PARIS HAS PLENTY TO READ (IN ENGLISH)

While New-York's French-language bookstores close down, Paris offers a huge choice of books in English:

There are surely as many good English-language bookstores in Paris as in all but a handful of cities in the United States. Whatever that may tell us about relative cultural priorities, it's also an indication of the American (and British) presence in Paris, the importance of American literature to literate Parisians and the large number of Americans visiting and living there.

I discovered 10 bookstores in Paris that specialize, more or less - a few exclusively - in English-language books, four on the Right Bank and six on the Left. One can visit them all in a long day's walk. For a city of its size, compared to New York or London, Paris is readily accessible by foot.

A useful place to start our walking tour would be on the Right Bank, on the Rue de Rivoli where, at Rue Cambon, one finds W. H. Smith (subtitle: The English Bookstore), a larger, more glamorous version of the stationery shops in the notable British chain. The Paris Smith's is a place to get English newspapers and The New York Times, best sellers and a wide range of English paperbacks - Penguin, Pan, Methuen, Virago. There is an imitation English tea shop on the second floor. The books, which are mostly imported from England (Penguin has a terrific list of American titles), cost about half again as much as they do in London, which means they cost about the same as paperbacks in the United States. W. H. Smith is similar to American chains like B. Dalton, a good place to pick up a recent book of no great obscurity but hardly a hangout for book lovers. Still, for a mass market store, Smith's stocks a large number of interesting paperbacks, including American titles generally unavailable in the States. The Louvre is a few minutes' walk from Smith's, though perhaps too great a distraction on this particular tour.

Walking east on the Rue de Rivoli, two blocks or so from W. H. Smith, one comes to the oldest and most elegant English-language bookstore in Paris, the Librairie Galignani. If W. H. Smith has the feel of an upscale Dalton, Galignani is reminiscent of Scribner or Rizzoli in New York. Galignani, lined with dark wood shelves and with a skylight overhead, is easy to move around in, well-stocked, a mix of shelves and tables displaying few if any best sellers. Unlike the chains, it is a store for which books are objects of respect and affection. Galignani has a good selection of poetry and a small though impressive selection of art books. Its prices are generally comparable to Smith's. The staff is knowledgeable and helpful. Browsing is encouraged. Originated in 1805, and at the present address since 1856, Galignani carries 15,000 volumes in English and 15,000 in French. It is a favorite among American writers living in Paris and a place to visit for those who love bookstores as esthetic objects in themselves.

Walking north on the Rue des Pyramides, turning left on Avenue de l'Opera, one comes to the huge, mass market bookstore, Brentano, which appropriately has a golden facade. On entering the store, customers are confronted by records, key chains and souvenirs, as if the absence of books were a selling point. If W. H. Smith is a bit of England on the Continent, Brentano might be perceived as its American counterpart, a bookshop seemingly embarrassed to display books. In the back, however, is a winding blind alley of paperbacks, a first-rate collection hidden away like a secret vice. Brentano's thousands of books in English include a travel shelf comparable to Smith's and a considerably more extensive children's books section. (The other shops on this tour are less rewarding than Smith and Brentano for visitors seeking maps and travel guides in English.) Although disguised as an upscale tourist bazaar, Brentano is, in fact, a fairly substantial store of its kind. Prices are about the same as Smith's and slightly higher than the least expensive of the Left Bank bookstores. Brentano is a short walk from the American Express offices and the Paris Opera.

The one other English-language bookstore on the Right Bank, Librairie Albion, is an anomalous presence. It is a store you are not likely to stumble on unless thoroughly lost. The way to find it is to take Avenue de l'Opera south to Rue de Rivoli, walk east for about 12 blocks along Rivoli until it becomes Rue St. Antoine and then ask directions to Rue Charles V, a street with no other shops but Librairie Albion. From a distance, Albion looks something like an English pub. The front door was locked when my companion and I arrived and an employee let us in through the back. Although Albion exists to serve the University of Paris, which is nearby, stocking French, German and Spanish texts in addition to English, it is a real bookstore - a place of books - cramped, charming, incomplete, eccentric, the expression of a personality. If you are after a particular volume, Brentano and Smith are more likely to have it, but if you are willing to discover what you might want, Albion is a sweet place to browse.

