixed up
You are the only one in my coffee
The only one I can’t rub out

But what did you do with the smartest ones
With those who used to make me tea
With milk I should have mistrusted
The beautiful auto-da-fé
The beautiful auto-da-fé
That you performed
In my coffee

You are indeed the devil aboard
No need to make it clear
Even though I stir the spoon
You are always in my coffee

Even if I don’t finish juggling
If I don’t practice enough
With you the eyes are closed
All those knives you’ll throw at me

What did you do with the sharpest ones
With the ones you never thrust in me
Bengal lights on either side
The beautiful auto-da-fé
The beautiful auto-da-fé
That you performed
In my coffee . . .

Although Francis Cabrel has been one of the best-selling songwriters in France since the late 1970s, he’s hardly had the typical life of a celebrity. Raised in the village of Astaffort, in the southwestern French department of Lot-et-Garonne, he still lives there with his longtime wife, Mariette. His first hit, “Petite Marie” (“Little Marie”; 1977), was dedicated to her.

Below is a video of Francis Cabrel performing “La Corrida” (“Bullfighting”), a song from his 1994 album Samedi soir sur la terre (“Saturday Night on Earth”), which sold three million copies. I love the tall, French windows at the back of the stage.

The lyrics describe the horror of bullfighting from the point of view of the bull, and the song shares with Cabrel’s other music a dreamlike quality and a yearning to say something that feels essential. Andalousie (Andalusia), mentioned below in the lyrics and translation, is a region in southern Spain known for bullfighting. The French expression “dormer sur ses deux oreilles” (“to sleep on both ears”) means to sleep deeply. In the song it’s used as a pun. After killing a bull the bullfighter is sometimes given its ears as a gift.

Francis Cabrel – La corrida
envoyé par dimigardien. – Regardez la dernière sélection musicale.

La Corrida

By Francis Cabrel
Depuis le temps que je patiente
Dans cette chambre noire
J’entends qu’on s’amuse et qu’on chante
Au bout du couloir
Quelqu’un a touché le verrou
Et j’ai plongé vers le grand jour
J’ai vu les fanfares, les barrières
Et les gens autour

Dans les premiers moments j’ai cru
Qu’il fallait seulement se défendre
Mais cette place est sans issue
Je commence à comprendre
Ils ont refermé derrière moi
Ils ont eu peur que je recule
Je vais bien finir par l’avoir
Cette danseuse ridicule…

Est-ce que ce monde est sérieux ?
Est-ce que ce monde est sérieux ?

Andalousie je me souviens
Les prairies bordées de cactus
Je ne vais pas trembler devant
Ce pantin, ce minus !
Je vais l’attraper, lui et son chapeau
Les faire tourner comme un soleil
Ce soir la femme du torero
Dormira sur ses deux oreilles

Est-ce que ce monde est sérieux ?
Est-ce que ce monde est sérieux ?

J’en ai poursuivi des fantômes
Presque touché leurs ballerines
Ils ont frappé fort dans mon cou
Pour que je m’incline
Ils sortent d’où ces acrobates
Avec leurs costumes de papier ?
J’ai jamais appris à me battre
Contre des poupées

Sentir le sable sous ma tête
C’est fou comme ça peut faire du bien
J’ai prié pour que tout s’arrête
Andalousie je me souviens
Je les entends rire comme je râle
Je les vois danser comme je succombe
Je pensais pas qu’on puisse autant
S’amuser autour d’une tombe

Est-ce que ce monde est sérieux ?
Est-ce que ce monde est sérieux ?

Si, si, hombre, hombre
Baila, baila
Hay que bailar de nuevo
Y mataremos otros
Otras vidas, otros toros
Y mataremos otros
Venga, venga a bailar…
Y mataremos otros
During the time I was waiting
In this dark room
I heard people having fun and singing
At the end of the corridor
Someone put his hand on the lock
And I dove into the daylight
I saw the commotion, the gates
And the people all around

At first I believed
I needed only to defend myself
But this place with no exit
I’m beginning to understand
They locked up behind me
They were afraid I was going back
I’m just going to end up doing
This ridiculous pastime . . .

Are these people serious?
Are these people serious?

Andalusia I remember
The meadows lined with cacti
I’m not going to tremble before
This nobody, this moron!
I’m going to catch him, him and his hat
Make them spin like a sun
This evening the bullfighter’s wife
Will sleep on both ears

Are these people serious?
Are these people serious?

