FIXING FRANCE: How to Repair a Broken Republic, less how-to than why-should

FIXING FRANCE: How to Repair a Broken Republic
NABILA RAMDANI
PublicAffairs
$30.00 hardcover, available now

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: A French-Algerian journalist, born and brought up in a neglected Paris suburb, offers unique insight into crisis-ridden France from a very different perspective to the establishment elites

France, the romanticized, revolutionary land with an enlightened historical mission—Liberty, Equality, Fraternity for all—is failing its own citizens and its admirers around the world. How did the country get here, and what can be done about it?

In Fixing France, Nabila Ramdani assesses the fault lines in her struggling nation with unflinching clarity and originality.

The makeshift Fifth Republic, which emerged from the cataclysmic Algerian War of Independence, has produced extremism. Constitutional reform is urgently needed: an all-powerful monarchical president displays little interest in democracy, while a mainstream far-right party founded by Nazi collaborators threatens to deliver a head of state.

Segregated suburbs, institutionalized rioting, economic injustice, a monolithic education system, the debasement of women, deep-seated racial and religious discrimination, paramilitary policing, terrorism, and a duplicitous foreign policy all fuel the growing crisis.

Ramdani’s critique is stark but provides real hope: the broken French Republic can and must be fixed.

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My Review: More a why-should than a how-to. Author Ramdani goes through the laundry list of increasing right-wing populist horrors that the country's indulging its worst self by celebrating. She shares her very low opinion of the pantouflard Macron. She cites her own experiences and journalism, she sources a lot, but not all, her asseverations about the French Fifth Republic in her "Notes" section. A lot of "everybody knows"ism is present; the right-wing's angry voices are referred to as "{like} Presidents, they are almost always white males" and then in the next sentence, she says "{s}tated facts are scant"! Accusing your enemy of your own sin. Marine Le Pen's public schism from her Nazi-collabortating anti-semite father is treated as political theater without linking to or performing substantive analyses demonatrating it as such, for another example. This is probably true but you're writing a book advocating the disestablishment of the Fifth Republic in it sixty-fifth year, when it's one of the cornerstones of the EU and multiple supranational alliances. You need to go the extra mile with such a proposition.

I'm aware of flaws and inconsistencies in a book, in general, I agree with. I'm aware also of the genuine value proposition the book represents. Most US readers are not aware of how very new France's current government is; they have the same illusion of ancient permanence about their own. No structure of government is, or should be, permanent; that illusion is perpetuated by those who despise and fear We-The-People, because the idea of changing governments is threatening to their control of society's attention.

So, in my opinion, read this book to follow the author's poiting finger, and attend to her argument's substance, not sources. These could be more complete. The argument for a better, more just, more inclusive France, however, is in and of itself convincing and deserves close and attentive reading here in the US.

FINDING DORA MAAR: An Artist, an Address Book, a Life

FINDING DORA MAAR: An Artist, an Address Book, a Life
BRIGITTE BENKEMOUN (tr. Jody Gladding)
Getty Publications
$24.95 trade paper, available now

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: Merging biography, memoir, and cultural history, this compelling book, a bestseller in France, traces the life of Dora Maar through a serendipitous encounter with the artist’s address book.

In search of a replacement for his lost Hermès agenda, Brigitte Benkemoun’s husband buys a vintage diary on eBay. When it arrives, she opens it and finds inside private notes dating back to 1951—twenty pages of phone numbers and addresses for Balthus, Brassaï, André Breton, Jean Cocteau, Paul Éluard, Leonor Fini, Jacqueline Lamba, and other artistic luminaries of the European avant-garde.

After realizing that the address book belonged to Dora Maar—Picasso’s famous “Weeping Woman” and a brilliant artist in her own right—Benkemoun embarks on a two-year voyage of discovery to learn more about this provocative, passionate, and enigmatic woman, and the role that each of these figures played in her life.

Longlisted for the prestigious literary award Prix Renaudot, Finding Dora Maar is a fascinating and breathtaking portrait of the artist.

This work received support from the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Cultural Services of the French Embassy in the United States through their publishing assistance program.

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My Review: A very interesting look at the inspiration of one very curious person to dig into the life of a largely forgotten figure from the fringes of art history. The discovery of the address book, the many pathways the author's curiosity led her down, the wonderfully creative way she was able to overcome spaces left in the record of the time...all very good. I enjoyed that aspect of the book.

I actively despise Dora Maar, homophobe and antisemite.

I don't want to know more about her, and am sorry that I now know what I do. If I could dig her up and kill her again, I would. The author doesn't frame her unhappiness with the discoveries she makes about the woman in such outraged terms because, one assumes in the absence of explicit statements on the subject, she isn't gay or Jewish. As a product of the modern world she shares none of Maar's unpleasant ideology, and makes it quite clear this is the case.

What her project did was recenter attention on Dora Maar, artist, person, woman; up to now her one piece of fame was as Picasso's mistress and muse, "The Weeping Woman" of Picasso's iconic painting:

...whose mental health was terribly damaged by him during their relationship. So, in other words, her only existence even in her mind's functioning was centered on the man Picasso. No room for Maar the suffering person. No blame attached to her "friends" populating this address book for essentialling dropping her as she declined. After all, her claim to their attention waned when her connection to Picasso receded into memory. Of course it would.