Crossing the Seine to the Left Bank at

Pont Marie and working one's way past Notre Dame, the walker comes to the Rue de la Bucherie and Shakespeare and Company, namesake and self-styled spiritual heir to the legendary Sylvia Beach bookstore of the expatriate 1920's. Shakespeare has stalls in front selling used books, starting at about 60 cents. There may be books of interest among the long forgotten popular novels, mysteries and outdated anthologies, of interest to someone - there are always browsers on display - but I found virtually none. The crowded interior, an olio of old and new books, seems somewhat more promising, though chaos seems to be the shop's reigning principle of organization. Run by George Whitman, a theatrically bohemian septuagenarian with an avowed sense of mission, the store regularly sponsors readings, offers free shelter to young writers (and potential writers) in its apartments upstairs and invites selected visitors to browse in its private library, reputedly totaling 50,000 volumes.

It is, in its own way, a service bookstore, a haven to the errant literary spirit, a place to rub shoulders with literary ghosts. Most of the writers in Paris I talked to thought Shakespeare and Company, for all its good intentions, was of negligible use. Originally called Mistral (one of the celebratory articles I was shown called it Mistrial), Mr. Whitman's shop changed its name to Shakespeare and Company in 1964 to make connection with the original in which, legend says, James Joyce wrote ''Ulysses.'' The 13-room house that Shakespeare occupies, a beautiful building in bohemian disrepair, was, in one of its lives, a monastery and in another an Arab grocery. Today it is a kind of shrine in the guise of a bookstore.

Moving south on Rue St. Jacques, crossing the Boulevard St. Michel, then turning left on Rue des Ecoles, one arrives at Attica, in the Sorbonne district, a former avant-garde bookstore domesticated by the needs of survival. French intellectuals are particularly interested in new American fiction and Attica reflects that interest. There are more books from American publishers here and more small-press books than in the Right Bank supermarkets. Visitors who remember with great affection the haphazard and highly personal collection at Attica's original store will be somewhat disappointed by the relative impersonality of its present quarters. What started out as an obsession of the owner, Stephan Levy, has metamorphosed into a better than average English-language paperback bookstore, a good example of what you might find in an American university town. The difference is that English is not the primary language of Paris. Browsing is welcome. Prices are reasonable. Next on the tour is the Librairie Internationale on the Boulevard St. Germain. To get there, one backtracks on the Rue des Ecoles to Boulevard St. Michel, turns right toward Boulevard Saint Germain, going by the enormous Chez Gibert (a good place to buy inexpensive maps and travel guides - in French), and arrives after a five-minute walk. The elegant Librairie Internationale, which has a high-tech look, specializes in English, French, German, Italian and Spanish books, the English texts making up 40 percent of the stock. The place has achieved a certain notoriety among some writers. Two American poets were evicted from Internationale for having taken books off the shelves to look at the texts. A visit to the shop readily conjures the scene. The manager, a former finance specialist, presides over the store like a grim schoolmaster. Although Internationale has an impressive stock of almost 50,000 books, it is a place without definition or focus or passion. The shop has books on economics (in English) and philosophy that are probably not available elsewhere in Paris. It is, clearly, not a place to browse.

One continues on the Boulevard St. Germain, turning left on the Rue de Rennes, and arrives after about a half-mile at the main branch of the department store FNAC. Among its seemingly endless stock of French books are a half-dozen English-language shelves, broken up into the rubrics: Policiers, Science Fiction and Literature. It is an efficiency bookstore without pretensions, an amusing place to browse and shop. Moreover, it is air-conditioned; it was the only bookstore I visited with the air-conditioning switched on. The selection is smaller than at Smith or Brentano, but in a sampling I took the prices were two to five percent cheaper. FNAC is a part of a chain that sells electronic and photographic equipment and develops film overnight.