I pursued their ghosts
Almost touched their ballerina shoes
They struck hard on my neck
So that I’d bow down
Where did these acrobats come from
With their paper costumes?
I never learned to fight
Against dolls

To feel the sand under my head
It’s crazy how good it can feel
I prayed so that everything would stop
Andalusia I remember
I hear them laugh as I groan
I see them dance as I die
I didn’t think anyone could have so much
fun gathered around a grave

Are these people serious?
Are these people serious?

Yes, yes, man, man
Dance, dance
You have to dance again
And we’ll kill others
Other lives, other bulls
And we’ll kill others
Come, come and dance . . .
And we’ll kill others

As another hint of the upcoming books under our own imprint, we are starting today the French Pop Song of the Week. Writers live in the bubble of their own language, landscape, and culture. While waiting in a grocery store line or taking an escalator in a department store, French writers hear songs that Americans or Brits, for example, would not recognize. French music influences French writers, whether they wish it or not, just as growing up by a sea washes a permanent tint over a person’s sensibility.

There are a fair number of French singers who imitate Anglo styles, which is not surprising, as American and British music dominates the market in much of the world. But the French have tenaciously clung to music in their own language. Since 1994 at least 40 percent of songs on French radio stations have by law been required to be in French, and sales of French music in France, though varying from year to year, usually do not stray far from the percentage heard on the radio.

Is there anything distinctive about French pop music? Listening to the radio, I usually know before someone begins singing if the song is Anglo or French. The range of French pop is too broad to generalize, but there is often a romantic, epic, though ambivalent quality that settles in your spirit in some notable French way.

In French the word variété can mean “pop music,” so French pop music is called variété française. A great tradition within French popular music is the chanson à texte (literally “text song”), in which the words, often poetic, reflective, or otherwise engaging, have as much importance as the music. An example in the United States would be Bob Dylan; in France a famous chanteur à texte is Georges Brassens.

Our first French pop song of the week is “Mon amie la rose” (“My Friend the Rose”), sung by Françoise Hardy, one of the best-known singers of the French 1960s yé-yé era. The video, from 1965, has been viewed about 1.5 million times on YouTube. Below is a translation of the lyrics.

Mon amie la rose

Lyrics by Cécile Caulier
On est bien peu de chose
Et mon amie la rose
Me l’a dit ce matin
A l’aurore je suis née
Baptisée de rosée
Je me suis épanouie
Heureuse et amoureuse
Aux rayons du soleil
Me suis fermée la nuit
Me suis réveillée vieille

Pourtant j’étais très belle
Oui j’étais la plus belle
Des fleurs de ton jardin

On est bien peu de chose
Et mon amie la rose
Me l’a dit ce matin
Vois le dieu qui m’a faite
Me fait courber la tête
Et je sens que je tombe
Et je sens que je tombe
Mon cœur est presque nu
J’ai le pied dans la tombe
Déjà je ne suis plus

Tu m’admirais hier
Et je serai poussière
Pour toujours demain

On est bien peu de chose
Et mon amie la rose
Est morte ce matin
La lune cette nuit
A veillé mon amie
Moi en rêve j’ai vu
Eblouissante et nue
Son âme qui dansait
Bien au-delà des nues
Et qui me souriait

Crois celui qui peut croire
Moi, j’ai besoin d’espoir
Sinon je ne suis rien

Ou bien si peu de chose
C’est mon amie la rose
Qui l’a dit hier matin
We are really almost nothing
And my friend the rose
Told me that this morning
At dawn I was born
Baptized by the dew
I blossomed
Happy and in love
In the rays of the sun
I closed up at night
I woke up old

And yet I was very beautiful
Yes, I was the most beautiful
Of the flowers in your garden

We are really almost nothing
And my friend the rose
Told me that this morning
See the god who made me
Makes me bow down
And I feel that I am falling
And I feel that I am falling
My heart is almost bare
I have one foot in the grave
Already I am no longer

You admired me yesterday
And I will be dust
Forever tomorrow

We are really almost nothing
And my friend the rose
Passed away this morning
The moon last night
Watched over my friend
Me, in a dream, I saw
Dazzling and naked
Its soul that was dancing
Far beyond the heavens
And smiling at me

Believe, those who can believe,
Me, I need hope
Otherwise I am nothing

Or at least not much of anything
It was my friend the rose
Who said that yesterday morning

Perhaps you didn’t notice, but next month Soft Skull Press is releasing The Bad Life, the English translation of Frédéric Mitterrand’s “memoir” La mauvaise vie (2005). Over the last few months the author has become controversial, and in response Soft Skull published a defense of the book on its blog.

