Despite the fact that many traditional booksellers have refused to sell the book, it has shot to the top of the Amazon best seller list, supplanting Fifty Shades of Grey. The first print run was 200,000, so it’s quite likely the book will make Valérie Trierweiler a euro millionaire, nice revenge if you can get it. It’s far from flattering about Hollande, who comes across as not only petty and dull but dithering and procrastinating, too, a lethal combination in a political leader. He’s also contemptuous of the ‘sans dents’, those without teeth, in other words, the poor. The latest opinion poll, in Le Figaro, says that only 13 per cent of the French electorate says Hollande is doing a good job. No wonder that the latest polls, about prospects in the 2017 presidential election, put Marine Le Pen at the top of the heap.
At a gathering in Bologna the other day of left wing politicians from around Europe, Manuel Valls, the French pm, said that the Front National is at the gates of power in France and if it wins the presidential election, it would be a terrible, even a fatal, blow for Europe. Meanwhile, the terrible anger that lies beneath the right wing in France has made itself felt in the case of Najat Vallaud-Bellacem, the new education minister. It so happens that her origins are in Morocco, so she has been the target of far right wing abuse on the grounds of her country of origin and her religious beliefs, all very unedifying. She’s also managed to become the subject of attack by anti-gay marriage campaigners in France. This is all clear evidence that not far below the surface in France lurks a very nasty far right element. If the Front National does come to power in 2017, keeping this far right element in check is going to become even more difficult. The new education minister also has to deal with the fallout from the changes in the education system, put in place long before she became minister. The new five day school week is now in place and parents are having to deal with the consequences of this and other changes now that the new school year has started.
Quite apart from all this, the new government has already seen its first resignation. Junior trade minister Thomas Thevenoud resigned after just nine days in office, because of irregularities in his tax affairs. The new government is continuing the old French political tradition, so evident in the 1950s, of the revolving door syndrome; no sooner did a new government come to power than it started falling apart. All that nonsense didn’t stop until General de Gaulle came to power. Now, many voters in France are looking to Marine Le Pen to become a similarly strong minded role model. And with a new survey showing that most people in France are living on a mere €1,650 a month or less, there’s ample scope for anger to be expressed towards the traditional parties at the next president poll.
On a more positive note, Alain Ducasse, described as the godfather of French gastronomy, has banned meat from his famed restaurant in the Hotel Plaza-Athenée in Paris. The hotel itself, one of the most luxurious in the French capital, is just completing a major refurbishment, which includes its restaurant. Ducasse, whose global restaurant empire has carried off numerous Michelin stars, has now said that he is going to ban meat. He says that the planet’s resources are limited and that a more ethical approach has to be taken to preserve them. Naturalness is his new gospel and as part of this new look, he is also going to reduce as much as possible the amount of sugar in his recipes. Incidentally, eating chez M.Ducasse doesn’t come cheap; at the Paris restaurant, when it reopens, it’ll cost close on €400 a head to enjoy the set menu, slightly dearer than McDonalds!!
For anyone who’s interesting in eating and drinking in Paris - who isn’t? - a new book has just been published listing a huge number of cafés, bars and restaurants, with the emphasis on the quirky, local places that aren’t part of global chains. The book has been compiled by Parisian contributors, as well as frequent visitors to the city, and it promises to open up all those delightful neighbourhood places that tourists just don’t hear about.
Paris also has a tantalising number of temporary exhibitions coming up over the next few months, all of which sound very promising.
At the Pompidou Centre, Marcel Duchamp, the ‘father’ of contemporary art, is going to feature strongly, while at the Grand Palais, 500 works by the famed 18th century Japanese artist, Katsushika Hokusai, will be on show.
The Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson, dedicated to good photography, will be exhibiting 150 works by the celebrated American photographer, William Eggleston. Gary Winogrand, another American photographer, who has eulogised post World War II America, will have a selection of his works on show at the Jeu de Paume. The Musée Maillot will have a complete contrast, an exhibition on the life and carry-on of the Borgias, told through jewellery, paintings and other artefacts.
