Telling stories

As an historian I just tell little stories. Or, as Carmen puts it, "You just make crap up!" Actually, I don't have to make stuff up. The story of real people is so improbable that I don't need to.

Here is a Canadian-born French author talking about stories, and explaining a lot about French intellectual history in the late 20th century:

“After the war French writers rejected the idea of narrative because Hitler and Stalin were storytellers, and it seemed naïve to believe in stories. So instead they turned more and more to theory, to the absurd. The French declined even to tell stories about their own history, including the war in Algeria, which like all history can’t really be digested until it is turned into great literature. Francophone literature doesn’t come out of that background. It still tells stories.”

You can find the whole article, which is about the French language and how it has burst the narrow bounds of France and true 'Frenchiness.'

suddenly I have the strangest desire to get back to reading "La Reine Margot."

And now for something ... French

I am back from Virginia and about to start my paper on urban violence that has to be finished by Wed morning (Mora has won once again). Then off to Kalamazoo for the great meeting of Medievalists so I won't be posting much until next Monday.

But this is interesting. On NRO Denis Boyles comments on Sarko's victory in France and how to mine it for good advice for Repubs running in '08. Here's one of his conclusions:

The whole country knew that Jacques Chirac hated Sarkozy and that Sarkozy thought Chirac was a fraud; they knew Villepin and the whole UDP establishment was uncomfortable with Sarko. Even though he ran a campaign that had more in common with the UDP than with the Socialists, he was smart enough to know that the biggest asset he had was the enmity of Chirac, and he knew that the biggest mistake he could make would be to court the support of a president from his own party. He refused to do it, and the nation loved him for it. After all, most French voters think Chirac is a hopelessly inept and cynical loser — sort of the way most Americans, including many conservatives, feel about George W. Bush. The smart Republican candidate will make Bush his Chirac.

Politics for all you Francophiles

Yes, all three of us.

On National Review Online today I found an interesting update by Denis Boyles on French presidential politics. At the moment I care about this race a great deal more than our own, on the basis of a portion of none is none, and I find French politics, at least as presented by Boyles, much more entertaining.

I personally would love to be able to vote for a politico nicknamed "Sarko."