We’d just like to say that what is most surprising to us regarding the situation is that Mr. Mitterrand’s story has for quite some time been public knowledge to the French people, and in the most high-profile fashion. The Bad Life was published four years ago and became a bestseller in France. The controversial passages have been known to us all along and, among other things, it was the frankness and thoughtfulness with which Mr. Mitterrand discussed his life that drew us to the project. Whether you agree with Mr. Mitterrand’s story or habits, he approaches them with a compelling and thought-provoking honesty and we continue to stand behind this elegant and brave book in the same way we have since undertaking to publish it here. As a publisher, Soft Skull has always embraced controversial conversations.

So, then, who is Frédéric Mitterrand, and what did he do to cause such a scandal?

Monsieur Mitterrand is the nephew of the former French president François Mitterrand. In June 2009, after many years as a documentary maker, writer, and television presenter, he became the French minister of culture and communication under the current president, Nicolas Sarkozy, supposedly at the urging of Sarkozy’s wife, the singer and former model Carla Bruni. France is famous for looking the other way when politicians and other personalities transgress moral norms in their personal lives. Hardly anyone in France seemed to care when Mitterrand’s book appeared in French in 2005, even though what he says about paying for prostitutes in Thailand is hardly accepted behavior in France.

Tous ces rituels de foire aux éphèbes, de marché aux esclaves m’excitent énormément. La lumière est moche, la musique tape sur les nerfs, les shows sont sinistres et on pourrait juger qu’un tel spectacle, abominable d’un point de vue moral, est aussi d’une vulgarité repoussante. Mais il me plaît au-delà du raisonnable. La profusion de garçons très attrayants, et immédiatement disponibles, me met dans un état de désir que je n’ai plus besoin de refréner ou d’occulter. L’argent et le sexe, je suis au cœur de mon système ; celui qui fonctionne enfin car je sais qu’on ne me refusera pas.

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All the rituals of the market for young men, the slave market, excite me enormously. The light is awful, the music gets on your nerves, the shows are dreary, and such a spectacle, abominable from a moral standpoint, could also be judged as a hideous vulgarity. But it pleases me beyond reason. The profusion of boys, very attractive and immediately available, puts me in a state of desire I no longer need to restrain or hide. Money and sex, I am at the heart of my system, that which functions in the end because I know that no one will refuse me.

In France the book was critically acclaimed and sold well, but something changed in 2009. Mitterrand, now a politician, threw himself into an international controversy: the arrest in Switzerland of director Roman Polanski, a French citizen, who had fled the United States in 1978 after pleading guilty to unlawful sexual intercourse with a thirteen-year-old girl. Mitterrand called the arrest “frightening.” Unfortunately for Mitterrand, what he seemed to be admitting in his book—sex with underage boys—was immediately identified with Polanski’s crime, sex with an underage girl. Both French Socialists (the party of his uncle) and the ultra-right-wing Front National attacked him for pedophilia and “sex tourism.” It was left to President Sarkozy’s party, the right-wing UMP, to defend its minister of culture. The party’s spokesman, Xavier Bertrand, expressed his support in a typical French way. “On n’est pas obligé d’utiliser la vie privée des gens à des fins politiciennes” (“One is not obliged to use someone’s private life for political ends”).

Hardly surprising, the issue ended up being more complicated than it first seemed. Most importantly, the book is, as its French publisher (Éditions Robert Laffont) states, a roman d’inspiration autobiographique (“novel of autobiographical inspiration”). In other words, it’s a mixture of memory and imagination. The controversial material is found on only a few pages. The book covers a much longer period of his life and concerns something more general, as Mitterrand hints at here when referring to himself in the third person.

Autrefois on aurait dit qu’il s’agissait de la divulgation de sa part d’ombre ; aujourd’hui on parlerait de “coming out.” Il ne se reconnaît pas dans ce genre de définition. La mauvaise vie qu’il décrit est la seule qu’il a connue.

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In the past one would have said it was a matter of revealing his dark side; today one would speak of “coming out.” He doesn’t recognize himself in this type of definition. The bad life he describes is the only life he knew.