Going right on the Rue de Vaugirard, taking the occasion to cross the Jardin du Luxembourg - a particularly pleasant walk - to the Boulevard St. Michel, the stroller turns south and comes to the Nouveau Quartier Latin, a large, sprawling store that, like Attica, serves the students and faculty at the Sorbonne. The Nouveau also distributes English-language texts to most of the other bookstores. An inelegant, spacious shop of some 50,000 volumes, it is particularly good for hardcover cinema books and for coffee-table books on American popular culture. It is neither mass market, like Smith and Brentano, nor literary, like Attica, but something in between, a solid middlebrow way station, an Americanized French-English language bookstore. The service is low key and helpful. Browsing is acceptable and prices are somewhat lower than those of the Right Bank shops.

The last stop on our tour is the cafe-bookstore on the Rue Princesse, a side street off Boulevard St. Germain, a place called the Village Voice, which provides a center for much of the American literary activity in Paris. On my visit, I was shown three recently established literary periodicals, ''Frank,'' ''Paris Exiles'' and ''Moving Letter,'' containing work primarily of American writers living in the city. A reading given by the contributors to ''Paris Exiles'' while I was there - Village Voice sponsors six to eight readings a month - drew a crowd that overflowed the store. The owner and proprietor, Odile Hellier, a translator, has made Village Voice into the kind of place Shakespeare and Company merely imagines itself to be. Although small, the cafe-store has an impressively varied collection of large and small press publications. It carries The Village Voice (no relation) and The New York Times Book Review. In existence less than three years, Village Voice best exemplifies the new literary vitality among Americans in Paris. Alone among English-language bookstores there, it also carries European literature in translation.

It is a telling paradox that the United States is a source of some of the most exciting serious literature available in France. Largely this is thanks to English paperbacks, the intermediary in what is a fairly complex cultural transaction. A further reason to visit this beautiful city - as if one needed one - is to discover the vitality of one's own culture when separated from it by over 3,000 miles and hundreds of years of tradition.

The following is a postscript, a separate tour, a rundown of French-language bookstores of passing interest to the visitor. The Librairie Dupuis on the corner of Rue St. Jacques and Boulevard St. Germain is a shop devoted solely to cartoon books, a hot item in Paris. Some are wonderfully inventive while others seem merely excuses for avoiding the written word. There are two fairly good movie bookstores, Le Minotaure on Rue Beaux Arts (near Rue de Seine) and City Lights, Rue de la Gaite. For chess enthusiasts, the Librairie St. Germain on the boulevard is a place given over to chess books and texts dealing with games of strategy. According to ''Passion,'' the English-language magazine of Paris, Librairie Ulysse on the Ile St. Louis is the best travel bookstore in the city. And for bookstore aficionados I recommend a visit to La Hune or Le Divan, both on the Boulevard St. Germain, to see what a serious French bookshop is like. For the book lover, a browse through the beautiful Hune is a two-star meal. La Hune has a large, perhaps complete, collection of French art magazines and literary journals. I had the feeling, browsing in the hospitable store, that there is not a book on its shelves or tables that is not of some interest to the serious reader. A reader's guide Right Bank W. H. Smith (English Bookstore), 248 Rue de Rivoli (1st arrondissement). Telephone: 42.60.37.97. Metro: Concorde. Hours: 9 A.M. to 6 P.M. Monday to Saturday; closed Sunday.

Librairie Galignani, 224 Rue de Rivoli (1st arrondissement; 42.60.52.37. Metro: Concorde. Hours: 9:30 to 6:30; closed Monday.

Brentano, 37 Avenue de l'Opera, (2d arrondissement); 42.61.52.50. Metro: Pyramides or Opera. Hours: 10 to 7 daily.

Librairie Albion, 13 Rue Charles V (4th arrondissement); 42.72.50.71. Metro: St. Paul or Pont Marie. Hours: 9:30 to 7:30 Sunday to Friday; 10 to 6 Saturday. Left Bank Librairie Internationale, 141 Boulevard St. Germain (6th arrondissement); 43.29.38.20. Metro: St. Germain-des-Pres-Mabillon. Hours: 10 A.M. to 1 P.M., 2 to 7 P.M. Tuesday to Saturday; closed Sunday and Monday.

Village Voice, 6 Rue Princesse (6th arrondissement); 46.33.36.47. Metro: St. Germain-des-Pres-Mabillon. Hours: 11 A.M. to 8 P.M. Tuesday to Saturday; closed Sunday and Monday.

