Les Américains à Paris

Summary

Critics at Large | The New Yorker Episode: Les Américains à Paris Release Date: August 14, 2025

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Introduction

In this episode of Critics at Large, hosts Vincent Cunningham and Alex Schwartz engage in a deep exploration of the enduring relationship between Americans and Paris. Featuring guest critic Lauren Collins, the conversation delves into the historical and contemporary experiences of Americans living in the City of Light, examining cultural exchanges, stereotypes, and the evolving appeal of Paris to American expatriates.

Guests and Hosts

• Vincent Cunningham: Co-host and contributing writer for The New Yorker.
• Alex Schwartz: Co-host and cultural critic.
• Lauren Collins: Guest critic and The New Yorker’s correspondent in Paris.

Personal Journeys to Paris

Lauren Collins shares her personal journey of relocating to Paris, providing an authentic perspective on the practical and emotional motivations behind living abroad.

• Vincent Cunningham [05:01]: "I became an American in Paris by way of a Frenchman in London..."

Lauren emphasizes that her move to Paris was driven by family considerations and practical choices rather than the romanticized notions often associated with the city.

Historical Context: American Writers in Paris

The discussion transitions to the rich legacy of American writers who have called Paris home, including Edith Wharton, James Baldwin, and Janet Flanner. Lauren Collins reflects on how these figures have shaped the narrative of Americans in Paris and served as inspirations for her own work.

• Lauren Collins [12:53]: "Yeah, I mean, Flanner and Gopnik and Jane Kramer and the occasional Judith Thurman. I'm thrilled and honored to follow in these footsteps."

Cultural Stereotypes and Modern Representations

A significant portion of the conversation addresses how Paris is perceived through an American lens, often laden with stereotypes. The hosts critique contemporary representations, such as the Netflix series Emily in Paris, highlighting the oversimplification and lack of diversity in portraying Parisian life.

• Alex Schwartz [37:40]: "I have a little theory that I would like to propose... Paris really represented, I think, a vision of the future... but my theory for that is that New York really replaces Paris as that place in cultural life in the mid century."

Culinary Culture: French Tacos

Lauren Collins introduces the phenomenon of French tacos, a modern culinary trend that merges American and French food cultures. This segment underscores the dynamic and evolving nature of Parisian gastronomy.

• Vincent Cunningham [15:51]: "It's like a flour tortilla slathered with condiments, bunch of meat and then like other things... and then it's like folded and toasted like a panini."

Diversity and Social Structures

Lauren highlights the significant diversity within contemporary France, challenging the monolithic perceptions often held by Americans. She cites statistics to emphasize the multicultural fabric of French society.

• Lauren Collins [14:58]: "A third of children born in France in 2023 had at least one parent born abroad."

Work-Life Balance and Social Safety Nets

The conversation also touches on the differences in work-life balance and social support systems between France and the United States. Lauren praises the French approach to parenting and education, attributing it to robust social policies rather than inherent cultural traits.

• Lauren Collins [47:56]: "I've just gotten the gift of so much time not having to worry about these things."

Critical Analysis of Parisian Stereotypes

Vincent critiques the stereotypical image of the Parisian woman, advocating for a more nuanced and diverse representation of Parisians in media and popular culture.

• Vincent Cunningham [43:55]: "This Parisian is no more indicative of this nation in all its vibrancy and all its diversity than a group of like really thin, really rich, straight, mostly white residents of the Upper East Side would be of America."

Conclusion and Final Insights

The episode concludes with reflections on the perpetual interplay between American and French cultural identities. The hosts underscore the importance of moving beyond simplistic stereotypes to appreciate the complex and multifaceted nature of life in Paris.

• Alex Schwartz [48:13]: "A life that can accommodate that seems like the greatest luxury."

Notable Quotes

• Vincent Cunningham [05:01]: "I became an American in Paris by way of a Frenchman in London."
• Lauren Collins [12:53]: "I'm thrilled and honored to follow in these footsteps."
• Vincent Cunningham [15:51]: "It's like a flour tortilla slathered with condiments... folded and toasted like a panini."
• Lauren Collins [14:58]: "A third of children born in France in 2023 had at least one parent born abroad."
• Vincent Cunningham [43:55]: "This Parisian is no more indicative of this nation in all its vibrancy and all its diversity than... a group of like really thin, really rich, straight, mostly white residents of the Upper East Side."

Production Credits

This week's episode was produced by Michelle O'Brien, with consulting editor Alex Barish and executive producer Stephen Valentino. The theme music was composed by Alexis Quadrato, and engineering and mixing were handled by James Yost and Mike Kutchman, respectively. Future episodes include Vincent's upcoming interview with Richard Brody about auteurism.

Access

Listeners can find every episode of Critics at Large on The New Yorker platform, with new episodes available weekly.

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This comprehensive summary captures the essence of the "Les Américains à Paris" episode, providing insights into the cultural dynamics between Americans and Parisians, while highlighting key discussions and notable quotes to engage both regular listeners and new audiences.