Mitterrand eventually went on French television to discuss the controversy. He denied having sex with underage boys, saying gay men often call other men “boys.” He echoed misgivings expressed in the book, saying payment for sex was “an offence against the idea of dignity, human dignity.” And ultimately, as when the book first appeared in 2005, many (though not all) French people admired his honesty in discussing the issue. To this day he remains the minister of culture and communication.

Of course, I don’t know whether Mitterrand is telling the truth. But I give him the benefit of the doubt. He’s a smart man (if you understand French, see the video below), and it doesn’t seem bright to mention in a “memoir” that you committed what would be a serious crime in your own country. France, of course, prosecutes people who have sex with minors.

But what about the book itself, its quality and literary merit? As we have learned so many times before, art is not a reflection of the moral rectitude of the creator. Art, in this case an arrangement of words, stands on its own. On the back of the French edition, a blurb describes the work as “délicat, pudique jusque dans l’impudeur” (“delicate, discreet to the point of indiscretion”). In reading the book, I was absorbed by the author’s elegant style, his search for understanding, of himself and of things around him, whether real or imagined. I found it to be an impressive and moving confession of an unsettling and at times disturbing life.

Like many people in France last week, I went to the opening of Gainsbourg (vie héroïque), a film about Serge Gainsbourg (1928-91), the French songwriter, provocateur, and cultural icon. It’s hard to imagine the American equivalent of Gainsbourg, who is as famous in his own country as Elvis Presley is in the United States. To describe his personality and public presence, I thought about combining Bob Dylan, Abby Hoffman, and Charles Bukowski, but any mélange of American personalities would lack the French sensibility of Gainsbourg and the French culture that he both embodied and challenged.

That Gainsbourg, an inventive and disturbing cultural force, was virtually unknown in the United States even during his lifetime reflects the cocooning effect of language. Gainsbourg sang literary and sometimes shocking lyrics and provoked traditional French citizens into a fury, but Americans, deaf to the French language, were left undisturbed and unaffected.

The French book blog Cafebook has a good review of the film from a French perspective. When the film finally makes its way to the United States, Americans will get a chance to see a bit of why he was one of the strongest cultural forces in France during the second half of the twentieth century (and will not see anything from his last decade, when he was older and often drunk and sometimes less than impressive). Americans will also understand how he is now summarized: representing a strain of French Jewish identity after Nazi-controlled France; leading a dissolute life of drinking and smoking that eventually killed him; dating among the most beautiful women of his era, including Brigitte Bardot; and writing songs with sophisticated lyrics (often interpreted by other French singers), some of which trespassed the accepted borders of French society. When in 1979 Gainsbourg recorded a reggae version of “La Marseillaise,” the French national anthem, he provoked a riot.

Although Gainsbourg had relations with many women, he is best known for his marriage to Jane Birkin, who, despite being British, sang and continues to sing in French. Their daughter, Charlotte Gainsbourg, is an actor and singer whose most recent album, IRM, was reviewed last week in the New York Times.

Here is the movie’s trailer. It seems at times more appropriate for a film called “The Sex Life of Serge.” The actual film is more subtle, artistic, and surrealistic, but alas, such is marketing.

For a glimpse of Gainsbourg in the 1960s, below is a video of “La Javanaise,” which he initially wrote for the singer Juliette Gréco.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy; image by guillaumepaumier via Flickr

Imagine the plight of the French. They want to protect their language and culture. They have what many consider to be one of the most beautiful languages, and their literary history is rich. From Molière to Flaubert to Sartre, the French have given much to the world.

Unfortunately for those who think literature is more than mere Internet “content” to attract advertising dollars, the times are changing quickly. Google is in the process of digitizing every book it can (admittedly to the great benefit of people who don’t have the resources otherwise to obtain certain texts), and soon Google and other American companies, such as Amazon and Apple, might dictate the publishing terms of books both old and new worldwide.

Faced with the possibility of losing control of its literary heritage, the French are mulling over possibilities. Even the conservative French president Nicolas Sarkozy—who has been called “Sarko l’Américain” for his pro-American sentiments—is concerned. He recently said of Google, “We won’t let ourselves be stripped of our heritage to the benefit of a big company, no matter how friendly, big or American it is.” He said France would finance its own book digitization program.