Librairie Attica, 34 Rue des Ecoles (5th arrondissement); 43.26.09.53. Metro: Maubert Mutualite. Hours: 2 to 7 P.M. Monday; 10 A.M. to 7 P.M. Tuesday to Friday; 10 A.M. to 1 P.M., 2 to 7 P.M. Saturday; closed Sunday.

Shakespeare and Company, 37 Rue de la Bucherie (5th arrondissement); no telephone. Metro: St. Michel. Hours: Open every day, noon to midnight, approximately.

FNAC, 136 Rue de Rennes (6th arrondissement); 45.44.39.12. Metro: Montparnasse. Hours: 10 A.M. to 7 P.M. Monday to Saturday; closed Sunday.

Nouveau Quartier Latin, 78 Boulevard St.Michel, near Rue Auguste-Comte (6th arrondissement); 43.26.42.70. Metro: Port-Royal or Luxembourg. Hours: 10 A.M. to 7 P.M. Monday to Saturday; closed Sunday.

Hat tip: Edward J. Cunningham

Librairie Française To Close In Manhattan

Found in RFI:

The Librairie Française at New York's Rockefeller Center will close in September after 73 years in midtown Manhattan, as the store's rent jumps from $360,000 (258,000 euros) to a million dollars (716,000 euros) a year. The bookstore opened in 1935 at the invitation of David Rockefeller, who wanted Europeans to be part of his new office building.

Bookstore owner Emmanuel Molho, says the family-owned business's difficulties are due not only to the rise of on-line buying but also to the changes at Rockefeller Center itself.

With exclusive boutiques, selling clothes, cosmetics and electronics to tourists, "the Center has become a shopping mall," he told the AFP news agency.

Molho's father, Isaac, who arrived in America in 1928 from Athens, had attended a French school there. His contacts in Paris with the French publisher Hachette led him to David Rockefeller, and the idea of a French bookstore in the middle of Manhattan was launched.

During World War II the bookstore published French authors, such as André Maurois, Jules Romains and Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, who had fled the German occupation of France.

The shop flourished throughout the 1960s, with more than 50 employees. Books arrived by the shipload on board steamers such as the France.

The shop was a literary salon as well as a store for US and south American francophiles.

"In those years we would order 3,000 copies of the Prix Goncourt literary prize winner," said Molho. "Today, we don't have more than ten copies in stock."

The Molho family tried repeatedly to interest the French government in their plight, but to no avail.

"When French President Nicolas Sarkozy came to dinner at Rockefeller Center last September, he didn't even cross our threshhold," Molho said.

Que Reste-t-il de la Culture Française ?

Donald Morrison, author of the controversial Times piece on the decline of French culture, talks to le Monde about the French culture's loss of global significance and why it matters so much to France:

Donald Morrison, journaliste, auteur de "Que reste-t-il de la culture française ?" 

C comme culture, D comme déclin, E comme erreur ?

LE MONDE | 29.11.08 | 20h48 • Mis à jour le 30.11.08 | 11h01

Dans votre livre, Que reste-t-il de la culture française ?, qui prolonge votre article de Time Magazine, vous précisez que celui-ci vous avait été commandé par des Anglais et que "la rivalité historique entre les deux pays" peut faire peser un certain soupçon sur cette demande. Pourquoi alors avoir accepté la commande ?

J'ai d'abord refusé, je trouvais qu'il n'y avait pas là de sujet, je vis à Paris plusieurs mois par an et la culture est partout, bien vivante. Mais quand j'ai regardé l'impact de cette riche culture outre-Atlantique, j'ai vu qu'il était quasi nul, surtout si on le compare au rayonnement français de la fin du XIX^e siècle et de la première moitié du XX^e. Alors, j'ai cherché à comprendre. J'ai constaté, en premier lieu, le déclin de la langue française.

Il faut pourtant attendre la page 100 pour voir surgir cet argument. Lorsqu'une langue n'est plus dominante, le rayonnement culturel est moindre.