Transcript

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[Vincent Cunningham]

Welcome to Critics at Large, a podcast from the New Yorker. I'm Nomi Frye.

[Alex Schwartz]

I'm Vincent Cunningham. And I'm Alex Schwartz. Each week on this show, we make sense of what's happening in the culture right now and how we got here. Hello, my friends.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Hello. So good to see you.

[Alex Schwartz]

So I'm up next in our summer interview series. We have each selected a colleague to bring on the show as a guest critic. My pick was the brilliant Lauren Collins. And we are here to talk about a city near and dear to both of our hearts, Paris. More specifically, we are talking about Americans in Paris.

[Vincent Cunningham]

I feel like there's so much to say about this.

[Alex Schwartz]

A whole canon emerges the moment you say it. Frankly. We could make our own podcast just about Americans in Paris. I think this became evident, but we kept it here to one single episode. But we range pretty widely. We're going to be talking about Edith Wharton, James Baldwin, Jack, Janet Flanner. We will even dip a manicured toe into Emily.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Wow. A pedicure toe.

[Alex Schwartz]

A pedicured toe. Thank you so much. That is quite right. All to figure out what has drawn Americans to the City of Light for centuries. Because I think Paris is a fantasy for Americans. It always has been. But how much of that is still a reality? And how much of it was a heifer of the truth? So that's today on Critics at Large. Les Americains, Lauren Collins. Bonjour.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Bonjour. I'm so happy to be on this esteemed podcast that I like listening to all the time. So what a treat.

[Alex Schwartz]

Oh, what a treat. What a delight. What a thrill. Well, I've asked you here today to talk to me for our Critics at Large summer series because you have one of the most plum delicious gigs that is available. You know, it's like a miracle to me that you get to write for the New Yorker magazine and live in Paris, a place that Americans, many Americans, have dreamed of being for time immemorial. I think this might be a good place as any to drop in. Oscar Wilde's observation that when good Americans die, they go to Paris. And yet you're very much living. So what I wanted to start by asking you was how did you come to live abroad? How did you make it to the city of Paris, France?

[Vincent Cunningham]

I became an American in Paris by way of a Frenchman in London. My husband, whom I met when I moved there in 2010. And the funny part was I was not a Francophile, not even Francotropic, really didn't speak a word of the language, had never really had France as a part of my life, and in fact, had moved to London for the very reason that I. I spoke English, and I thought that would be a good place to ply my trade. But we met. We spent a few years there. We moved to Switzerland for a little bit and then basically had kids and started thinking about school and real estate and all the boring stuff that people start thinking about. And we decided eventually that we should go where one of us at least knew how to navigate. And so, perhaps counterintuitively, rather than being all kind of like macaroons and mimes and can can dancers and whatnot, Paris for us was kind of like a practical choice. You know, where can we go live that it's gonna make sense for this family that we're trying to put together out of an American and a French person? And the little Franco American franklets that came along.

[Alex Schwartz]

I think that's the technical term, franklets.

[Vincent Cunningham]

I was trying to fit an American in there somewhere, but friend, glance, I don't know.

[Alex Schwartz]

Okay. You got to Paris in both, I guess, as you say, the most romantic and unromantic way possible. Romantic because it involved actual love between two people. And unromantic because you did not project onto Paris what so many Americans do, which is the city of sophistication and leisure and little markets and wicker baskets with which to shop at them. So what was your experience when you did get to the city? How did you start to make your way there?

[Vincent Cunningham]

Well, I was immediately kind of elated because, you know, I felt like there was this just embarrassment of riches in terms of the cultural life, the intellectual life, the political life. I mean, there's been so much going on in France, and in the 10 years that I've been here, there are not enough hours in the day for me to cover all the things that I would like to write about in Paris and in the rest of the country, too.

[Alex Schwartz]

And I'm also curious to know, did you feel that there was any kind of set of assumptions about America projected onto you by Parisians when you were there? Because we are also a pretty wreck. As. As distinctive as the French are, we are also a pretty recognizable band of people, I would say, particularly in a European context. Did you find yourself treated like an American?

[Vincent Cunningham]

Particularly, yes, for sure. And I'm still treated like an American all the time. I mean, it was funny. I don't know if you saw the. There was an article that was like, making the rounds. Like, so many people sent it to me about American tourists in Montmartre getting, like, these hugely inflated bills and the waiters using kind of all the tricks of the trade to, you know, entrap them into accidentally ordering a really large, expensive Coke. You know, it was actually Le Parisienne. It was French kind of reporters who decided to don their. Their fanny packs and their, you know, NFL ball caps or whatever and. And go see what happened. But I think there's a mutual fascination. I mean, I also sometimes think of it as a love triangle because there's, you know, there's the UK that's kind of the third. Spoke of this relationship that fluctuates and changes, but is always like a. It's a passionate one. And there's always a lot of back and forth, a lot of projection, a lot of fantasizing about what another culture and another kind of life means. That I think is a pretty timeless feature of the France, America Interplay.