Given Maar's own merits as an artist, the decline in her circle of friends wasn't as abrupt as it would've been had she not been socially acceptable before her troubles manifested themselves. The author is much more direct about blaming Maar's unpleasant personal beliefs on others than about blaming those others for exacerbating her depression by isolating her. They had scads of reasons to do so, given her unpleasantly judgmental and deeply dyed-in-the-wool fascist ideas and ideology...and no, Author Benkemoun, trying to explain that away with her desire to provoke and satirize the leftists she knew via Picasso isn't an excuse. It's not even much of an explanation. That level of indifference she displayed to the Final Solution and her framing of it as a threat to her personally as someone of Croatian ancestry smacks more of sociopathy than of some kind of artifact of depression, as is suggested in here.

What about this truly dreadful human being made you care for her so deeply, I kept asking Author Benkemoun as the pages turned. What resonated in you to this, to my eyes, justly forgotten and uncelebrated hateful person? Her femaleness? I think she, and her lover Picasso, both deserve desuetude. That it was only her lot is unjust. But let's try to use the weapons of attention to attack Picasso not re-evaluate Maar. Put him, his sexism, his abusive narcissism in the bin with her and let's move on.

A NOVEL BOOKSTORE, delightfully daffy book about books in a different kind of bookstore

A NOVEL BOOKSTORE
LAURENCE COSSÉ (tr. Alison Anderson)
Europa Editions
$18.00 trade paper, available now

Rating: 4.9* of five

The Publisher Says: A Europa classic about love, deceit, Paris, and books!

Ivan and Francesca decide to open a bookstore devoted solely to good literature and their love of books. Frustrated by the glut of mediocre books printed every month and envisioning a true literary paradise, they offer a selection of literary masterpieces chosen by a top-secret committee of like-minded literary connoisseurs.

To their amazement, after only a few months, their vision proves popular. Very popular. Tucked away in a corner of Paris, the bookstore quickly becomes a haven for bibliophiles. Indeed, it becomes so successful that the great majority of Parisian readers are now buying their books only at Ivan and Francesca’s store, and other stores in the city are starting to change how they order and display books too. Now big publishing’s powerful elite are desperately trying to adapt their business model to the demand for quality above all else. As the store’s success grows, venomous comments begin circulating online and the owners, and their selection committee, become the target of vicious editorials and threats.

A Novel Bookstore blends book love and bookstore love with a brilliantly conceived and entertaining mystery and is a delight for readers of all tastes.

My Review: Well, okay, see, this is a French novel, and it's really, really hard for a Murrikin like me to disentangle what French novels are about, like what the author set out to do, because the French don't really have the same rules we Murrikins do for novel-writing. It seems to be about two people, a rich, smart woman and a poor, smart man, who sorta kinda fall in love in a way and yet they don't because she's married to a major Philistine a-hole and he's in love, for some unfathomable reason, with this dreary little chickie half his age who seems drippy, useless, and uninteresting to *me* and, I suspect, to the rich lady too. So the rich lady does what rich people do best and unbelts with a big pile of gelt for the poor-but-smart dude to start this bookstore that will sell only novels, and only the best, the finest, the most ut of the lit'ry output of the planet, chosen by eight of the best (French) writers now writing. Hijinks ensue, which are frankly completely incredible (in its literal sense), but are lots of fun. What this book is *not* is any species of thriller or mystery; it's a French novel. That's what it is. No more, no less, no different. So, in the end, the Philistine husband and the poor-but-smart dude part ways but the store must go on, and the book's narrator is revealed, though I have to say it's not a huge surprise, though I think it's intended that way. The end, happily ever after but sadder and wiser.

I gave the book a generous 4.9 stars because it's one of those books that, while reading, goes wildly up and down the star scale; but in the end, cover closed, glasses chewed upon, assumes a different shape than the one that the reading process creates.

I'd recommend this book to all and sundry if only because of this passage, beautifully translated by the very talented Alison Anderson, on page 150 of the Europa edition:

Literature is a source of pleasure...it is one of the rare inexhaustible joys in life, but it's not only that. It must not be dissociated from reality. Everything is there. That is why I never use the word fiction. Every subtlety in life is material for a book....Have you noticed...that I'm talking about novels? Novels don't contain only exceptional situations, life or death choices, or major ordeals; there are also everyday difficulties, temptations, ordinary disappointments; and, in response, every human attitude, every type of behavior, from the finest to the most wretched. There are books where, as you read, you wonder: What would I have done? It's a question you have to ask yourself. Listen carefully: it is a way to learn to live. There are grown-ups who will say no, literature is not life, that novels teach you nothing. They are wrong. Literature informs, instructs, it prepares you for life.

If that passage rings you like the bell you wondered if you might be, then this book will speak to you and shape you a bit differently than you were before; if it seems tediously long, avoid this book like it's got herpes, because you'll hate it.

*gooonnnggg* goes my spirit.