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France - interview
You boast and bitch but I love you, author tells the French
by David Page
Article published on the 2009-04-23 Latest update 2009-04-24 15:02 TU
Alberto Toscano
(Photo: Tony Cross)
On the 23 February 2008 French President Nicolas Sarkozy said he would call on Unesco to recognise French gastronomy as one of the world’s most valuable treasures. Paris-based Italian journalist Alberto Toscano heard the President and he laughed ... at first. Then he then became seriously aggravated.
Toscano thought that Unesco has better things to do and that his own Italian grandmother makes better mashed potatoes than he’s ever tasted in France.
Sarkozy should first look at what Christian Milau wrote in his Dictionnaire Amoureux de la Gastronomie, according to Toscano.
“France, the Queen of cuisine among the world’s nations, the country of truffles, foie gras, frog legs and snails: in fact this is a hoax!" the noted French food authority says. "Our cuisine has never stopped being nurtured and enriched by foreign influences.”
Toscano first came to live in Paris back in 1986 as a correspondent for several leading Italian newspapers and magazines. He expected to stay a few years, but has lived in Paris ever since.
He loves Paris and he loves France…and he even loves the French. But what seems to be their arrogance upsets him, and this he outlines thoroughly in a very entertaining book titled Critique amoureuse des français (Affectionate critique of the French).
The target is French chauvinism.
Toscano questions certain claims that are taken by the French for granted. Is Paris really the City of Light? Is the Champs-Elysées really the most beautiful avenue in the world? Is France really the home of civil rights because the Declaration of Human Rights was written here? Is France really a secular society?
"What is amazing with certain French notions is that they are taken for granted," he says. "Let’s take for example the idea that France is an absolute secular society, even ultra-secular. In theory it is. Secularism is almost a state religion, with the President playing the role of Pope, a little bit like the Queen of England who heads the Anglican Church on the other side of the channel.3
But, he says that in reality France is only partially secular, with Christian traditions observed and protected.
"The school calendar is based on the Christian calendar. The French wouldn’t even consider sacrificing the day off to celebrate Pentecost when former Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin wanted to remove it from the long list of annual holidays.
"The French use the secular argument to protect themselves from the growing number of Muslims. Islam is already the country’s second biggest religion, with over six million people identifying themselves as Muslim.”
At the same time Toscano has praise for French public services and the quality of life here, wondering if the French themselves appreciate their advantages in this domain. In a chapter called "Les français sont des râleurs congénitaux” (which loosely translates as The French are congenital complainers), Toscano asserts that, even though the French like to complain, most of them are really happy.
He cites a survey done recently which indicates that three-fourths of the French are happy with their lives. But Toscano worries about the future.
Are the state of institutions and public services and the direction in which France is heading making the future less rosy for French youth?
In the past few French people liked moving abread, Toscano tells us, nowadays more and more French young people are leaving France for the United States or Britain, believing they’ll find more opportunity there.
But Toscano reminds us that just when people are starting to complain that the French don’t work hard enough or are resting on their laurels, the country comes up with important and dynamic innovations such as high-speed trains, that have changed the way people live and travel.
And he is impressed by the Pacs, a legal arrangement that entitles couples who live together, either heterosexual or homosexual, to have the same fiscal advantages that married people are entitled to.
He recalls when an Italian newspaper asked him to write an article on what the editor called “[French Prime Minister] Jospin’s new brand of homosexual marriage”.
Toscano says; “The reality is completely different, even if many French people and foreigners consider the Pacs to be a form of homosexual marriage. The Pacs ever since its inception has been applied as an alternative to a traditional marriage. Although at first it attracted many homosexuals, now the number of heterosexuals who are pacsed far outnumbers those who are homosexual!”
Toscano claims to be a committed European. He would like to see the European Union with all its member states work together as a large political, economic and social entity. And he wishes the French would make more of an effort to be a team player in the EU rather than try to dominate the European Union.
The French are only interested in Europe if France is its role model, he writes. Then again… of all the EU countries, Alberto Toscano chose to live in France!
Alberto Toscano is David Page's guest on Club 9516 on Sunday 26 April 2009
Critique amoureuses de français by Alberto Toscano is published in French by Hachette