[Alex Schwartz]

Yeah, 100%. All right, I'm going to lay my cards on the table for one second, just so. Just in the. For the sake of honesty, because what I love about our different perspectives as I'm not an American in Paris, I'm an American in New York City, but I've been an American in Paris. But what can I say? I have to be honest that when I was first really an American in Paris, I went with some classic dreams.

[Vincent Cunningham]

I really need to wanna break out into song right now, like you dreamed a dream. No, I won't.

[Alex Schwartz]

I dreamed a dream. If anyone wants to option this for a musical, I'm available. Just write to themalewyorker.com subjectlinecritics with your offer because it's a great story. Here's the story. I went to Paris right after I graduated from college in the summer of 2000. Well, actually, the early fall of 2009, when, as you may or may not know, everything in the American economy was in free fall. And it felt like, okay, might as well just try it somewhere else. It's not like I'm throwing any great opportunities here. Let's go. And what I did was I wanted to go live at Shakespeare and Company, the bookstore, the famous English language bookstore founded by Sylvia beach, who. Who published James Joyce, who has made, for that reason and others, enormous contributions to English language literature. And then for years was Run by a huge character, this kind of magical, cantankerous, frightening, almost fairy book like man, George Whitman. And when I got to Paris, George Whitman was quite old. He had bequeathed Shakespeare and Company to his daughter, also named Sylvia. But he was still around. He was kind of like the troll living. He would live in the back of the. He would just be eating soup in the back of this magical bookstore across the street from Notre Dame. And I went there because I knew that they allowed self proclaimed writers to stay at the shop for really any length of time. They had bedrolls that you would just roll out in the evenings and lay down on. And in the mornings you'd roll them back up and you'd open the shop, volunteer for a couple of hours a day, go out and live your life and come in and close the shop again.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Didn't these people have some kind of name like the Fireflies or something like that? What's Tumbleweeds? Tumbleweeds, okay.

[Alex Schwartz]

Which is of course a very American name, like, you know, blowing across the great Midwest. There are no Tumbleweeds in Paris, France.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Yeah. Tumbling through the saloon. Yeah, exactly.

[Alex Schwartz]

And tumbleweeds we were. So I did that for a week and guess what? Like many fantasies of the good Parisian life, I didn't like it. I didn't like it. It wasn't for me. I like certain things, such as sleeping in a bed. I discovered at that point it just wasn't quite my scene. And once I left Shakespeare and Company, for which I retain enormous fondness, my life really opened up. But let's come back to you, Lauren. You are the New Yorker's woman on the ground in Paris. And there have been others in this esteemed lineage, some amazing writers. I think immediately of Janet Flanner, who covered Paris for decades for the New Yorker, who started under Harold Ross and kept on going through William Shawn. There, of course, was Adam Gopnik, our colleague, who was there in the early 2000s. So when you realized that this was going to be your role, did you go back and look at any of their writing? How have they served as models for you or not so much.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Yeah, I mean, Flanner and Gopnik and Jane Kramer and the occasional Judith Thurman. I'm thrilled and honored to follow in these footsteps. And then those of others, like, you know, outside the New Yorker, Alice Kaplan is one of my idols. At the same time, I mean, I've tried to forge my own path, both as a function of my own priorities and of the time that I'm living in and covering, you know, Harold Ross, who was the first editor of the New Yorker, had a specific assignment for Flanner and he said he wanted to know what the French thought was going on in France, not what Flanner thought was going on. And I love that. I mean, I've come back to that kind of commission in a way, in the course of my career in France. My goal has been, it's been to widen the aperture both socially and geographically and to render France in a way that's entertaining and informative to an American reader, but recognizable to a French one. It's sort of the task that I've set for myself and one way of doing that. I mean, I really make an effort to get out of Paris, just like see some more of the country and within Paris, to get out of the traditional kind of Americans in Paris precincts. And also not to treat Paris too preciously. Like, yes, it's romantic and yes, it's picturesque, but it's also a big, loud, dirty, profane, complicated city that evolves and changes like everywhere else. And I'm also like a. I have a little rule for myself. It's like about generalizations and especially those about kind of national character and tendency. If I'm going to say something about the so called French, got to back it up with statistics. And I am going to deploy my favorite one on you, Alex. It is that a third of children born in France in 2023 had at least one parent born abroad. And I think that is a cornerstone statistic to any understanding of France today. I just really want to be sure to embrace that and bring it into my coverage of France.

[Alex Schwartz]

I love that you say that because as much as that Shakespeare & Co. Notre Dame vision might have brought me to Paris, that is not the vision that kept me there or keeps me coming back. And that's something that I love about your writing, that you capture the real diversity of the country. I want to ask you in particular about one piece you've written. You know, you're writing. Sometimes you write the big classic piece, like I'm thinking of your profile of Emmanuel Macron. And sometimes you show American readers a totally different side of this country. Let me ask you about one of my favorite pieces you've written in the last few years, which is your piece about French tacos. Can you just tell us what French tacos are, how you came to that topic and how you went about writing about them.

