{"id":423,"date":"2016-10-31T14:13:32","date_gmt":"2016-10-31T14:13:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/harrietweltyrochefort.com\/wordpress\/?p=423"},"modified":"2016-10-31T16:01:53","modified_gmt":"2016-10-31T16:01:53","slug":"an-american-living-the-paris-life-and-writing-cultural-dictionairies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/harrietweltyrochefort.com\/?p=423","title":{"rendered":"An American living the Paris life and writing “cultural dictionairies”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sorry to toot my own horn but if I don’t do it, who will?\u00a0 Below is a lovely review of my third and latest book,\u00a0 Joie de Vivre,<\/em> by John Pearce,\u00a0 author of the intriguing mysteries Last Stop: Paris<\/em> and Treasure of St. Lazare.\u00a0\u00a0<\/em> John’s third book is scheduled for publication in mid 2017;\u00a0 you can find his blog at\u00a0\u00a0http:\/\/parttimeparisian.com\/\u00a0\u00a0 Phrases in bold in text below are mine.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Books: Joie de Vivre \u2013 An American living the Paris life<\/strong>
\nPosted on August 14, 2016 by John Pearce<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Forty-plus years of living in Paris, first as a student then as the wife of a well-known banker and historian, have given Harriet Welty Rochefort the ability to look at both sides of the French-American cultural divide with a sharp analysis that\u2019s both trenchant and humorous.<\/strong><\/p>\n

She\u2019s published three books that I think of as cultural dictionaries. In them, she translates French culture in a way Americans can understand, even if we sometimes can\u2019t quite comprehend.<\/strong> The French are different from us Americans (and from Germans, the only other European culture I know well enough to judge). But at the same time they\u2019re much like us. Or we\u2019re like them.<\/p>\n

I met Harriet late last year at one of Patricia Laplante-Collins\u2019s Sunday soir\u00e9es. Patricia had invited her to be the guest of honor and presenter of a slide show based on her most recent book, Joie de Vivre: Secrets of Wining, Dining, and Romancing like the French. I also got to meet her husband Philippe, who retired as a banker then went back to the Sorbonne for his doctorate in history, and their friends Ron Rosbottom, the Amherst professor who had just published the outstanding When Paris Went Dark: The City of Light Under German Occupation, and his wife Betty, a noted cookbook author. (When Paris Went Dark is fascinating, and is on my list to be reviewed soon.)<\/p>\n

The Differences<\/strong><\/p>\n

Harriet\u2019s focus is the differences wrapped within the similarities.<\/strong> There are plenty of both, and they seem pretty well matched in plusses and minuses.<\/p>\n

An American tourist will generally cast the differences in superficial terms: a surly waiter (some are, most aren\u2019t, and even those warm up if you are nice to them), or fashion. Here\u2019s Harriet\u2019s take on that:<\/p>\n

\u201cAn American woman might, for example, get the dress, makeup and hairstyle right, but she can\u2019t change her wide-open, trusting, smiling, innocent American face.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bingo. And the same goes for her American husband. We stand out, and we need to be conscious of that, since we\u2019re guests in their home.<\/p>\n

Dress aside (and that does seem to be less important year by year), the French are known as one of the most pessimistic people in Europe. Harriet\u2019s take on that again:<\/p>\n

\u201cAfter watching the nightly eight o\u2019clock news on France\u2019s Channel 2, I want to immerse my head in a bucket of Bordeaux.\u201d<\/p>\n

I watch that newscast, too (it\u2019s on the web at France2.fr. Be prepared to follow quick French) and it does seem to focus on the negatives of the day, but that\u2019s pretty much TV news everywhere these days.<\/p>\n

Les Petits Plaisirs<\/strong><\/p>\n

Harriet\u2019s choice of chapters summarizes the culture differences well. There\u2019s an important one on \u201cRomance, French Style,\u201d and one I especially liked entitled \u201cSmall is good: Les Petits Plaisirs.\u201d Several deal with the special differences and attractions of French women, and she wraps it up with \u201cHow I Became A Little Bit French.\u201d<\/p>\n

Joie de Vivre is a charming book, informative at the same time it entertains. I give it five stars. If you\u2019re already a Francophile you\u2019ll enjoy it immensely; if you\u2019re just thinking about a visit you should consider it as well.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Thomas Dunne Books. Kindle edition $11.99, hardcover $19.17. I reviewed the Kindle edition, which I purchased. Its Amazon page is here.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sorry to toot my own horn but if I don’t do it, who will?\u00a0 Below is a lovely review of my third and latest book,\u00a0 Joie de Vivre, by John Pearce,\u00a0 author of the intriguing mysteries Last Stop: Paris and Treasure of St. Lazare.\u00a0\u00a0 John’s third book is scheduled for publication in mid 2017;\u00a0 you […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":783,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"link","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-423","post","type-post","status-publish","format-link","hentry","category-uncategorized","post_format-post-format-link"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/harrietweltyrochefort.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/423","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/harrietweltyrochefort.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/harrietweltyrochefort.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/harrietweltyrochefort.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/783"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/harrietweltyrochefort.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=423"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/harrietweltyrochefort.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/423\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":435,"href":"https:\/\/harrietweltyrochefort.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/423\/revisions\/435"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/harrietweltyrochefort.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=423"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/harrietweltyrochefort.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=423"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/harrietweltyrochefort.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=423"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}