Sud de France 3.2: Flaubert’s Q-Tips.

 I hit something hard and crunchy when I bit into my croissant this morning.  It was a dark brown chocolate bar stuck in the middle of the pastry. Zuts alors, the lovely redheaded boulanger’s wife had mistakenly given me a croissant “au chocolat” instead of a croissant “beurre.”The two types of croissant look identical and you can only tell them apart by their delicious names. 

It made me think about words and the great French writer Gustave Flaubert, who wrote Madame Bovary. Flaubert was known as a slow writer because he spent a lot of time searching for the “bon mot,” for just the right word. He’d take weeks writing a single paragraph over and over. He wanted to find that one word that once in its place would fit so perfectly that the sentence would become simply unchangeable. Just perfect. 

A young Gustave Flaubert circa 1850-60

His efforts produced some of the finest novels ever written. As an artist he struggled with his words because he understood that even ordinary words contain powerful implications and textures.

And this isn’t an  “out there” idea. I think that names and words are always affecting our ordinary lives. Here’s a very simple example of what I mean. I ran out of Q-Tips today. I had brought a couple of dozen with me from the States but now they were all used up.  

So I put Q-Tips on my shopping list and later in the day went off the supermarket. When I got there I realized I had no idea what the damn things were called in French.    

I asked one of the supermarket staff,” S’il vous plait. Ou est les Queue Teeeps?” She stared at me for a moment with that “Oh, Monsieur is a moron from space” look in her eyes and shrugged. 

Left alone I began to think to myself, “If I were a French Q-Tip what would I be called?”

English creeping into France

Having no good answer to this deep question, I simply began a methodical aisle by aisle search of the store. Starting in first aid products working my way through shampoos, air fresheners, soaps, toothpaste, skin crèmes and finally makeup. Nothing. I moved on to tissues and paper supplies and was about to give up when there on a bottom shelf, half hidden by bags of cotton pads, I saw a familiar blue packages. There were the Q-Tips or as the package called them in French “bâtonettes ouatés.”

“Bâtonettes ouatés” translates as “little sticks of cotton wool.” Now that’s a lovely name for Q-Tips. Bâtonettes! That works for me because Q-Tips absolutely look like drum majorette batons, scaled down for mice.

And this was a very Flaubert moment because it points out how French differs from English in subtle ways.  

Look at “Q-Tips,” it is a very sterile name, very impersonal and industrial. Do we even know what the Q stand for? Bâtonettes ouatés on the other hand is descriptive of what the item is and has a sweetness to it.

There are other examples. In America we drive cars. Drive has a pushy sound to it like driving a herd of cattle over the edge of a cliff. In France one “conduire le voiture” or conducts the car. You escorting the car get to a place, much gentler than driving. 

Give way

 At traffic roundabouts signs here say “cedez le passage” which means “give way” as opposed to the American “Yield!” The French are struggling as English slips into their language. When new things come along they try to create new French words that retain a descriptive quality, a French identity. 

For instance, since email means enamel in French they’ve taken the words for electronic mail--courrier electronique—and shortened them to courriele. A word with rolling Rs that’s not quite as corporate and hard as email. I like this softness in the language as much as I like the way the French find workarounds to get along. 

More english in France

Flaubert wanted to write realistic novels devoid of the flowery language and “higher emotions” of the literature of his day. In his search for the bon mot he created works that soar with emotive power and that shaped the French language forever.

I’d like to think that not so long age someone who had read and loved Flaubert had been the one to give Q-Tips a French name of bon mots like bâtonettes ouatés.

Photos and text © 2010 Steve Meltzer

Sud de France 2.6 : It’s raining, it’s pouring, it’s time to go to the HyperU.

There are 300 days of sunshine a year in the Herault but today and yesterday were not among them.

It has been raining since early yesterday morning and it washed out our plans to go to the big antiques fair in Pezenas. It is the universe telling us to slow down I guess. But there is something we can do today we can go to the HyperU.

Pronounced Ee-Par-Oe (as in shoe) it is France’s version of a super Target or Wal-Mart except that it is more a cultural adventure than a shopping opportunity.

First of all before you go shopping you have to remember to take along your own grocery bags. There are no plastic bags to be had in any French supermarket, seriously and for certain, none. You don’t have a choice between plastic or paper cause there aren't either. If you haven’t brought your own grocery bag then everything you buy is piled up loose on the counter after the cashier scans it and you just have to figure out how to carry it out. Some folks stick their noses in the air and say “who cares?” They put everything back into their carts and go out to their cars where they throw all the loose items into their trunks.

The shopping carts are different here too. They are chained together outside the store and you have to put an Euro into a slot to release one. The Euro then rides around the store in the cart’s slot with you. When you are done with the cart you stick the chain back into the opposite side of the coin slot and it returns your Euro. I suppose this reduces cart theft but who knows?

They sell a lot of wine at the HyperU at prices that break your heart. for example we’ve found an exquisite "Fitou" red that sells for 2.99 € or $4 USD. Then there's the Chateauneuf de Pape that sells for under $10 USD or half its price in the US. And none of these wines have been shaken and bounced about in the hold of ship for four weeks either. This is happy wine, calm wine.

The HyperU understands French culture and so it has created a sort of  Farmer’s market in each of its stores. Although they sell lots of packaged products and meats in Styrofoam containers like American supermarkets, they’ve kept real people working too. They have actual butchers and fishmongers, and real bakers and a real cheese market.

But big treat in a French supermarket is the other shoppers. Here in Clermont the people we live amongst are delightful. For example, roll down an aisle and if a couple of old folks are chatting and blocking the aisle, eveyone just waits. When the old people notice the blockage they quickly move aside saying “oh pardon, pardon, je suis desole” (I am so sorry) and smile a warm smile that says that everything is alright with the world. No one gets upset.

People come to the market dressed. No sweats here. No flipflops. A lot of style and some real flash is on display. In the market kids are on their best behavior too. That means double doses of sweetness. And I have yet to see a French mother lose her temper with a child. Usually they laugh at misbehavior and say something to the child like, “You really don’t want to be like that.”

The checkout lines are mind boggling to an American. So far on almost every check-out line I’ve been on the credit card readers have gone out. Cashiers will bang on them and jiggle their wires and if all else fails unplug them and switch them with a reader from a closed checkout lane. This is the old French strategy of moving problems along rather than spending lots of time solving them.

And all the while, during the breakdown, the people on line remain calm. No one’s cursing or scooping up their stuff in annoyance to find another line. More often than not, they'll begin to pass the time by having existential debates about the meaning of card reader breakdowns and whether the card readers add to the alienation of the shopper.

But no one gets upset. Once I was on a line and the card reader died. Within  minutes the guy behind me starts singing to pass the time. He’s doing his entire repetoire of old Charles Trenet tunes. Everyone is smiling.

Then the other day on a checkout line I handed the cashier my money and when she hit the button to open the cash drawer, nothing happened. She shook the drawer, hit the button, tried to pry it open with her fingernails, but the lid stayed shut. A few customers offered suggestions but the drawer was sealed.
So she called a supervisor over for help. The supervisor pushed some keys. and she tugged at the drawer. She even used her official supervisor keys on the cashier’s computer but nothing worked.

Finally the supervisor pushed the cashier back and staring intently at the cash drawer took a long swing of her arm and came down hard on the lid with her fist.

The crowd gasped.

The drawer made a little popping sound and the lid sprang open. Smiles broke out all around. The supervisor straightened her jacket and brushed off her skirt and walked away to the general approval of the crowd.

For her it was just another day at the HyperU. 

Photos and text © 2010 Steve Meltzer