[Vincent Cunningham]

So I had seen French tacos sort of all over town signs for them. So I was like, what Is this a French taco? Is. It's not a taco, it's a sandwich. It's like a flour tortilla slathered with condiments, bunch of meat and then like other things, all kinds of add ons, French fries, whatever you want, Dallas and cheese sauce. And then it's like folded and toasted like a panini. And this is a homegrown gastronomic phenomenon that was essentially invented and popularized by, you know, owners of, like, what are called snacks. So kind of just like little small business fast food outlets, many of them of North African descent, in Lyon and Grenoble over the past decade. And I just thought this was amazing. I was like, it's not that often that a new fast food crops up. Like, where did it come from? Grenoble and Lyon are in this duel to kind of stake a claim as the birthplace of this extremely popular fast food. And yeah, so there's a bit of a time gap sometimes in Americans perception of what goes on in France. Like, I think you think French food, and it's very much kind of Julia Child's interpretation. And of course, these dishes are still standbys, but you've got pizza and couscous and all these other things, and you've got French tacos. So that was the genesis of that piece. Have you had one?

[Alex Schwartz]

I have never had one, but I'm getting some French tacos the next time I'm there. Are they still everywhere? Have I missed? Have I missed the moment?

[Vincent Cunningham]

No. I'm going to keep a French taco warm for you. And for dessert, we'll have El Morjan. That is the Algerian upstart hazelnut spread that is challenging Nutella and therefore potentially by nefarious means was recently banned by the European Union.

[Alex Schwartz]

Absolutely. I know this will shock you listeners, but we are not the first American writers to live in love the French capital. After a quick break, we dig into the long cultural history of Americans in Paris. This is critics at large from the New Yorker.

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[Alex Schwartz]

We've been talking about our own experiences as Americans in Paris. So I want to get into what it is about Paris that appeals to something in the American sensibility. Let's go back. I love to go back. I love to dip a little toe into the stream of the 19th century, the early 20th century. Henry James, Edith Wharton. What's their American vision of Paris?

[Vincent Cunningham]

Well, so I know we'll get to Janet Flanner in a little bit, but.

[Alex Schwartz]

Bring us to Janet. Now.

[Vincent Cunningham]

We're gonna kind of Janet and Edith at the same time, because Janet Flanner's like unsurpassable line on Edith Wharton was her withdrawal from America was her most American act. And you just, you can't get any Flannery or any better than that Wharton. I mean, I so last summer I was reading the Custom of the Country. You read it, and it's not that you identify with Undine Sprague, but I was thinking, I have a very nice mother in law and I'm not dealing with H Vac problems in a chateau. But I so identified and tapped into her occasional feeling of this is not what I signed up for. What are your Wharton feelings?

[Alex Schwartz]

Well, you know what I'm gonna do? I'm gonna do something that I simply love to do. As listeners to the show will know. I'm gonna go to the text. Let me just zoom over and get my tote bag. Inside this little tote bag, I have my very own copy of A Custom in the Country. So I love that you bring up this book and the figure of Undine Sprague and Wharton in general. I think what I would say is the following. To set up the custom of the country and the passage that I would like to read. In the 19th century, Paris became for the American the ultimate symbol of sophistication. America was new, Paris was old. America was aspirational. Paris was the aspiration. Fashions came from Paris, art came from Paris, Food came from Paris. There was a whole sense that that was where things were done correctly. And that a certain class of American person, and especially American woman Really needed to tune into what was going on in Paris if she was going to have any kind of cultural sophistication. Which, of course, you know, was. Was being used to harden America's own class system. So here we get Undine Sprague, the heroine of the Custom of the country, which was published in 1913. She is a young, married American woman. Her husband is conveniently still in New York, and she's in Paris. She's living her life. And she's looking out the window in her hotel room. And this is what she says. The scene before her typified to Undine her first real taste of life. How meager and starved the past appeared in comparison with this abundant present. The noise, the crowd, the promiscuity beneath her eyes Symbolized the glare and movement of her life. Every moment of her days was packed with excitement and exhilaration. Everything amused her. The long hours of bargaining and debate with dressmakers and jewelers. The crowded lunches at fashionable restaurants. The perfunctory dash through a picture show. Or the lingering visit to the last new milliner. The afternoon motor rush to some leafy suburb where tea and music and sunset were hastily absorbed On a crowded terrace above the Seine. The whirl home through the Bois to dress for dinner and start again on the round of evening diversions and dinner at the Nouveau Luxe or the Cafe de Paris. And the little play at the Capuchin or the Variete followed because the night was too lovely and it was a shame to waste it by a breathless flight back to the Bois with supper in one of its lamp hung restaurants. Or if the weather forbade, a tumultuous progress through the midnight haunts where ladies were not supposed to show themselves. And might consequently taste the thrill of being occasionally taken for their Opposites. That is one long sentence and you get it all.

