I don't disagree that France has been in what one might call a big identity crisis for a good while now, or that it's in a sad state. To some extent that's true for many Western countries right now, but it's worse in France and it's been going on for longer. But to use that argument to throw all contemporary French literature out of the window, or at least all contemporary French literature that decides not to use the out-moded passé simple, that goes a bit far. After all, a civilization that is having existential issues can still produce interesting literature or art. And for all the Islam-related issues France has, those immigrants have had their impact on French literature, and I don't just mean in L'Etranger (where they weren't immigrants anyway, but I digress), perhaps even revitalized it to some extent by bringing in new ideas and ways of looking at things.

Yeah, I'm not sure if they'll vote for Sarkozy again. I know I'd have my doubts, personally. I'd probably still vote for him in 2012, but reluctantly. If the French PS wasn't such a prehistorical monstrosity, I'd say Sarkozy well deserves to be taken down a notch.



You have to admit he's rather failed at turning things, though, and while part of the blame for that obviously lies with the elements in French society fighting the necessary changes tooth and nail, part of it is his needless antagonizing and annoying of, well, just about everyone. I was more impressed by Sarkozy when he was just Minister of the Interior.

See, that first point is the one that really bugs me. Languages evolve. You don't look down on people who fail to write in 19th century English, why would you down on people who fail to write in 19th century French? The reason people don't use the passé simple anymore isn't that it's too hard - it's arguably easier than the alternatives they're using now. It's just that somehow it fell into disuse, just like plenty of words and tenses and cases and grammatic rules in any other language. And really, if you're going to complain (quite rightly so, I should add) about French people wallowing in entitlements, one would think you wouldn't encourage their being stuck in the past in their literature at the same time. Because that's really the only thing you can call the stubborn refusal to stop using a tense that has fallen into disuse in the spoken language a long time ago. If France is to stop mooning over its achievements of the past and actually try to have some achievements in the present for a change, that means letting the past be the past and looking forward, in grammar like in anything else.

I couldn't agree more, but then I spent one of the best summers in my life in Montréal with my then-girlfriend, so I would think that way about Québec. And the French acknowledge it too, really, judging by the disproportionately large success enjoyed by Québecois artists, actors and writers in France (and the rest of the world; I don't really see any French cultural export products of the past few decades that can match the Cirque du Soleil and Céline Dion, in terms of international success).

The Québecois are nearly as left-wing in economic terms as the French, from what I can tell, but I suppose they have the advantage of being balanced by the rather conservative rest of Canada (excepting Ontario and BC, I suppose). One could make a good case that Québec has the best of both worlds in terms of the European vs. American mentality.