New York-Paris Round Trip
SAUVAGE, LEO
A TRAVELER'S NOTEBOOK New York-Paris Round Trip BY LEO SAUVAGE "I think that as a rule we develop a borrowed Eropean idea forward," Mark Twain once wrote, "and that Europe develops a borrowed...
...At the Comedie-Francaise, Moliere's Tartuffe is alternating with Chekhov's Seagull...
...ever had...
...No space whatsoever, no panel of any kind has been provided—or required by contract—to give information about the buses the shelters are supposed to serve...
...Not until I pointed to the various signs and maps on the Paris glass shelter where we were standing did he notice a difference never mentioned about the New York shelters...
...Perhaps it is based on the concept of relativity...
...At the beginning of the play, while sewing like the others yet talking a little more hesitantly, she still has some hope that her husband will come back...
...He really was the 10-year-old boy with glasses who appears at the end to tell that his mother cannot come to work...
...And he really was the boy who says he hates the Americans because the overcoat someone in the U.S...
...If there appears to be a general lessening of anti-American rantings in France, partly for good reasons and partly because of the impact of American rock 'n' roll on French youth, the lack of esteem for Jimmy Carter seems even more general...
...Still, Rene Monory insists that he has done the right thing...
...At the Theatre du Gymnase, I saw Jean-Claude Grumberg's play L'atel-ier (The Workroom), produced under the auspices of the Theatre National de I'Odeon, with the author acting in it and participating in the staging...
...A French plane snatched him from under the noses of the American Command in Naples to bring him to Corsica...
...sent for him was a girl's coat...
...Instead of wandering from store to store in the hope of finding a better buy, more readers than ever are going to the big discount house for their books...
...In budgeting their trip, foreign visitors have to take into account that they can travel only by taxi...
...A slice of life but with a quiet, direct, simple truth—no egocentric misfits here, no cats on hot tin roofs...
...And as a rule, indeed, there is no such thing in Paris, or in London for that matter, as a Bus Stop without a sign indicating the numbers of the buses stopping there, plus their routes and other stops on the way to their destination...
...The time is important...
...One has a husband who was with the police, "a civil servant, yes, and he helped some Israelites, warned them, yes...
...All of the characters are taken from real life, and that life is the real drama...
...To begin with, it is easy to tell where to wait...
...In a joint communique, the national organizations of the publishers and the booksellers have complained about the "disorder" the Dicret Monory has brought to their industry...
...Subsequently, the echoes we get through the workroom reflect mostly her difficulties with the French bureaucracy in trying to secure a death certificate that might entitle her to a few francs for the children...
...you may pay two or three times more for your prescription in the wrong pharmacy...
...They were badly mistaken...
...The chief of de Gaulle's 1941 London Cabinet, later French Ambassador in Teheran and in Belgrade, had arrived by the 83 bus...
...Following the Normandy landing in 1944, he became the first Commissaire de la Ripublique to take over the administration of liberated France in Rouen...
...If you are accustomed to Rolls Royces, how can you put yourself into the shoes of little people...
...But one day when I was the lone passenger, a driver admitted that he had intentionally disconnected the bell...
...I talked with one here about the glass shelters that have appeared in recent years on Manhattan's sidewalks...
...I have no explanation for the lasting or reborn French love affair with Nixon...
...All these luxuries are unknown in New York...
...The small Theatre de la Huchette, in the Latin Quarter, has been playing Io-nesco's Bald Soprano and The Lesson every night except Sunday since 1957...
...A few regular theaters prefer not to take that risk...
...Like the former Rouen Commissaire, he also had been ambassador in various places, including the European Economic Community in Brussels...
...One of the women workers is Jewish...
...The alibi was Jimmy Carter...
...Even in the subways there are few maps that are accessible or understandable, and most signs are hidden from view or meaningless or misleading...
...A few years ago, he decided by decree that books should carry no printed price...
...New Yorkers seem to accept the situation...
...Leo Sauvage , for many years the New York correspondent for Le Figaro, is a frequent contributor to these pages...
...It is the work of a fashionable avant-garde humorist named Jerome Savary and it is called Melodies of Misfortune...
...He enjoyed riding the 83, he said, because it has an open platform in the back where he can smoke...
...You have to feel humble when dealing with humble characters...
...As for political blundering, you are invited to look at what happened in the White House after Jimmy Carter moved in...
...The Matignon is not a hotel but the traditional residence of French prime ministers...
...At a dinner at the home of Lucie and Raymond Aubrac, both top leaders of the French Resistance during the War, I met some former members of Charles de Gaulle's personal staff whose names were very familiar to me...
...There are union leaders in New York who are said to care about the drivers' working conditions...
...Jean-Claude Grumberg's most important play, Dreyfus, was not much of a hit at the Ethel Barrymore Theater on Broadway a few years ago...
...The less enraptured wanted me at least to admit that he was not as bad as I had written...
...Before quoting raves from various newspapers including the Communist L 'Humanity, it shows a happy chorus line of five barebreasted dancers...
...Have they never discovered that when a passenger pushes the button on a Paris bus, a little red sign goes on noiselessly to show that the request for the next stop has been recorded...
...An aerialist in a circus has become paralyzed and blind after a fall, but she successfully tries her highwire act in a wheelchair only to be killed by a dwarf...
...He knew everything about the financial and political scandals surrounding the awarding of the franchise to construct and maintain them...
...And so on...
...The number is repeated on the side next to the entrance, too, so that nobody coming from behind has to run first to the front or shout to the driver to find out whether it is the right bus...
...World War II has just ended...
