Sharon Harrigan

Author Website

By

On Being an American-in-Paris-in-Italy

We recently traveled to northeastern Italy for a week. It was the first time Ella, my nine-year-old daughter, had left France since August. What struck her the most? “Not being able to speak the language. It was disorienting.”

When Italians asked where she was from, she said, “France.” When she observed Italian cities, food, and clothes, her point of comparison was Paris. “Italian architecture is a lot older than in Paris,” she said, “because Paris is all Haussman,” the architect Napoleon III hired to transform narrow, winding streets into grand, open boulevards. She’s right: Italy makes France look young. Ferrara, for instance, is divided into Renaissance and Medieval neighborhoods, and the apartment we rented was in a subdivided 15th century palazzo.

What else was different? “People spoke a lot louder,” according to Ella. Not louder than in the U.S., but louder than in Paris. I have been reprimanded twice by Parisians at cafes for making too much noise. Anybody who has witnessed my feeble attempts at squeezing two words into a dinner party conversation knows how surprised I was to be shushed. I have the voice of a mouse. Americans are always saying, “What did you say?”

Bologna, where I had the best steak in my entire life, is the culinary capital of Italy, according to my guide book, and the food made a big impression on Ella. “The cuisine is a lot simpler in Italy,” she said. “You can almost always tell what a dish is made of, unlike in Paris,” where that green puree on your plate might get its color from frog legs or avocado. Ella was surprised that the bread was so bad. Even at the restaurant that served the platonic ideal of steak, the bread was not up to Parisian standards.

Nor were the clothes. “People dressed more casually,” she noticed. It’s not that they sported shorts and flip flops. But they lacked the crisp, tailored look we’ve become so accustomed to.

Except for a day trip to Venice, we stayed away from tourist centers, so language was an issue more than it ever was in Paris, even when we first arrived. When I bought bus tickets at a tabacchi in Ferrara, I had to muddle my way through Italian by speaking French but changing the accent to the penultimate syllable and pronouncing all the letters the French keep silent. I resorted to using my hands. And speaking very loudly. When at a total loss, it seemed like a good idea to just keep saying prego. The coat check attendant at the Este castle, hearing us speak English to each other, asked if we were from Germany. “No,” Ella said, “France.” That must have really confused her.

A wine seller, noticing Ella ogling the ceramic tags decorating his wine bottles (and observing, probably, that our bonjourno sounded like bonjour), starting speaking to Ella in French. “Un cadeau pour toi,” he said, handing her a flowered tag. “A gift for you.” The two of them chatted away en francais as my husband and I loaded up on Prosecco.

Apparently, I spoke French without knowing. When we arrived at the Venice Airport, I called our landlady in Ferrara to alert her. Our e-mail correspondence had been in English, so I thought I was speaking to her in my native tongue. But after I hung up my husband asked, “Why were you speaking French?”

“I wasn’t.”

“You said oui and non, Madame and a bientot.”

So maybe Ella was right. Maybe we’re from France. Now if I could just figure out when I’m being served frog leg broth and when I’m being given infusion of avocado, all will be bien. As long as I keep my voice down.

 

 

 

By

Tasty and Sexy: C’est Bon! (More Lost in Translation)

 

I’ve been in Paris half a year now. I should know everything. Then why is my French getting worse?

When I asked that question to my French conversation group, they said, “It’s not. ”

“Then why does my friend (whom I’ll call G) correct me ten times as much as she used to? She doesn’t correct my husband, and I thought my French was better than his.”

“It’s a sign of friendship,” they said. “Now she’s comfortable enough to point out your flaws.” I’d always heard that the French take a different view of friendship than Americans do. It takes a long time to become intimate, but once you’re in someone’s small inner circle, it’s very meaningful. In America, we tend to have a bigger circle, with more superficial friendships.

G is one of the warmest, friendliest, most generous people I’ve ever met, so I know she metes out her lessons from the goodness of her heart.

She corrects my daughter, too. Ella’s favorite snack to order at the bakery is a bread shaped like a mouse, which is called “une souris.” Ella asked for “un souris” and the woman behind the counter gave her a cookie (un cookie) instead. The woman seemed confused when Ella said it wasn’t what she ordered.

