Not dead yet

Saturday, 8th December 2007

The Indy's man in Paris, the ever-readable John Lichfield, believes that Time magazine's obituary for French culture was somewhat premature:

This is one of the old, cyclical, favourites of foreign journalists, like the prevalence of dog-shit on the streets of Paris and the decline of French love-making. I wrote something similar on the collapse of French creativity when I first went to Paris 11 years ago. I was wrong, but not wholly wrong, then. Time is wrong, but not wholly wrong, now.
If there is any news to report, it is the revival of French artistic creativity in many areas, ranging from architecture and pop to classical music and film...

Partly, the Time article makes a cyclical argument. France used to export Frenchness through such cultural superstars as Monet or Sartre or Piaf, it says. Despite all France's efforts to protect or subsidise its cultural heritage and industries, the French voice is now barely heard. International culture is dominated by the Anglo-Saxon world and by the English language.
This is rather like a spokesman for Tesco complaining that family grocery shops are no longer what they were. As Didier Jacob observed in Le Nouvel Observateur, much of the article was rooted in a cartoon transatlantic definition of French culture, old and new. "If it could be reduced to an algebraic formula, it would be: De Gaulle plus Sartre plus baguette plus Sophie Marceau's breasts = the culture of France."
In truth, French political subsidies are not meant to make France into a cultural superpower. They are, first and foremost, meant to prevent French culture from being swamped by American culture within France.

Although, as Lichfield admits, the French novel does seem to be in the doldrums. If Michel Houellebecq's shock tactics are the best it can offer, something must be very wrong. Certain Ideas of Europe rounds up more of the reactions. As for Bernard-Henri Lévy's response, in today's Guardian, I think I need to read it through a couple more times to get the gist.

LATER: Sorry, it's just that Levy's prose has a habit of making my brain cloud over. Alex elucidates and adds some cogent points of his own.

[Pic: Nicolas Sarkozy examines Gustave Courbet's self-portrait in the exhibition devoted to the artist at the Grand Palais in Paris. Credit: Eric Feferberg/AFP/Getty Images]