[Vincent Cunningham]

That is the most deliciously overstuffed sentence. No, I mean, there's something that is so modern about that. I mean, you can kind of equate it to the Instagram reel of, you know, 24 things you absolutely have to do before you leave Paris. It's this sense, you know, which can be both exhilarating and kind of grating, that Paris is a playground. Paris is, you know, an all you can eat buffet that was laid out expressly and solely for the delectation of the American visitor. Yeah, it's. When I hear that, Alex, what I think of is this kind of, you know, European girl summer. And to me, it seems like not a day has passed since Wharton wrote that. And you also get the pleasure. This is one of my favorite kind of Parisian subjects. But not only is Undine Sprague the American come to Paris, she's also the provincial come to the big city. And so there are just like double layers of ecstasy and amazement and the feeling that she has to eat it.

[Alex Schwartz]

All up at once, a hundred percent. That's so beautifully said. And of course, you know, as we've previewed, Undine goes on to try to live a more old French life and feels really stultified by it. You know, the other thing that strikes me in that passage I just read, which it ends with a hint of sex. And I think that also so gets to the heart of the French American cultural relationship and things that each culture projects onto the other. I mean, to just start with the cliches so that we can explore and perhaps bust them. I think the idea, as I see it, especially from that era, is of the buttoned up American arriving in this city of. It's this libertine city, right?

[Vincent Cunningham]

Of sensual. The city of sensual delight.

[Alex Schwartz]

Exactly like, my God, they're showing their shoulders. Can you even imagine? There's this sense of, okay, Americans are still doing the square thing, but in France, you can let those inhibitions go. I mean, one place this immediately takes me is to the amazing figure of Josephine Baker, the performer, the dancer who came to Paris in 1925. She was 19, very young. And she begins to perform in La Revue Nigre at the theater of the Champs Elysees. And she's a total sensation. She's dancing essentially in the nude, covered scantily. It's a huge spectacle of sex. It's a race spectacle. Josephine Baker is black. She's applauded, she's celebrated. And to me, it's such an interesting combination of French and American gazes, each one looking at the other, the American, in this case, personifying a kind of liberation and sexual freedom and the French supporting her for it. Is Josephine Baker a touchstone for you at all, Lauren, in the Chronicle of American Life in Paris?

[Vincent Cunningham]

Yes, I'm so glad you brought up Josephine Baker. I was lucky enough to be able to go to her induction ceremony into the Pantheon, which is, you know, the national tomb of France's heroes. And she was only the sixth woman. She was the first black woman to be pantheonized. There's a verb. I can't say it.

[Alex Schwartz]

I'm just guessing. Sounds great.

[Vincent Cunningham]

I went with one of her children. She adopted 14 children from all over the world. Called them her rainbow tribe. She was active in the Resistance, you know, she was a voice against racism, against anti Semitism, a hero born American, naturalized French at the same time. What was so interesting about this occasion is that bifurcated gaze endures. It was a political occasion, of course, too. It was in an election season. It was at a moment when French people were questioning the disjuncture between this national creed of universalism, saying race doesn't exist, we're all the same, and their own experiences of racial discrimination. Riccia Diallo, who's done a lot of work on this, I remember she wrote, while France is inducting Josephine Baker, cherishing black Americans while subjecting its own citizens to 20 times more police checks when they're perceived as Arab or black. And she pointed out that while France was swooning over Baker, it was exhibiting her own ancestors, colonized ancestors, in human zoos.

[Alex Schwartz]

No, it's fascinating what you say, because I think that so much of the French American relationship, and I'm speaking really about, like, the relationship that takes place in the mind and therefore expresses itself in culture, but it is political. Very much political, too, is about freedom and different ideas of freedom and what freedom might. Might mean or might be able to bring you. I mean, when I think of the classic crew of Americans in Paris, there are a few, but one, of course, is from the lost generation, going in those years after the First World War, being able to live cheaply, being able to make art, new ideas, freedom, a kind of intellectual, artistic freedom, Hemingway, Fitzgerald, of course, Gertrude Stein, a new way of thinking and seeing coming up through art and literature that's being created in France and coming back to the United States that way. And then if you jump ahead, you know, very significant American creative experience in Paris was that of James Baldwin, who went to Paris to live when he was 25 years old and he was finishing Go Tell it on the Mountain, his first novel, which is a New York City novel, he goes to Paris. To finish that, he needs to leave the place where the book takes place and where he feels entrapped and set his imagination free. And like, boy, did he. As soon as he gets to Paris, he writes a storm. I mean, it's amazing to me, honestly, that he was 25, although I guess you do have that curse at 25. He just. He goes on a tear. And he gives us one of the most, for me, complex texts on American life in Paris, which is Giovanni's Room. Giovanni's Room is a really sad novel. Have you read it recently, Lauren?