G straightened things out and explained to Ella and me after we’d left: “It’s very important to get the gender correct or people won’t understand you. She heard “un” and “ee” so she assumed you asked for a cookie. People listen to the beginning and the end but sometimes miss the middle.”

That explains a lot.

The next time G corrected Ella’s pronunciation of the vowels in “souris.” “Diphthongs are hard for Americans to say,” she said, and modeled the complex nasal gymnastics for Ella. “It’s important for her to get this right,” G said. “No offense, Sharon, but it’s too late for you.”

At lunch G told me to place my bread on the table to the left of my plate. “Everyone will know you’re American if they see you put the bread on the plate,” she said. I had never heard this before. So every time I’d sat down to a meal before I’d been doing it wrong.

But my funniest faux pas was revealed at pick-up the other day. I don’t know how many times I said the phrase “c’est bon” to the other parents as we waited for our children to be released.  I was talking about books and films and museums. Elevated stuff. I’d been speaking this way at lunch earlier, with a French writer I really wanted to impress. I was on a roll. Until G stopped me. “Bon is only for food,” she said. “Everything else is bien.”

Apparently, when I thought I was expressing refined opinions about life and art, all I’d said was “how tasty.” Delicious. Yum.

But it gets worse. When I shared this anecdote with my French conversation group, they laughed and said. “There’s one other thing people will think you mean when you use the phrase “c’est bon.”

Oh good. Maybe I hadn’t made a complete fool of myself with that French writer at lunch.

“We also say that when we’re talking about sex.”

So I’d been saying all day (maybe all six months I’ve been in Paris) that everything is tasty and sexy.

Well, it is. Isn’t it?

By

March for Gay Marriage in Paris

We gathered today at Denfert Rochereau, the protest march capital of Paris, which also happens to be our neighborhood, waiting for la Manifestation en faveur du mariage pour tous (the Pro-Gay Marriage March) to begin. My nine-year-old daughter carried her sign high above her head, its stars and swirls spelling “Enfants, nous soutenons le mariage pour tous” (Children Support Marriage for All). I carried mine, too, substituting Straight People for Children. My husband James came, too, even though he was sick.

The crowds were heartening (from 125,000 to 400,00, according to the French newspaper Le Monde). A few weeks earlier an Anti-Gay Marriage protest march had drawn from 340,000 to 800,000. Church buses from all over France had been parked near the huge lion statue at Denfert Rochereau, and provincial parishioners had spilled out onto the city streets.

So we thought it was important to show support for the other side. The Socialist government will soon introduce a bill to legalize marriage for gay people, and we wanted everyone to see that even heterosexual families care about this issue.

But I was unprepared for our reception. Many people asked to photograph us with our signs (my daughter, especially, but James and me, too). Others just said “thank you” to us as they walked by. Two women asked if they could hug us. “Yes, of course,” we said. “Merci, merci d’etre ici” (Thank you, thank you for being here), they said. I could see James get choked up, struggling to hold back the tears almost as much as I was. It was one of the most moving experiences I’ve had here.

By

A Parisian Visits the Key West Literary Seminar (or I Left My Flip Flops in Florida)

Leigh and me outside the Tattoos & Scars Saloon

“You never know how American you are until you leave the country,” according to my nine-year old daughter. She says she didn’t even notice her American accent until she came to Paris.

I hadn’t realized that the corollary could be true for me, too: I didn’t know how French I was until I left France.

I was lucky enough this year (it felt like winning the lottery) to receive the Joyce Horton Johson Award from the Key West Literary Seminar. This granted me a fabulous, literary-star-studded week of panels, lectures, and workshops in the old stomping grounds of Tennessee Williams and Ernest Hemingway. I was also honored to give a reading with the very talented Scott Brennan and Brooks Whitney Phillips. Even if this was not my physical home, it seemed like my artistic one.

As soon as I landed at the Key West Airport, though, you could peg me as a foreigner by my black ballet flats. It became clear my first day that I’d have to buy sports sandals to scale the streets like a native. And flip flops.

My table manners were weird, too. “Why are you eating the pretzel bread with a fork and knife?” my friend Leigh asked.

“That’s what we do in Paris,” I said.

She put her hands up as if to point out that we were in a sports bar at the southernmost edge of North America.

