Paris to the Moon
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- ISBN13: 9780375758232
- Condition: NEW
- Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
Product Description
Paris. The name alone conjures images of chestnut-lined boulevards, sidewalk cafés, breathtaking façades around every confront–in fleeting, an exquisite optimism that has captured the American imagination for as long as there have been Americans.
In 1995, Adam Gopnik, his wife, and their infant son left the familiar comforts and hassles of New York City for the elegant glamour of the City of Light. Gopnik is a longtime New Yorker writer, and the magazine has sent its writers to Paris for decades–but his was above all a personal pilgrimage to the place that had for so long been the undisputed capital of everything cultural and gorgeous. It was also the opportunity to raise a child who would know what it was to romp in the Luxembourg Gardens, to delight in a croque monsieur in a Left Bank café–a child (and perhaps a father, too) who would have a grasp of that Parisian sense of style we Americans find so elusive.
So, in the grand tradition of the American abroad, Gopnik walked the paths of the Tuileries, loved philosophical discussions at his local bistro, wrote as violet twilight fell on the arrondissements. Of course, as readers of Gopnik’s beloved and award-winning “Paris Journals” in The New Yorker know, there was also the matter of raising a child and carrying on with day-to-day, not-so-fabled life. Evenings with French intellectuals preceded middle-of-the-night baby feedings; afternoons were filled with trips to the Musée d’Orsay and pinball games; weekday leftovers were eaten while three-star chefs debated a “culinary crisis.”
As Gopnik describes in this amusing and tender book, the dual processes of navigating a foreign city and apt a parent are not completely dissimilar journeys–both hold new routines, new languages, a new set of rules by which everyday life is lived. With singular wit and insight, Gopnik weaves the magical with the mundane in a wholly delightful, regularly hilarious look at what it was to be an American family tree man in Paris at the end of the twentieth century. “We went to Paris for a sentimental reeducation-I did anyway-even though the sentiments we were instructed in were not the ones we were expecting to learn, which I judge is why they call it an education.”
Amazon.com Review
In 1995 Gopnik was offered the plush assignment of writing the “Paris Journals” for the New Yorker. He spent five years in Paris with his wife, Martha, and son, Luke, writing dispatches now collected here along with previously unpublished journal entries. A self-described “comic-sentimental essayist,” Gopnik chose the romance of Paris in its particulars as his theme. Gopnik falls in unabashed like with what he calls Paris’s commonplace civilization–the cafés, the small shops, the very ancient carousel in the park, and the tiny, intricate experiences that take place in such settings. But Paris can also be a hard city to like, particularly its pompous and abstract official culture with its parallel paper universe. The tension between these two sides of Paris and the country’s all-purpose brooding over the decline of French dominance in the face of globalization (haute couture, cooking, and sex, as well as the economy, are running deficits) form the subtexts for these keenly wrought and witty essays. With his emphasis on the micro in the macro, Gopnik describes trying to get a Prayer turkey delivered during a all-purpose strike and his struggle to find an apartment during a government scandal over favoritism in housing allocations. The essays alternate between reports of national and local events and accounts of expatriate family tree life, with an emphasis on “the trinity of late-century bourgeois obsessions: children and cooking and spectator sports, including the spectator sport of shopping.” Gopnik describes some truly tasty moments, from the rites of Parisian haute couture, to the “occupation” of a local brasserie in protest of its buy by a restaurant tycoon, to the birth of his daughter with the aid of a doctor in black jeans and a black silk shirt, open at the front. Gopnik makes terrific use of his status as an observer on the fringes of fashionable society to draw some deft comparisons between Paris and New York (“It is as if all American appliances dreamed of being cars while all French appliances dreamed of being telephones”) and do some sharp philosophizing on the scenery of both. This is masterful reportage with a winning mix of intelligence, intimacy, and charm. –Lesley Reed
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This is a ‘lets make fun of the French’ book. In reality, a similar book can be written by many expatriates in every country, including foreigners living in the US and New York. Mr. Gupnik refuses to accept the differences between the different cultures and seemingly expects the French to behave as if they are amusing language Americans.
This is a useless book, fake and pompous. Don’t waste your time and money with it.
Reader’s Rating: 1 / 5
I wish I had read some of the reviews prior to wasting my time on this inaccurate collection of self absorbed drivel. My spouse and I were fortunate enough to have lived for two years in the center of Paris. I delight in reading everything about Paris from Alistair Horne to Patricia Wells and am permanently looking for new insights. This book was a huge disappointment that never captured even the slightest essence of Paris. If Gopnik was a painter his palette would be limited to a tiresome grey.
Reader’s Rating: 1 / 5
The title for this book should have been VAPID. This book is vapid, like the New Yorker. It’s for people who want to look vital being bored. Like New Yorker readers. It takes Gopnik five pages of philosophical musings on how many angels fit on the head of a pin to make a point about cracks in the sidewalk. Every chapter is like that. The most exciting part of the book is when he talks about how dull soccer is. His life is dull. All he can talk about are ancient pin ball machines in ancient bars. I’ve got that right here. I guess Paris is a pretty dull place. There is nothing of use in this book.
Reader’s Rating: 1 / 5
Gopnik’s book, “From Paris to the Moon” showed promise on the shelf at the bookstore. His insight is excellent for persons who have never been to France and will never go. It’s insulting to persons of us who do know the language and the culture. He throws bits of French in with no translation in some places, and in others drags out a description (of a meal, for example) with the pointless translation of every item on the table. He shows his ignorance again when he adds “ing” to a French verb (mijoteing) to make it an English verb, and in translating when it’s unnecessary (the Small Prince — everybody knows le Petit Prince). It’s painfully obvious that his experience in Paris was limited and his egocentricity is apparent when he speaks of his desire, which only reflects his greed, to bring up his chrildren in an idealized French society, only to drag them back to States later where they speak with an accent (as they do in France, no doubt). They will be their father’s children — mixing the languages and having no mandate over either. The book is poorly written — was it even edited or proofread by a name additional than Gopnik? There are run-on sentences, sentence fragments, a perfect lack of theme-verb agreement in places, and then there’s the terrible translation (or lack thereof) in places that’s enough to make you sick.
Reader’s Rating: 2 / 5
Being stuck on a long plane flight with this book was torture!
Reader’s Rating: 1 / 5