[Vincent Cunningham]

I have read it, but I haven't read it recently. But going back and thinking about it, what struck me so much was the protagonist of Giovanni's Room is a white American. He's a tall, white, blonde American man. And what I think is so interesting is, you know, when Baldwin published it, people said to him, how come your main character here is a white guy when you just wrote this incredible novel about race in America? And he said, I couldn't make him black and gay. There wasn't enough room in the novel to tackle both of these subjects. It's so interesting. He writes about Europe. There's a great line from his essay, the Discovery of what it Means to be an American. I proved, to my astonishment, to be as an American as any Texas gi. And he writes about his life in Europe as a form of preparing for America. And I relate so deeply to that. I think it's a brilliant articulation of the need to, in a way, get some distance. I mean, Baldwin, you know, he was doing these things that he felt like he couldn't do on home turf. And Europe, for him was a place for confronting, potentially reconciling with America and the. And the pain that inflicts Europe as a form of preparing for America.

[Alex Schwartz]

I think that's huge, and I think that's. It's so true. And it's also huge in Giovanni's Room. You know, as you say, it's a white American man who's the protagonist of that novel, who falls in love with Giovanni, who's a young, gorgeous Italian who leads a kind of dissolute nightlife that this guy gets wrapped up in. And David, the narrator of the novel, is engaged to be married, of course, to a woman. We're talking about the 50s and to go back to the US and it's this push and Pull. It's the pull of the expected life he's supposed to live and the attraction of this other kind of freedom that might be available to him if he stays. There's also just a side note, you know that scene that takes place in the novel where they go to Les Halles, the old restaurant and market center that used to be with 24 hour restaurants that was in the center of Paris before it was bulldozed in I believe, the 80s. So something that you and I never got to experience. But I live it through that scene.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Although it is the subject of my absolute favorite Paris paintings. It's the Les Halle by Leon Lhermit. And it's this enormous. I mean, it takes up an entire wall of the Petit Palais where it hangs and it's just like pumpkins and cabbage heads and, you know, men with crates on their shoulders and you can just hear the people like, calling out to, you know, buy my pears Anyhow. Digression, go ahead.

[Alex Schwartz]

No, I'm looking at it actually. I love the digression because of course, like that sense, not. I don't think we can get too basic here. Commerce is such an appeal, it's such a part of the Parisian appeal. And, you know, maybe jumping ahead a little bit, but I do think Paris represents that also in the American mind, this idea of going to the Marche and doing your daily shopping, as opposed to the kind of smooth Runway of optimized American life where perhaps Fresh Direct will just drop your groceries off outside your home. Some of that tactility is inevitably lost in any modernized society. But I do think Paris represents that, and rightly so, but it's not just.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Yeah, and it's also the market. I think not only is it fascinating and appealing to Americans as the site of, you know, really good things to eat, but it's also a model of a different kind of capitalism, as are all the small and kind of medium sized businesses in Paris that Americans love to both frequent and bitch about when the shopkeeper has, you know, gone out for a two hour lunch. And I think that, you know, for better or for worse, that provides a real contrast to daily life in America.

[Alex Schwartz]

Oh, I think it does. 100%, frankly. I think for better. I mean, it's about the interaction, it's about being with people, it's about using your senses. Again, basic things that like highly capitalized modern life is trying to convince us all are just impediments to fairy American things like productivity, like optimization. But I want to be out there smelling the strawberries and I want to be out there looking at the cabbages and finding the right one. A life that can accommodate that seems like the greatest luxury. Our American forebears had one relationship with Paris, but from here in the 21st century, things look a bit different. Critics at large from the New Yorker will be right back.

[Jonathan Van Ness]

Do you want a better relationship with yourself and the people around you, honey? Same. That's why on Getting Better, I'm talking with the most brilliant folks I can find. We are going deep to figure out how we can care for ourselves with more joy, curiosity, and compassion. We're talking mental health, financial wellness, aging brains, tiny habits, and everything in between. So if you're ready to learn and unlearn and laugh a lot while we're at it, come join me, Jonathan Van Ness, on Getting Better, available on YouTube and wherever you get your podcasts.

[Alex Schwartz]

The other thing that occurs to me, we've been, of course, focusing on how Americans experience Paris and France and what that brings to the American point of view. Clearly, France has taken much from the United States as well. I mean, we don't need to talk about it, but just to think about McDonald's and the advent of McDonald's in France being seen as this kind of death knell. But guess what? Super popular. My theory is that sometimes. And here we go with the phrase the French, but sometimes the French kind of like it because French and Frenchness, as you say, France is such a diverse country, and these antiquated ideas of Frenchness really are getting washed away all the time. And yet it's almost like Americans, by holding onto them, are helping the French preserve some cultural sense of self in that way, too.

[Vincent Cunningham]

So true. I mean, they need a foil, and we are the perfect foil. Like, how to better bolster your Frenchness than just, like, think about America.

[Alex Schwartz]

And we.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Do we play that role for each other?

[Alex Schwartz]

Well, I bring it up because it's on my mind in general, but also because we have to talk about Emily. Emily Cooper.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Bonjour.

[Alex Schwartz]

Bonjour.

[Vincent Cunningham]

I'm Emily. You're a new neighbor. You don't come to Paris to be good, sexy. Paris is the most exciting city in the world. You never know what's gonna happen next.