The next day I cut my pizza in tiny wedges. When Leigh looked at me funny, I shrugged, as if to say, “It’s what the Parisian guy sitting next to me on the plane did.”

I became addicted to a morning ritual of cafe con leche in a styrofoam cup from a take-out Cuban stand attached to a landromat because, as I told Leigh, “it tastes exactly like an eclair au cafe.” It reminded me of my favorite bakery in Montparnasse.

I wore button-down shirts. And even tucked them in. Not exactly beachscape dressing. When I saw a woman in skinny jeans, a black blazer and heels one night, I couldn’t restrain myself from telling her, “You look like you’re in Paris.”

She humored me. “People dress like this in New York, too.”

Which is true, but New York isn’t like the rest of America, is it? Of course, neither is Key West. This idyllic island ninety miles from Cuba feels like the setting of a magic realism novel. An enchanting and unreal place where the streets are full of feral cocks. The sun is so bright it makes you want to write a bullfight scene or at least speak in telegraphic, Hemingway-ese. Chickens cross the street for no reason at all (apparently, they belong to no one, like pigeons), and the sky is peppered with seagulls. There are more art galleries than grocery stores. You can hail a pink taxi with the wag of a finger or ride a rented bike in the street or on the sidewalk. Guava paste outnumbers grape jelly ten to one.

So maybe I haven’t really been back to America yet. Or maybe there isn’t only one country to return to.

Our notion of home is complicated these days, isn’t it? On my flight to Florida, I sat next to a Spanish-born Parisian who spoke English perfectly (which he learned from his obsession with Marvel Comics and his American girlfriend). A music journalist, he works for a magazine devoted exclusively to reggae, and he was taking a business trip to Jamaica. The place where he felt most at home.

On my trip back to France, my seatmate was a Finnish woman and her newly adopted toddler from Ecuador. She spoke to the little girl in a mix of Finnish and Spanish and carried an American novel in English. They were on their way home.

And so was I. But right before I left for the airport, I asked Leigh if she wanted my flip flops. I couldn’t wear them in Paris.

 

Photo credit:  Chuck Kramer.

By

Paris Journal: American Style

What’s the first word that comes to mind when I say “Paris”? If it’s not Hemingway or Hilton, it’s probably “fashion.” Then why did a French woman in my conversation group yesterday say “Americans don’t care about French clothes anymore, do they?”

“Are you kidding?” I said. “France is the style capital of the world.”

“Maybe when it comes to designers like Chanel,” she said. “Haute couture. But that’s not what people wear on the street.”

What do they wear? Here’s a list, according to the chic French women in my group, of the hot items in Paris this season.

Abercrombie & Fitch T-shirts. Every time I’ve strolled the Champs Elyssees, I passed an inexplicable half-block-long line that led to a mysterious, unmarked building. What could it be? It wasn’t listed in any of my guidebooks. Yesterday, I discovered it wasn’t a tourist attraction at all, but the line to buy Abercrombie & Fitch T-shirts. Who knew these ordinary items, available at any mall in America, would be seen as such a status symbol here?

Franklin & Marshall gear. For months I’ve noticed young hipsters wearing t-shirts, sweatshirts, and baseball caps with the logo of this small, liberal arts college located in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Do French people think it’s like Harvard? I wondered. When I asked my conversation groupees, they said they didn’t even know Franklin & Marshall was a college. They thought it was just a trendy brand of clothing.

Teddies. And I don’t mean lingerie. A “teddie,” I was told, is a jacket with white leather sleeves and red wool on the chest. “What an odd idea,” I said, until I realized what they were describing: a varsity jacket. When I told my friends what it was, they laughed. They had no idea this cutting-edge fashion item was just a knock-off from high school sports.

Merrell sandals. These are still not fashionable here in Paris, but I wish they were at least available, because I’d like to buy a pair to wear during my trip to Florida next week. It’s the twice-yearly, mandated-by-national-law season of sales in France, so it would be the perfect time to buy. (“In some ways, Paris fashion is still orthogonal to that in Key West,” my husband said. I love when he talks Math like that.)

I guess I’ll buy a pair of sports sandals in the U.S. While I’m at it, I should go to a mall and fill my suitcase with Abercrombie & Fitch T-shirts, then sell them for twice the price on the street. With the profits I might be able to buy my first piece of actual haute couture.