Le deluge s'arrive
Alain de Botton
ON THE BRINK: THE TROUBLE WITH FRANCE by Jonathan Fenby Little, Brown, £18.99, pp. 449 Aremark one often hears from British tourists who spend time across the Channel is that France would be the most perfect country on earth, if it were not for its peo- ple — which captures the deep ambiva- lence that has long characterised relations with the neighbour of 547 cheeses. France's best qualities seem inextricably knotted to its gravest faults (the situation flouts any cosy beliefs in the perfectibility of human nature). There seems a complex and awk- ward connection between French culinary arrogance and French culinary greatness, between French chauvinism and French sensuality, between France's intellectual snobbery and her cultural achievement. Not all the goods may belong together.
Jonathan Fenby must have been struck by a virulent strain of love-hate towards France, and On the Brink can be read as his attempt to overcome or at least understand the disease. A regular visitor to the coun- try, married to a French woman, an enthu- siast of its culture, wines, landscape and people, Fenby nevertheless opens his work by declaring that he will outline some seri- ous concerns about the state of the nation: `My starting point is not that of a Franco- phone; rather more that of a lover who entertains some fundamental worries about the object of his affection.'
But before doing so, in case we were to disbelieve the depths of his affection or at least forget the grounds for it, Fenby devotes a chapter to outlining some of the many reasons why France may feel proud of itself. France is the world's fourth biggest economy, its women have the longest life expectancy in Europe, it is the world's favourite holiday destination, it has kept a very low inflation rate, it produced Montaigne, Stendhal, Balzac and Proust, has the world's finest vineyards and its most beautiful capital city. Fenby has a taste for long lists of amusing trivia, and so provides us with a gamut of lesser-known reasons why the French might want to cele- brate their nation. France invented the world's first underpants with a horizontal fly; the non-stick frying pan; the pressure- cooker; the bikini; the non-iron pure cotton shirt and Club Mediterranee; it is the world's biggest exporter of apples and bred the first hybrid tea-rose; it houses the world's earliest work of art in the form of a 32,000-year-old cave painting; and the most ancient walnut, an 8-million-year-old fossil discovered in Burgundy in 1995.
Then, just as unsystematically, he flips the coin; France has 70 per cent more mur- ders than Britain; has 2 million alcohol- dependent citizens; a virulent fascist movement; an oppressive tax system; a nepotistic government machine; inefficient state-owned industries; stubbornly high unemployment; more psychiatrists than any other European country; leaking nuclear power-stations; a dysfunctional new opera house; a dearth of good young writers, and schoolchildren who make two and a half times as many spelling mistakes as their peers in the 1920s.
After this mixed salad, he announces a major project, nothing less than a consider- ation and genealogy of every significant problem now afflicting France. He starts with the politicians, outlining the foibles and sheer incompetence of Mitterand and Chirac, as well as the corruption permeat- ing the political system as a whole. Then he tackles the decline in traditional French customs, for instance eating out in restau- rants (business meals in restaurants are estimated to have fallen from 48 million a year in 1980 to 19 million in 1995) and the production of good baguettes and crois- sants. There's a consideration of the prob- lems of French industry: the overmanning, the fear of change, the protectionist impuls- es and the uncompetitiveness of French firms on the world stage. In two recent rank- ings of competitiveness, France stood at number 20 in the world, behind more than half of its European Union partners. AXA, the enormous French insurance and invest- ment firm, is estimated to pay the state more in welfare charges than it does to its French workers in wages, not an unusual state of affairs apparently. Only two of the top 200 companies have a woman director.
Fenby's book is an admirable summary of many recent social, political and eco- nomic developments in France. It would make perfect reading for anyone who had overlooked news reports on the country since Mitterand came to power, and neatly summarises many of the complex scandals that one is liable to lose sight of in Britain (the death of Pierre Beregovoy, the Credit Lyonnais fiasco, the Bernard Tapie affair). However, a French critic might fault the work for displaying a particular kind of charming British empiricism: Fenby relent- lessly avoids making generalisations and putting forward any grand theories for French decline. He seems happier merely to pile up facts and entertaining anecdotes, which makes for a book far livelier than most on the subject, yet somehow lacking the kind of intellectual marrow which some (but probably only the French) would care for. For instance, here is his homely analy- sis of regional differences:
Take any element of French life and it will almost certainly contain rival factions.... The cassoulet stew may be the quintessential dish of the south-west, but don't expect regional solidarity as you sit down at the table. In the town of Castelnaudary it comes with pork, in Carcassone with roast shoulder of mutton, and in Toulouse with the local sausage; and each has its fervent disciples.
By the end of On the Brink one has been wonderfully entertained, yet one can't be sure of having gained any secure handle on the causes of France's decline or indeed on the areas in which decline has set in (close to a discussion of the serious problems of French industrial relations, Fenby lapses into his fervent lament on the decline in the quality of croissants). But perhaps this isn't the point. On the Brink is a witty and engaging confession of love-hate for a com- plex country.
`What with hunting, shooting and trapping. I decided to come to the city for a quiet, peaceful life.'
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