And God Created the French

Rating:
Summary: Amusing at times but could have contributed more insights
Review: For well over thirty years, I have been visiting France for a minimum of one month per year, and feel very fortunate to have many French friends.

While I found the beginning of the book most amusing, I did not appreciate the "puff" pieces. I wish, after his having spent twenty years in France, M. Robitaille would have given us his insights as to why the French still do not buy automobiles with automatic transmission, or why General De Gaulle was never promoted to Marshall of France, or the contribution McDo (McDonald's) has made to France, or why Disneyland Paris is now a success, or consider that M. Mitterand did actually have a lovely apartment where he lived with two others, or why Jean Moulin continues to be honored, etc., etc.

Rating:
Summary: Amusing at times but could have contributed more insights
Review: For well over thirty years, I have been visiting France for a minimum of one month per year, and feel very fortunate to have many French friends.

While I found the beginning of the book most amusing, I did not appreciate the "puff" pieces. I wish, after his having spent twenty years in France, M. Robitaille would have given us his insights as to why the French still do not buy automobiles with automatic transmission, or why General De Gaulle was never promoted to Marshall of France, or the contribution McDo (McDonald's) has made to France, or why Disneyland Paris is now a success, or consider that M. Mitterand did actually have a lovely apartment where he lived with two others, or why Jean Moulin continues to be honored, etc., etc.

Rating:
Summary: Pick and choose in this one
Review: Robitaille says some interesting and funny things, but in general I found his book hard going. The prose is quite dense (this may be the fault of the translation), and the author expects his readers to be as au courant with the details of French political and social life of the last twenty years as he is. If you're not up to speed, you'll be left scratching your head about the significance of this strike and that strike, this gaffe and that gaucherie, this change of minister and that, and on and on. But there are some very entertaining general articles in this collection, so I recommend that the Average Reader (in this case, someone generally but not intimately familiar with matters French) hunt them out and enjoy them, and leave the rest to the specialists.

Rating:
Summary: Convoluted and Poorly Written
Review: This work is beset by problems of both style and substance.

Stylistically: this book has numerous spelling errors (Chili instead of Chile, for example.) and is translated into a verbose English. It's possible to remove at least 50% of this book by shaving needless adjectives and redundant sentences. There is no logical organization; it seems the author just began writing one evening and didn't pick up his pen until after he was finished.

In matters of substance this book has even more serious problems. First, the author is writing from the perspective of the literary "chic" crowd. His self consciousness is evident throughout when he constantly points out what the French may think of you if you live in one of the less fashionable districts of Paris, if you criticize a popular writer, or commit any of a few dozen minor social gaffes he has listed. While this may be the case for the literary crowd he associates with, it by no means is representative of the French. This book should be retitled, "And God Created the Self-Styled Parisian Literary Elite."

Most of the points he raises are universal in nature. If you flaunt your money or dress in a gaudy manner, you will be looked down upon whether you are in France, New York, or even Moscow.

His political insights are trivial. In no way does he explain the French political or business sectors before coming to his outlandish conclusions. The only people who could get anything at all out of this book are those who don't know anything about France. (For those who don't know, this book gets two stars. For those that do know, it's only 1 star) Unfortunately, this very audience needs the author to present some basic background information before diving into the conclusions.

Another main problem is that a lot of the material is marginal to his main story. Why does he feel the need to keep bringing up Jews and anti-Semitism every couple pages? If he wanted to write a book about anti-Semitism in France, then that is exactly what he should have written. He writes, at length, about Louis-Ferdinand Celine just to mock his "anti-Semitism." Another topic which perplexed me, was the young French Orientalist who lived in India as an "untouchable." I'm fascinated by India's caste system, but I don't see why he has to spend half a dozen pages writing about it in a book on France. When I want to read about a caste system, I will read a book by many informed Orientalists. And when I want to read about France, I would like to find a book actually about France and not a book written about everything and nothing at the same time -- about the Parisian literary elite, anti-Semitism in French literature, India's caste system, and some dimwitted perceptions about the United States.