[Alex Schwartz]

I'm just gonna make a little confession here. I had not watched much Emily in Paris, but I will tell you that before our conversation, I was like, all right, I'm dipping in. I'm going in. I'm gonna have a little look. And I kind of found it a bit amusing. I did. I found it a bit endearing. And charming and amusing because it's living in that outrageous fantasy realm. But am I totally off base here? Please send. Send me back to planet Earth. Have you engaged at all with. With the Emily of it all?

[Vincent Cunningham]

I watched the first season. I am not a fan. I mean, it's just the thing that's tricky about that for me is, okay, yes, it's a confection and yes, it's a fantasy, but people live here and there are politics and, my God, there are people of North African descent which never appear in. I mean, I think it's like a very. I honestly think it's a very. I don't understand why you would want to take out all the things that make it Paris and what kind of message that is sending when it's just this kind of. Yeah. Playground for this, like, really ignorant American woman to traipse through. And I think it's like, it's just frustrating because it's a place with its own very real problems to turn it into this sort of like, idealized utopia. Yeah, it's a comparative utopia, but by no means an absolute one and by no means one devoid of politics and people who don't look like Emily. And it's irritating for people who live their lives here. I just keep thinking of, you know, she's like living her life in that voiceover from an American in Paris. When Gene Kelly goes, this is Paris and I'm an American who lives here. It's like, I don't know, Emily, like, go, just get out a little. I have trouble with that show.

[Alex Schwartz]

I'm gonna admit that I set you up a little bit for bashing. I'm so delighted with the bashing I got. It's true. Everything you say is true. But it just brought to me again that idea that there is something, not a huge thing, but something in a certain part maybe of the French classical self cultural understanding that wants that Emily Foyle to play against. You know, it's a little bit like going to a Punch and Judy show. They're playing their roles. The American bright eyed, bushy tail thing is what Emily's there to represent. The cynical. Get out of my face. I'm gonna get lingerie sent to me at work in a La Perla box. Thing is what the French are there to represent. All of it is false. But I kind of got a kick out of seeing them, like, I guess play that stale. That stale song. Let me be clear for an episode and a half. Okay. I have a little bit of a theory that I would like to propose. We talked about Edith Wharton, we talked about Josephine Baker, James Baldwin, we mentioned the Lost Generation, all these big, big American cultural touchstones in those eras, in those texts, in those works, Paris really represented, I think, a vision of the future, an artistic future, a cultural future, a sexual future. And at some point in the 20th century, the future and the past. Flip. The American vision of Paris, I think, stops being that place of freedom and excitement and it becomes a little bit more a classic place where things are very decorous. It's a little bit less about the chaos in the mix. It's less about Les Halles and it's more about Chanel maybe. But my theory for that is that New York really replaces Paris as that place in cultural life in the mid century. I mean, it's for a very real reason. The war hits France in a way it does not hit America. It's on French soil. Many artists, writers, et cetera, are killed or have to flee. And so New York gets that influx of energy, the sexual revolution comes. All of a sudden, Paris doesn't quite have that role. And so when I think of like a later depiction of the American in Paris. This may sound funny, but I see Carrie Bradshaw walking around Paris feeling lonely as hell in the like series finale for Sex and the City totally endorsed the theory.

[Vincent Cunningham]

And it brings up something that I was dying to touch on, which is like the Parisienne, right? The idea of this Parisian woman who was like an international marketing phenomenon. I mean this all came like ever since the 1900 Paris Exposition. She got a 20 foot tall statue. She was all about innovation. She was like driving a fast car and eating canned soup, you know, prepared food. The Parisian was electricity. She was energy. She was so forward looking. And then we got the French woman of kind of the French women don't get fat era. And then at some point she got rid of the scarf and stopped smoking and got an Instagram account and became the French girl. And I kind of like object to French girl content. And I would like for us to deconstruct this image a little bit of the Parisian. And here's why. This Parisian is no more indicative of this nation in all its vibrancy and all its diversity than a group of like really thin, really rich, straight, mostly white residents of the Upper east side would be of America. If you really look at this stereotype, it's like she has high heels in this little bite because she lives in the center of town, never in the suburbs. She's got the shirt that she borrowed from her Boyfriend. Because she's straight. She's got a certain kind of hair. She's got the vintage bag because she inherited it from her grandmother. Because generational wealth. And I think, like, yeah, there's this really. I'm going to drop a Franglish on you. But like, this Fiji, like, frozen or congealed idea of the Parisian of Paris of France. And I think it's time to deconstruct.

[Alex Schwartz]

And you think it's time to get rid of her?

[Vincent Cunningham]

I don't think it's time to get rid of her. I think she can still hang around, but I think she needs. I think it needs to be an ensemble cast. I think we need more ideas about Parisians. I mean, this brings me back again, sorry to keep. You know, all roads lead to influencers. But this is why I object to some of the, like, French girl content. My friend Lindsay Trimuto, who's written a lot about this, calls it the flattening of Paris. But it can also be like a false inflating or hyperbolizing as well. I saw. I was watching, there was a video the other day. It was an American telling Americans what they need to know about Paris. And it was like, the pickpockets in France are sneaky, and they move silently. And I was like, the pickpockets are sneaky, unlike pickpockets elsewhere. You know, I think there's a lot of misbegotten essentializing that happens when Americans start talking about France. And that is my little hill I wanna die on.