Amazon is also causing concern in France. Amazon has already battled France over the country’s prix unique du livre, which allows publishers, not booksellers, to set the price of a book. Because of this law, Amazon sells books for the same price as a small bookstore in Paris. Now five of France’s largest booksellers, including Fnac and Virgin, have proposed a nationalized ebook “hub.” There French publishers and booksellers would work together to sell ebooks online at a price determined by the publishers, preventing Amazon and other sites from competing with lower prices.

Guillaume Decitre, CEO of the French bookseller Decitre, said, “If we don’t manage to do this, what’s going to happen? We will find ourselves in front of a platform, or hub, already made by a private company . . . whether Amazon, Google or Apple.” In order to establish a nationalized ebook platform, the booksellers would have to persuade not only the French government but also French publishers, who don’t necessarily have the same interests. In fact, French publishers are thinking about creating their own single ebook platform without the booksellers.

Americans are often mystified by the French approach to politics, and many love to mock it. But if we are entering what comes to be called the Chinese century, it will be interesting to see how Americans react to their own declining empire, their own experience of being a small part of an economic world, this time dominated by Asia.

Curiously “Starsky et Hutch” speak French.

But there remain some common complaints. Americans are loud. They’re overweight. They don’t care about other countries and couldn’t find France on a map. Recently on a plane I was sitting next to a Romanian woman who now lives in Chicago. She told me she had watched an American television quiz show, and the host asked the question, What’s Romania? The contestant, the Romanian woman assured me, guessed it was a type of lettuce.

As a person fond of both Europe and the United States, I just smiled. Not long ago someone here in France asked me if Chicago was a neighborhood of New York.

What does this have to do with literature? One of my favorite blogs is Three Percent, devoted to modern and contemporary international literature. It’s so called because only 3 percent of all books published in the United States are translations. According to Three Percent, among books of literary fiction and poetry, the figure is only 0.7 percent (in 2008 the most commonly translated language in this category was French, with 16 percent of the total, but that added up to only 59 books).

I’m afraid, at least in literature, the stereotype of Americans is true. We all spend time in the produce section, but few of us ever buy a Romanian book.

What is the biggest challenge for publishers and bookstores today? The simple answer, of course, is that people are buying fewer books, and when they do buy books, it’s increasingly online. But it’s not as if people are reading less. They might, in fact, be reading more, except now they have a new option: free content in the ever expanding virtual world of the Internet.

I sometimes think of this as an American phenomenon. In the United States attention spans are getting shorter and shorter, and people seem more interested in reading blogs or watching strangers lip sync on YouTube than doing something as sedate and tedious as reading a novel. But I was discouraged to learn recently that in France, too, book buying is on the decline.

This week in Nice I found a small book, Lettres à mon libraire (Letters to My Bookseller), that helped reassure me that the world has not completely abandoned the idea of books and the stores that nurture and sell them. For the book forty-five French writers wrote brief letters, verging on love letters at times, to bookstores and booksellers. In the preface François Busnel (a well-known editor and host of a literary television program in France) begins by arguing something seemingly antiquated but at the same time intuitively true for those who grew up in the nondigital world. “Soyons honnêtes: il n’y a pas de livre sans librairie, pas d’écrivain sans libraire” (“Let’s be honest: there is no book without a bookstore, no writer without a bookseller”). He then goes on to pin the problem of bookselling today on capitalism’s commodification of art.

Literature [is] the most useless of activities. That is what we hear every day . . . in this overloaded century, which made speed its supreme value and superficiality its guardian angel, which in metaphysical discourse asked the question “What is this for?” and insisted on profitability as the answer to everything, it is a good sign, I’ve said, that something resists the terrible temptation to declare itself “useful.” Beauty is useless, as poets and philosophers all affirm.

It is in this spirit that bookstores have more than commercial value that novelist Michèle Lesbre, one of the forty-five authors, writes,

Dear bookseller of my youth. I learned that you died several months ago. I couldn’t believe the bad news. Your tiny bookstore, at the top of rue des Gras and under the shadow of the cathedral, in Clermont-Ferrand, was so long the only real sanctuary for those that thought literature could save the world, one day.

True, these passages are nostalgic and in themselves of little effect, as is much of the commentary these days lamenting the decline of reading and wearily pushing against the upcoming digital revolution in book publishing. But if it’s any consolation, books and bookstores are still valued by a lot of people, and in the worst case, when everyone has a Kindle or an Apple Tablet for reading, you’ll probably still be able to find paper books. They’ll be right next to the vinyl record section.