C'est tout à fait vrai pour la littérature, mais ça ne devrait pas jouer pour les autres arts. Or, à l'exception des architectes, les artistes français, plasticiens, musiciens, sont moins cotés que leurs contemporains britanniques ou américains.

"L'art n'est plus considéré avec le sérieux nécessaire en France", écrivez-vous. N'est-ce pas là le vrai problème, non pas la culture française, mais la France et son déni de sa propre culture, son manque d'intérêt pour la culture ?

Si, en partie. Je cite le cas du photographe Helmut Newton, qui a vécu en France, aimait la France et a voulu donner des photos à la France. On a refusé, il les a données à Berlin. Et que dire de François Pinault emportant sa collection à Venise ?

Est-ce que votre article et votre livre - dans une moindre mesure parce que plus nuancé - ont exaspéré les Français parce que vous leur montrez, en creux, une image d'eux-mêmes qui les dérange ?

Celle de gens qui, tout en proclamant le contraire, n'aiment pas leur culture. Il suffit de voir la sévérité des critiques sur la production française, et leur indulgence à l'égard de ce qui vient d'ailleurs, notamment des Etats-Unis, en particulier en littérature. Si on camouflait certains textes français en textes américains, ils feraient la couverture des magazines branchés. Et inversement, un roman américain moyen transformé en production française serait, à coup sûr, démoli.

C'est vrai, mais ce n'est qu'une partie du problème. Il faut aller plus loin dans le rapport de la France à sa culture. Même si les critiques font ce que vous décrivez, la France assiste sa culture, et il est facile d'être célèbre en France avec des romans médiocres, nombrilistes, des films que personne ne voit sauf sur Canal+. Les artistes n'ont pas à se battre, pas plus que les éditeurs, les producteurs, les galeristes. Il est bien plus facile ici d'être un artiste, singulièrement un écrivain, qu'aux Etats-Unis.

On voit pourtant moins d'à-valoir colossaux.

Parce qu'il n'y a pas d'agents. Mais ici tout le monde écrit, tout le monde peut et veut écrire. Et il est facile d'être publié, j'en suis la preuve.

Il est vrai que trop de Français se croient écrivains. Mais certains le sont. Pas toujours avec un mode de narration semblable à celui des Américains, modèle désormais dominant. Le roman américain aujourd'hui - sauf pour quelques grands écrivains - c'est souvent avoir "a story", une bonne histoire, déjà prête pour le cinéma.

Oui, mais c'est une narration empruntée aux grands auteurs français du XIX^e siècle, Balzac par exemple.

Peut-être. Alors, comment expliquez-vous que les critiques littéraires de langue anglaise, à travers le monde, en 2000, aient désigné comme plus grand écrivain de langue anglaise du XX^e siècle James Joyce, dont on ne peut pas dire qu'il soit un tenant de ce type de narration ?

Je l'ignorais... C'est très français... En France, c'est le Nouveau Roman qui a fait du mal à la littérature. Certes, il était lu à l'étranger, mais les plus jeunes ont voulu le continuer et c'est devenu l'autofiction.

Claude Simon, précurseur de l'autofiction ? La plupart des jeunes auteurs ne font pas d'autofiction. Quant à la génération qui suit immédiatement celle du Nouveau Roman - Le Clézio, Modiano, Sollers et quelques autres - elle est aussi très loin de ce que vous suggérez. Ils sont plus traduits que vous ne le pensez, sauf aux Etats-Unis. Mais, comme le dit Philip Roth, où sont les lecteurs ?

Enfin, pourquoi n'avoir critiqué que la France ? Vous auriez pu dire aussi, peut-être à tort, que l'Allemagne n'avait pas trouvé ses nouveaux Robert Musil, Thomas Mann...

C'est le fond de l'affaire. La France est le seul pays au monde pour lequel la grandeur signifie la grandeur de la culture. C'est un pays qui n'a pas seulement été fondé sur des principes politiques, mais sur la pensée, sur les Lumières. La "francité" passe par la culture, et c'est ça que j'ai touché dans mon article de Time. Sans une culture supérieure, la France devient un autre pays.

Dans le livre, le sous-titre de votre article du Time est traduit ainsi : "Qui peut citer le nom d'un artiste ou d'un écrivain français vivant ayant une dimension internationale ?".

