My Little French Emo-Boy

People go to France for many reasons. I went to France most recently in October because Eric the Boyfriend had been invited to Quai des bulles, la festival BD de St Malo (The Saint Malo Comics Festival.) Yes, the BF draws a comic book series called AGE OF BRONZE which is doing very well in France.

Our adventure began when we arrived in Paris. We went to the hotel and took a short nap and made plans to have dinner with our friends Virgine and Laurent. Virginie cooked us a wonderful dinner. The next day we made our usual trip to the Louvre for culture, a trip to FNAC for off-beat and obscure opera CDs, and then to the ALBUM comic store at Bercy so Eric could do a signing event.

The next day the mini-tour began. We left Paris in the early AM to travel by train to Rouen where we met the comic store owner and were taken to our hotel. We met soon after for lunch and Eric was interviewed by two French journalists. Rouen, like most of the towns we visited this trip, was badly damaged by bombings in WWII. During the interview the subject of WWII came up and I mentioned that my Dad had been in this area of France during the War. One of the journalists thanked me for what my Dad gave to France. That has NEVER happened to me here in the US.

The next morning we arose and traveled by train to Caen where we were met at the station by Jean-Marie and his wife Sophie who own a wonderful comic story called Le Cour des Miracles. We again dropped off our stuff at the hotel and then headed off for an incredibly tasty lunch. Then Eric went to do his signing at the store and I went to explore the remains of William the Conqueror's castle a few blocks away. Jean-Marie helped me track down the spiffy new French comic book version of SIEGFRIED I wanted and later presented me with a large 3-D plastic poster for SIEGFRIED. A review of RING graphic novels will be coming along soon.

The next morning we had breakfast with Jean-Marie and Sophie at their home and we were introduced to the music of Serge Gainsbourgh, ate croissants, talked about SHORTBUS, ate more croissants, and finally headed to the train so we could travel to Rennes and do essentially the same thing yet again.

Rennes was ok - but neither the store or the town had the charm of Rouen or Caen.
On to Saint Malo!

The walled town Saint Malo.

Saint Malo was charming beyond belief. It is an old walled city that was the home of the Corsairs (something like pirates hired to defend the Bretagne coastline). After acquiring our convention badges and stuff we checked into the hotel (inside the walled city!) and were given a couple hours to go find lunch and walk around the town. Our Parisian friends Virginie and Laurent had mentioned that the French writer Chateaubriand was buried on a little island, the Grand Bé, off the coast of Saint Malo - and that one could walk there at low tide.

So Eric and I bought a baguette, a Camembert, and a bottle of red wine; and when we saw the tide was out we walked to the Grand Bé to picnic at the grave of Chateaubriand having only the vaguest notion of who he really was. Was he related to the expensive beef dish? We had also heard that the previous year at Saint Malo, another cartoonist friend of ours got stuck on Grand Bé becuase he wasn't paying enough attention to the tides. Thus I wasn't absolutely sure we were in fact headed toward Grand Bé because it seemed hard to believe the ocean would come in to sequester this island. So off we trekked to the rocky little island. We walked to the top and there was the grave of Chateaubriand.

The grave of Chateaubriand on Grand Bé.

We found a nice rock to sit on, ate our bread and cheese, drank our bottle of wine, and felt worldly and sophisticated. But when one has purchased a bottle of wine one has little choice but to finish it. Thus by the time we had finished lunch and began the walk back to Saint Malo, well ... nous étions tres pompette! My French gets better when I'm a little pompette, too! Quand j'ai été pompette j'ai pensé ma Français était meilleur. Hien? . . . donc, comme je disais ... Well, Saint Malo was a wonderful experience. We stayed for three days and three nights. I walked around the city walls one afternoon and watched the tide race in and, indeed, it not only cut off Grand Bé from the mainland it completely smothered a number of other little islets and rocky outcroppings until the ocean was lapping at the walls of Saint Malo itself. Eric and I also had our best meal in France this trip when we discovered we liked mussels - a specialty of the region.

We left Saint Malo and headed back to Paris. But Eric had one more thing on his schedule. He was to be interviewed on a popular "live" radio program (sort of the equivalent of "Fresh Air" on NPR) called Minuit/Dix which starts each night at ten past midnight. We arrived at the Radio France studios around 11:30, met the host, and the show began. It was very interesting. And I was allowed to sit in the studio during the broadcast.You can hear the interview by clicking the link below and clicking on the little red "Ecoutez" button. There is a little SLIDESHOW of PICS of the interview on this page, too.