Allons voir plus loin, veux-tu? Voir la mer, la baie des anges et ses palmiers . . . un peu plus loin, de l’autre coté du Musée Masséna.

Translated into our more accented English, it said,

Let’s go see farther. Do you want to? See the sea, the Bay of Angels and its palm trees . . . a little farther, on the other side of the Masséna Museum.

Musée Masséna by DrOMM via Flickr

Musée Masséna? That’s in Nice, where I live, so how could I say no?

I had never met the person who wrote the note. In fact, I read the message on bookcrossing.com, a website that promotes “free range books.” The idea is simple: read a book, and afterward, instead of putting it to rest on your bookshelf, set it free. The site gives suggestions.

Leave it on a park bench, a coffee shop, at a hotel on vacation. Share it with a friend or tuck it onto a bookshelf at the gym – anywhere it might find a new reader!

When I found the listing for Allons voir plus loin, veux-tu? by Anny Duperey, I saw there were almost 800 books “in the wild” in France, all waiting for someone to find them. In the United States there were some 10,000 books left in parks, coffee shops, and other random places.

The site also lets readers post notes about books before passing them on to someone else. This copy of Allons voir plus loin, veux-tu? began in Feins, Bretagne, in the north of France. It then traveled to nearby Pléneuf-Val-André before heading south to Lyon and finally Nice in southeastern France, where a reader left a rather uninspired recommendation: “Enfin je ne sais pas pourquoi j’avais envie de lire ce livre! . . . mais j’ai passé un bon moment” (”In fact, I don’t know why I felt like reading this book! . . . but I had a good time”).

After reading the note, I decided it was my turn to “passer un bon moment.” Fortunately there was one more clue: “Livre laissé côté rue de France, sur les grilles du Musée” (”book left on the side of rue de France, on the gate of the museum”). As I was going to a concert that evening not far from the museum, I decided to “go hunting,” as the site says.

The museum is a stone’s throw from the sea and next to the famous Hotel Negresco, where, as one site claims, Claudia Schiffer, Orson Welles, and Michael Jackson all stayed. But rue de France is one street in from the sea, and at night, when I arrived, it seemed desolate. A light breeze was pushing around a plastic sack. I was wearing headphones, listening to the French pop singer Bénabar, and reached my hand through the gate to search through a thick stretch of shrubbery. I must have seemed like a thief or a homeless person.

After a while, something didn’t seem right.

I looked around and across the street. Two prostitutes stood waiting for tourists. A flic, as cops are called here, sped by on a motorcycle. Great, I thought. This is all fine, and I don’t mind the weirdness, but someone already took the book.

Why read this book? It’s intellectual without being pretentious. It talks about serious ideas, though in a simple, fascinating story. It takes place in the 1960s but is concerned with something interesting to think about during today’s global economic downturn—the culture of consumption.

I was grateful to Cafebook, written by Emma Zucchi, for talking about Perec, who died of lung cancer at the age of 45. Les Choses, his first book, was a big success in France and translated into numerous languages.

In the United States Perec has a loyal following, and the translated version, Things, is published by David R. Godine. In this era of best sellers and declining midlists, it’s great to see a foreign writer continue to fascinate Americans. Thanks, Godine, for publishing Things!

Even if you don’t speak French, here is a video that gives a glimpse of Perec and his mannered but entrancing mode of expression. In the video Perec, just 30 years old and dressed in a suit, discusses Les Choses.

For those who speak French, here’s part 2.

But no need to imagine. Here is a video of the Nice book festival, including scenes of the sea, a market, writers signing books, even a socialist union demonstration. It was filmed by Valérie Bonnier, a French actress turned novelist. 

How is the book business in France? Well, consider these numbers. France, with a population of 65 million people, has 3,500 independent bookstores. The United States, with 300 million people, has 2,200. France not only has more independent bookstores but, per capita, tops the United States seven to one.

Why? One reason might be France’s “prix unique du livre,” which allows publishers (or in the case of foreign books, importers) to set book prices. Thus, an independent bookstore in a small street in Paris has the same prices as Amazon.com. A maximum 5 percent discount is allowed.

France is not alone. Twelve other countries in Europe have fixed book prices. Switzerland, which had abandoned fixed prices, took the first step toward reinstating them this year.