Or le propos en anglais, "global significance", était plus dévalorisant.

J'aurais dû dire "reputation" et non "significance".

A propos de "global significance", que pensez-vous du Nobel de Le Clézio ?

Je m'en réjouis, il écrit une littérature ouverte sur l'extérieur, pas franco-centrée.

Pensez-vous l'avoir aidé par vos critiques de la France ? Vous avez entendu les déclarations de l'Académie Nobel sur la culture américaine.

Les Nobel ont raison sur un point, le manque de curiosité des Américains pour tout ce qui vient de l'étranger. Mais ils ont tort sur la littérature américaine elle-même. Quoi qu'il en soit, le Nobel est un prix assez politique, et de plus en plus politiquement correct. Et je ne crois pas avoir influencé le vote.

En revanche je suis heureux de prendre ma part des prix littéraires français de cette année, un Goncourt afghan, un Renaudot guinéen et un Médicis avec un gros livre pas du tout narcissique.

Là où les tigres sont chez eux, de Jean-Marie Blas de Roblès, qui a reçu le Médicis, a pourtant été étrillé par ceux qui délirent devant tout ce qui vient d'Amérique.

Je ne conteste pas cette réalité. Mais convenez que les écrivains américains se saisissent beaucoup plus que les français des grands problèmes du monde. La Shoah, la seconde guerre mondiale, le Vietnam, les questions du développement, du terrorisme...

On a le sentiment que vous faites ce constat sans lire les auteurs français. Et dans le livre, dans les remerciements, ne figure qu'un seul écrivain français, Marc Levy. En avez-vous rencontré d'autres ?

... J'aurais pu mentionner Bernard-Henri Lévy, mais nous ne nous connaissons pas assez.

Un point de détail : que voulez-vous dire en affirmant qu'à sa mort Françoise Sagan n'avait rien écrit d'intéressant depuis cinquante ans ?

Je ne suis pas le seul hors de France à penser cela.

Elle est morte en 2004, elle a publié Bonjour tristesse en 1954, elle aurait donc écrit un seul bon livre ?

Aimez-vous Brahms..., c'est plus tard ?

1959.

... Alors disons quarante-cinq ans.

Croyez-vous ? Avec mon meilleur souvenir, très bon livre, est de 1984... Et toute ma sympathie, de 1993, et Derrière l'épaule, où elle juge son oeuvre avec beaucoup de sévérité, de 1998...

Peut-être, mais c'est encore une qui a écrit sur elle-même et ses amis, rien de plus.

Passons au théâtre. Que veut dire "malheureusement la France produit plus de Soulier de satin que de Fugueuses" ?

Je n'aurais pas dû prendre comme exemple Le Soulier de satin, magnifique pièce de Claudel - mais pas accessible. Je voulais dire qu'en France, il y a trop peu de pièces intelligentes accessibles à un large public. Il y a du théâtre très populaire et du théâtre élitiste, c'est tout. Et la Comédie-Française, qui monte le répertoire. A Londres et aux Etats-Unis, c'est autre chose, on a du jeune théâtre intelligent sans être élitiste.

Les architectes, vous le disiez, échappent au déclin que vous décrivez. Pourtant vous estimez que la France privilégie ses propres architectes pour des projets médiocres.

Oui, la bibliothèque François-Mitterrand, l'Opéra-Bastille...

... Dont l'architecte est canadien.

Qu'avez-vous pensé de la réaction de Bernard-Henri Lévy à votre article ? Il y voyait une crainte de la culture américaine sur elle-même.

J'ai une mauvaise nouvelle pour lui : les Américains ne pensent plus du tout à la France, les Américains ne se préoccupent pas de savoir comment leur culture est reçue à l'étranger. C'est un pays suffisamment grand pour qu'ils se sentent assurés de ce qu'est être américain et avoir une culture qui se porte très bien. Ils regardent l'Asie, mais pas pour sa culture. Ils ne craignent pas les romans indiens, les films chinois, etc.

Moi j'enseigne depuis quelque temps en Chine. La culture y est en expansion. Mais il y a du chemin à faire.