[Alex Schwartz]

I think it's a great hill to die on. The view will be amazing up there. Yeah. I mean, what you're saying is fascinating. It brings home the idea that this idea of a certain kind of Parisian, a perfect Parisian femininity, is a marketing tool. And in the United States, it has certainly been a marketing tool.

[Vincent Cunningham]

A highly, highly effective A marketing tool in the United States. I mean, the. The marketing tool that will not die.

[Alex Schwartz]

Yeah, it will not die. I mean, French Women don't get Fat, which is from 2004, is not one that I've read, thank God. But I did read Bringing up Bebe from 2012, which is the American writer Pamela Druckerman's account of having kids in France. She's an expat. She has kids in France, and she feels herself to be very, very judged with her first child because her child does such horrible things as, you know, like throw food on the floor at a restaurant at the age of two. And none of the French children are doing that. And it was A little bit of, I'm just gonna say it, a mind fuck. You know, what I like about the book is that it is able to poke fun at some of these conventions. What I guess I don't like about it is the sense that if you don't, you know, hold the line against your children and absolutely lay down the law like the captain of the ship, they'll just run ramshod all over you. And you can't have your, you know, your adult life because the idea of preserving the adult again, it's that French femininity thing. You're a woman first. And I think that, to Pamela Druckerman's credit, she is skeptical of and freaked out by some of that stuff. But what do you make of that relationship between basically American women looking to French women for a certain kind of femininity? Just what do you make of it?

[Vincent Cunningham]

I think what was revolutionary about that book when it came out was just, it's just permission. And that's, you know, Americans cherry pick from French culture to find answers or permission for the things that their own culture fails to address in some way, and vice versa. For the French, often the crux of the matter is missing. It's like people want kind of like 10 easy tips. But what it really is, I mean, if French women, which I think it's true to a certain extent, have a little bit more time for themselves, maybe take a little less shit from their husbands and kids, it's not because they're French, it's because they have 16 weeks of paid maternity leave. It's because there's a 28 day paid paternity leave. It's because education is compulsory from the age of three, it's because people aren't arguing over vaccines. I think one thing that I really owe to France and feel quite grateful about having, well, at least partially raised two children here, is that I've just gotten the gift of so much time not having to worry about these things.

[Alex Schwartz]

That's fascinating. I think it's so true that in the lack of a social safety net, which the ones we do have in the US are as riddled with holes as we've ever seen them, these choices that you make become hugely time consuming and also just a focus of identity.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Well, and people understandably feel like there's a lot riding on them because there is, I mean, it's such a more individualized France, for better or for worse. I mean, income inequality is widening here every year, but there still is a middle class and there is to some extent a society that hangs together and that believes in public education and that, you know, it's not just like, choose your own adventure, which I sometimes feel like life in the US can be. And I think that, to me, is the great gift of being a parent in France.

[Alex Schwartz]

Yeah, I can fully understand that and, in fact, feel deeply envious of that in a very real way. And again, I think that is part of the appeal of France for Americans. It is a sense of a tradition that you can enter into where not everything is customizable and not everything is about, as I keep saying, optimization, but also just, you know, originality. And there's something to be said for that, for la tradition.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Yeah. People are looking for a system. And if there's anything France has got for you, it is systems. It is things are done this way and there shall be no divergence, which.

[Alex Schwartz]

Again, can be a certain kind of freedom or a certain kind of oppression. And that is why this conversation about America and France and Americans of Paris can go on forever. Sadly, we have to bring it to a close. But I just want to say merci beaucoup, Lauren.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Eba. Merci.

[Alex Schwartz]

Come back anytime on Critics. We'd love to have you back.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Oh, thank you. This was so much fun. And don't forget, next time you're here, it's a French tacos.

[Alex Schwartz]

It's a French tacos all the way. This has been Critics at Large. This week's episode was produced by Michelle o'. Brien. Alex Barish is our consulting editor. Our executive producer is Stephen Valentino. Conde Nast's head of global audio is Chris Bannon. Alexis Quadrato composed our theme music, and we had engineering help today from James Yost with mixing by Mike Kutchman. You can find every episode of Critics at Large at New Yorker. Next week, Vincent is rounding out our interview series. He'll be talking to Richard Brody about auteurism. I cannot wait for this conversation. You will love it. Come back next week to hear it. Foreign.

[David Remnick]

I'm David Remnick, host of the New Yorker Radio Hour. There's nothing like finding a story you can really sink into that lets you tune out the noise and focus on what matters in print or here on the podcast. The New Yorker brings you thoughtfulness and depth and even humor that you can't find anywhere else. So please join me every week for the New Yorker Radio Hour. Wherever you listen to podcasts.

[Vincent Cunningham]

From prx.