Going back to the Pompidou Centre, in November, it will stage an exhibition of works by the American artist Jeff Koons, who elevates the banal and everyday in his art. Koons was also married to the Hungarian-born Italian porn star, Cicciolina, who turned all respectable and became an Italian MP from 1987 to 1992.
Finally, the noted abstract painter, Sonia Delauney, will have a show of her work at the museum of modern art run by the city of Paris. In the Espace Dali, 20 street artists who’ve been inspired by that great eccentric, Salvador Dali, will be showing their efforts. Then the great Mayan tradition from central America, which pre-dated the conquest of Latin America by the Spanish, will be portrayed at the Musée du Quai Branly.
All in all, these shows promise to be a feast for the visual senses. I’ve also been reading about the places that tourists should avoid at all costs.
First of all, there’s the Eiffel Tower. The Tour Montparnasse gives just as good views over Paris and it’s much less crowded. Then you should steer clear of the tourist train in Montmartre and walk around the district instead. The Moulin Rouge is very avoidable, especially as it costs €200 a head for a not very authentic show. It’s rather like the Crazy Horse, billed as one of the sexiest shows in Paris, where all the chorus girls have their pubes trimmed uniformly. In reality, it’s a very expensive way of getting thoroughly bored for a couple of hours.
Also in Paris, the bateaux mouches should be avoided at all costs, another tourist trap of the first order. And don’t forget to bypass Disneyland Paris for the much more authentically French experience of Parc Astérix, just north of Paris, which also happens to be cheaper.
Outside Paris, avoid St Tropez in the summer, when it’s home to the bling-bling mafia with their big yachts, and visit in the winter, when it’s almost deserted. And pick your time to visit Mont St Michel, which gets three million visitors a year and is totally overrun in summer.
Talking about the super rich visiting France, I see that Corsica is said to be the new place for the rich and famous. The likes of Rihanna and Beyoncé have been enjoying the place in recent days.
While all this is happening, another creative spirit is moving on. Natalie Nougayrede was the first female editor-in-chief of Le Monde, but she only held the job for little over a year before she was ousted in a newsroom revolt last April. She is bilingual in French and English and one of the countries she was brought up in was England. In one of her previous incarnations, she worked for the BBC, so she is very familiar with Anglo-Saxon culture. Now she’s moving back to London, to work for The Guardian, where she starts on October 1 as a columnist, leader writer and foreign affairs correspondent, as The Guardian plans to heighten its coverage of European affairs.
I’ve also been reading a couple of French themed books. Sue Roe’s book on Picasso, Matisse and modernism in Paris,1900-1910, is excellent on Picasso’s early, poverty stricken years in Montmartre. But then the book makes an all too common mistake; in its later pages, as it describes the development of modernist art in Paris in the early 20th century, it gets totally bogged down in an over-academic approach. Surely Cubism can be explained in a totally reader friendly way? Then I’ve been reading Stephen Clarke’s book, Dirty Bertie, an English king made in France. King Edward VII felt truly at home in France and in Paris, had his way with plenty of society dames, not to forget his patronage of so many upmarket brothels. He had indeed received a unique education in France that fitted him well for his kingly role. The trouble is that he ate and smoked himself into oblivion, and the author argues very convincingly that had his health been better, and had he lived for another few years, he would have talked the crowned heads of Europe, to all of whom he was related, out of starting the first world war. His French experiences had made Bertie the supreme diplomat.
Overall, it’s a very easily readable book and you can’t wait to turn the next page to find out what a future king of England was up to, or more likely, who he was up. All of which brings me to a tribute to that great American comic, Joan Rivers. Her talent was unique and she pulled no punches. In one of her jokes in old age, she said that her vagina was like Newark; all the men knew exactly where it was, but no-one wanted to visit. She really pushed the bounds of decency, using rumours that have been going the rounds in the US for months now and joking recently that not only was President of sorts Obama, gay but that his wife Michelle was really a tranny called Michael. In other countries and other times, Joan could have had her head chopped off for less. May she rest in peace.