CLICK to listen to Eric Shanower on MINUIT/DIX

The next morning Eric went to the airport to fly home to San Diego. Actually he missed his flight and he had to spend the night at Charles de Gaulle/Roissey Airoport. But I didn't find this out till later, as I was off to Belgium to visit my mySpace friend Katerine and her family. One of the best things I did was visit Breendonk, the Nazi Concentration Camp/POW camp in Belgium. I also visited the Mechalen Deportation Center which processed all of the Belgian Jews on their way to the Concentration Camps in the east. This will all get a blog of its own but it was quite over-powering. We also went to see SIEGFRIED, the Vlaamse Opera's latest installment in their new RING cycle. The next day I returned to Paris and flew home the following morning.

Now, I know what you're wondering ... where's that French Emo-Boy David promised! Surely there is some brooding and intense, floppy-haired, dark-eyed, tight jean-clad boy for you somewhere in this blog! Where is the Emo-boy?

Well, you have already met him. The Emo-boy par excellence, François-René de Chateaubriand. After I got home I decided that if I had gotten all tipsy at his grave, the least I could do was track down one of his books and read a little about him. It turns out Chateaubriand was the founder of French Romanticism. He was a lonely little boy, born in Saint Malo where he wandered the beach with his little mates. He was born in 1768 and he lost a number of family members in the French revolution and Reign of Terror. He came to America to find material for his writings and later produced his two best-known works from this material: Atala and René.

So I tracked down a paperback copy of Atala and René which kind of go together, and they each contain some of the same characters. Atala involves a love relationship between two Native Americans in 1669. The story is told by Chactas to a young Frenchman, René, as a memory about 75 years after the events have unfolded. But the true charm of the book is Chateaubriand's vivid descriptions on what is now the southeastern United States. The European descriptions of the surging rivers, mountains, wild life, and Native American culture are truly fascinating. Occasionally Chateaubriand goes a little over the top, but always with the most vivid results: "Down avenues of trees, bears may be seen drunk with grapes, and reeling on the branches of the elm trees." Contemporary reviews made fun of Chateaubriand's "drunken bears" too. But so much rings true - especially the details of how Chactas was captured and tortured by the Muskogee. It reminds me much of several books I've read on the early Iroquois. The book is also about the difference between a modern civilization gone awry (France in the revolution) and the Noble Savages of the Americas. It was most enjoyable.


The sequel, René, is a different sort of beast. In it, the brooding René finally tells his pitiful troubles to his American friends. René has become almost paralyzed with grief, woe, and misery and after unloading his troubles at last, Father Souël gives René some advice:

"Nothing in your story deserves the pity you are now being shown. I see a young man infatuated with illusions, satisfied with nothing... Know now that solitude is bad for the man who does not live with God. It increases the soul's power while robbing it at the same time of every opportunity to find expression. Whoever has been endowed with talent must devote it to serving his fellow men, for if he does not make use of it, he is first punished by an inner misery, and sooner or later Heaven visits on him a fearful retribution."

Wow, is that David's prescription for happiness or what! Hmmm...

Interestingly, René had an odd effect on French society by inventing the French Emo-Boy of the early 1800s. In typical romantic tradition Chateaubriand came to regret the monster he created. He later wrote:

"If René did not exist I would no longer write it; if I could destroy it, I would. A family of René poets and René prose writers has been swarming about. We can hear nothing now but pitiful and disconnected phrases; they talk of nothing but winds and storms, and mysterious words whispered to the clouds at night. There is not a scribbler just out of school who hasn't dreamed of being the unhappiest man of earth, not an upstart of sixteen who hasn't exhausted life and felt himself tormented by his genius, who in the abyss of his thoughts, hasn't given himself up to his vague passion, struck his pale and disheveled brow, and astounded men with sorrow which neither he nor they could describe."

Sigh ... thousands of little René-wannabe emo-boys wandering the French countryside, flopping their hair, oozing attitude, and looking for love. J'aime ça!

A+ David

When you talk about this blog later, and you will, be kind.
Copyright © 2007 D. H. Maxine
Quotes from ATALA and RENÉ translated by Irving Putter, University of California Press, Copyright © 1952.