...Back in New York, I found Americans who were indignant because of the widely varying prices charged in different Paris bookstores for the same book...
...As far as I could judge, nobody was engaged in any present-day political activities and everybody spoke freely...
...They have asked the government to change the decree "without delay," since it is clearly contrary to the interests of Economy as well as Culture...
...Rene Monory is the man in charge of Economy—but not of Culture—in the French government...
...There are members of the Transit Authority who get all-expenses-paid trips to study transit elsewhere...
...She has been taken to the hospital because she cannot stand on her feet anymore...
...One can also attend the performances of some 10 spectacles erotiques at 150 francs (with taxes, about $40), and a place near Pigalle called Le French Kiss offers "three special SM matinees"?no further explanation given—at 200 francs ($50...
...Such workrooms probably were among the few places where Jews and non-Jews had something to share," Jean-Claude Grumberg remarked the next day in his apartment on the Left Bank...
...They know that in the U.S...
...Summer is a bad time in Paris for theater-going...
...Well, the visitor from New York waiting for a bus on a Paris street is inclined to think differently...
...Usually, this is part of the regular maintenance breakdown New Yorkers are accustomed to...
...Some Paris booksellers, it seems, thus hoped to be able to withstand or circumvent the competition of the big discount house near the Montparnasse Tower...
...L 'atelier may be done in English by the Milwaukee Repertory Theater...
...The most amazing discussions I got myself involved in with an unbelievable variety of people concerned Richard M. Nixon...
...A borrowed European idea developed backwards by the people whose invention of public relations does not preclude contempt for the public...
...Moreover, when a bus arrives its number is clearly visible from a distance...
...I decided to skip it when I saw the ad...
...I was most pleased to be sitting next to Claire Morandat, the widow of Yvon Morandat...
...A "Polok," his German-born Jewish wife says half teasingly, and he sometimes calles her a "Boche...
...He is now a member of the Conseil d'Etat, the highest administrative court in France...
...The play is full of his own memories...
...When reminded of the corruption in Nixon's White House, his champions frequently ask whether you have heard about the diamonds that went to President Valery Giscard d'Estaing's Elysee Palace from the former Imperial Majesty Bokassa I of the Central African Republic...
...For some in France, he was one of the best Presidents the U.S...
...The boss is Jewish, a Frenchman of Polish origin...
...He doesn't complain about the American critics or the American public, but about Garson Kanin who adapted and staged it...
...Raymond Aubrac became Commissaire de la Republique in Marseilles after the landing in Southern France...
...Later, on the terrace of Le Colisee, a once famous cafe on the Champs-Ely-sees that has been cut in half to make room for a McDonald's, I was told what I had missed: A Siamese twin is in bed with a lover while her sister is hiding under the blanket, but the frustrated sister gets revenge by cutting her off and thus killing her...
...By the way, the former Secretary General of the Elysee and current member of the Conseil d'Etat had come to the Aubracs by subway...
...Another of the guests had been for five years Secretary General of the Pri-sidence de la Republique in the Elysee Palace...
...Quite a number of plays hang out the Relache sign, indicating that the actors also want to relax and are taking a vacation...
...But sometimes Relache becomes Cloture...
...One had been chief of the General's Cabinet in London...
...This Paris men's garment workroom is not reminiscent of a New York sweatshop, mainly because the time is between 1945-52, not before 1914...
...In August 1944, after cycling through the streets of Paris, they had taken possession of the Hotel Matignon in the name of General de Gaulle...
...the other leg, in the air, is amputated at the knee with blood dripping from the bandages...
...A TRAVELER'S NOTEBOOK New York-Paris Round Trip BY LEO SAUVAGE "I think that as a rule we develop a borrowed Eropean idea forward," Mark Twain once wrote, "and that Europe develops a borrowed American idea backwards...
...If 15 passengers want to get off, he told me, each one is going to ring the bell, some of them two or three times to make sure he has heard, and that was too much for his nerves...
...She somehow managed to escape the Nazi death camps with her two children, but in 1943 her husband was taken away to Drancy, the French antechamber to Auschwitz...
...They were surprised to learn, however, that pharmaceutical products sold in all French drugstores have a set price, which is printed on the package...
...Often in New York, too, the bell signaling that passengers want to get off at the next stop does not work...
...None of the other women is Jewish...
...The description of the route is given again inside the bus on two double-sided signs placed where they are easy to read...
...In addition, Paris has some 40-50 uncomfortable yet lively cafe-theaters where you can see such plays as David Storey's Home in a French adaptation by Marguerite Duras...
...There certainly was no overwhelming support for Giscard d'Estaing, but someone at the table said the French President had an "alibi...
...Mass transit...
...This prevented Eisenhower from setting up an American military government...
...When I tell him that Kanin is considered a very successful personality in the American theater, he insists: "That's exactly the point...
...Each has one high-heeled, silk-clad leg on the floor...
...The biggest hit at the moment is at the nationally-subsidized theater of the Palais de Chaillot...
...Another does not need much prodding to admit that, well, the German soldiers sometimes were more polite than the Americans are now...
...Publishers and booksellers are now united in protest—they are being supported by the authors, whose royalties used to be based on the printed price...
...France may not have problems with buses, but it has them with books—or rather with a man named Rene Monory: Because of him, unless price is of no importance to you, you cannot simply enter a bookstore to buy a book you want...
...They have charged that it represents an "extremely serious threat" to France's "cultural heritage," and that it poses a danger to "freedom of expression" because only prospective best-sellers can compete in such a backwards development of free enterprise...
Vol. 63 • July 1980 • No. 14