Après tout ce que vous dites de la France, pourquoi donc aimez-vous y vivre ?

Mais pour la culture, bien sûr !

link

Tiberge: "French literature today does not exist, nor does poetry"

Noted blogger Lawrence Auster Tiberge on the decline of French, December 03, 2005:

As for the French language, of course it was richer, clearer and more full-bodied (if I may compare it to wine) in the centuries of the monarchy and into the nineteenth century. Learning to read French literature was one of the joys of my life, and I was so impressed precisely by that “clarté” you speak of. The language has declined terribly in the latter half of the 20th century. Reading these French websites is often an agony. The slang, the acronyms, the horrible spelling, and the tendency to get entangled in specious “raisonnements” are all indicators of the collapse of their culture. French literature today does not exist, nor does poetry. And those who do attempt to write well are under the spell of political correctness, so they speak without saying anything. French magazines and newspapers are boring and often written in short elliptical phrases for those who can’t stand long sentences.
I believe the rise of totalitarian ideologies in the 19th century had something to do with all this. French writers and philosophers were suddenly dealing with terrifying ideas that had dreadful consequences and they could not cope. They tried to be more intelligent, more piercing than they were capable of and the result is boring and contradictory garbage that young people loved and quoted as if it were Gospel. I tried to read Sartre and couldn’t follow it. But he’s clear compared to others. The mutation of their culture meant the end of their language as well. Without great writers, you won’t have a great language.

Also, they are in such fierce competition with us that they twist whatever they say to ensure it does not sound too much like what an American would say. Recently on CNN Dominique de Villepin said that the riots were not real riots because nobody was killed, unlike American riots where people were killed (in 1992). He said the rioters were between the ages of 12 and 20, so it was a completely different type of event. What he was saying was that France’s riots are superior to America’s riots. When you think like this, how can you speak clearly?

Actually, Auster Tiberge could have pointed out that people did die in the 2005 French riots. So did one native Frenchman make the mistake of going out of the building he lived in to try and do some damage control when he was beaten up by youth and subsequently died of his injuries. All such incidents were initially reported, yet French and liberal media were not too keen to call the French government on its lie when it later claimed in interviews with foreign media that what it called "civil unrests" didn't cause any fatalities.
Don't believe me? Here you are, courtesy of the Beeb 

Ten policemen were injured by shots and stones when they confronted 200 rioters in the Paris suburb of Grigny, with two policemen seriously hurt.

President Jacques Chirac has said restoring order is his top priority.

Meanwhile a man who fell into a coma after being beaten last week is thought to be the first fatality of the unrest.

Jean-Jacques Le Chenadec, 61, was reportedly struck by a hooded man in the street after he and a neighbour went to inspect damage to bins near their apartment block in the town of Stains, in the Seine-Saint-Denis region outside Paris.

In the New York Times:

France's growing urban unrest claimed its first life today and Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin later indicated on French television that the government was near a decision to allow local officials to impose curfews.

The dead man, Jean-Jacques Le Chenadec, 61, had been in a coma since he was attacked by a hooded youth last week while talking with a neighbor about their cars near a working-class housing development in the Parisian suburb of Stains.

The "monotony and boringness" of Le Clezio's novels

In earthtimes.org, 9th Oct, 2008:

Berlin - Top German literary critic Sigrid Loeffler called Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clezio "a fairly bizarre choice" for the Nobel literature prize, dismissing his work Thursday as "boring."Speaking on MDR Info radio, she declared herself surprised and shocked at the award, and suggested Le Clezio may have won simply because no other French author had been picked for so long.
Loeffler has a German-wide reputation as a sharp-tongued reviewer of contemporary books on television.
She said the "monotony and boringness" of Le Clezio's novels had always put her and most readers off.
Terming him an "anachronistic romantic," she said, "His way of thought tends to nature mysticism: quietly contemplating nature rather than any kind of sensitivity to society.
"In our times, in our literature, that is a bit off-putting."
Noting that no one from France had won a literature Nobel since 1985, she added, "I can only imagine this choice has something to do with French literature."
She said that though Le Clezio had been an author for 40 years, "each of his books came from a different publishing house. That means publishers are not terribly happy about him or the sales."