Status Updates From The French

Reading this as part of my trip to Sete. It's very interesting, because it is a series of portraits of individual French people, their attitudes and values. It is rather old (written 1983), but the issues it raises are timeless ones of national identity.

"The real cause of dissatisfaction with foreigners in France comes not fro the French feeling humiliated by borrowing from America or other countries, but from an annoyance that foreigners are not borrowing much in return"

"There are other regions, too, like the Haut-Rhin, where the parents still give their children 'a good fill of eau-de-vie' every morning before sending them off to school; in the Auvergne, village football matches played by 15 year olds are preceded by each player drinking a litre of wine; it is not unknown for toddlers of two to be given wine so that they can get used to it"

"as was revealed by doctors investigating the Breton village of Plozevet 10 years ago; they found that it had 50 times more mental disease than Parisians of equivalent social status, 8 times more sexual diseases, 3 times more digestive troubles & twice as many bone & muscular defects"

"That a person should, after 50 years, still feel that he has been branded as a bad pupil says something very profound about the place of schools in the lives of the French. It does not signify hate of the schools, but love-hate, for Effel deeply regrets that he never had a good teacher"