by CHRIS BARRY

Ah, the French. Cheese-eating surrender monkeys to some. Gracious, compassionate, misunderstood world beaters to… well, uh, Julie Barlow and Jean-Benoît Nadeau, at least. Sponsored by the New Hampshire-based Institute of Current World Affairs to go live among these enigmatic people for several years and observe their customs and habits, the two Montreal-based journalists have recently returned back home with the results of their ethnographic adventure. Their newly released book, Sixty Million Frenchmen Can’t Be Wrong: Why We Love France, but Not the French is a “journey into the French heart, mind, and soul,” and actually, a surprisingly readable and insightful piece of work. The Mirror spoke to these two crazy kids earlier this week. This is what they had to say.

Mirror: Did you guys jump up and down with glee when all the friction between France and the U.S. started going down recently, thinking of all the additional sales your book might ring up?

Julie Barlow: Well, it was kind of sick to be happy about the Iraq war, but the timing certainly turned out to be great. But the Americans will always be having little fights with France.

M: I’ve yet to meet a Frenchman who didn’t look down his nose at the Québécois—usually accusing them of being unsophisticated. They, of course, have never spent an evening watching Quatre-Saisons TV. But did you come across this attitude much while you were there?

Jean-Benoît Nadeau: Quebecers always have an epidemic reaction to the French laughing at them or correcting their way of speaking. But laughing at people in France is not exactly impolite. Quebecers think that they are being looked down upon, but the French are always picking on each other too.

JB: Despite what Quebecers might believe, the French certainly like Canadians—and Quebecers even more. They feel an affinity with Quebecers that they don’t with anybody else. At the same time, they like to start their conversations with provocation. And that really creates problems with North Americans. But it’s just their style. Conversation is a sport in France. It took me awhile to figure out that they were really only inviting me to talk when it just sounded like they were trying to piss me off. But after a while I began pissing them off right back and everything was fine.

JBN: In France it’s impolite to ask someone from out of nowhere their name or what they do in life. Which is a very standard conversation starter here, the lowest common denominator of conversation. The French don’t value the lowest common denominator.

JB: They definitely don’t like being asked what they do for a living.

Arrogant? Moi?

M: Maybe because half the population is living off the state.

JB: No, they consider it rude. What you do for a living is considered private. They don’t want to know your name. They expect you to say something about something. You have to have an opinion.

JBN: The art of the French is rhetoric. They are trained from a very young age to listen and to express themselves well. If you have no opinion, then you need to have wit. In France, eloquence is one of the great means of social advancement. You can go very far if you are eloquent—even if you are poor.

M: So you think the popular perception of the French being arrogant is false.

JB: I don’t think they are objectively, quantifiably arrogant. They have a way of being and if you don’t understand it then it comes across that way, for sure.

JBN: If a Frenchman is asked his name and what he does in life and he reacts badly, well, who is being rude? For example, in France a store is considered the owner’s house, not a part of the street. Therefore if you don’t say “Bonjour” when you come in, you are guaranteed to have bad service. But it is you, actually, who are being rude.

M: Do you think the French government and their actions are truly representative of their populace? You know, sinking the Rainbow Warrior, terrorizing Algeria, all those nifty things they’ve done over the years.

JB: You know, when the original protests against the [Iraq] war started internationally, the turn-out in Paris was pretty weak, so people thought that the French must not be all that much against it. But no, it was because they knew how their government was going to react, so why go out and march? So the answer is that most French agree with their government.

JBN: On that issue.

That certain je ne sais quoi

M: What the hey is up with Jean-Marie Le Pen and the National Front getting something like 20 per cent of the popular vote last election? Doesn’t this support the widely held belief that the French are a xenophobic, racist lot?

JBN: I really don’t believe that 15 per cent of the population of Canada or the United States is not racist either. Could you disagree?

M: Well, I dunno, I haven’t seen these attitudes blatantly manifested in the platform of any significant political party here. Although I suppose some might argue that this element exists among certain Republicans, or the Alliance, or in the soul of Elsie Wayne for that matter.

JBN: You see, again, it’s always the French that you’re hearing about. In every European country right now the extreme right is very powerful. In Italy, Austria, the Netherlands, Denmark, all these countries have gone much further than France with respect to the far right acquiring power. But the integration of immigrants is definitely happening in France. We lived in a relatively middle-class area of Paris and about half the names on our building mailbox were not typically French. France is home to the biggest diaspora in Europe—with the largest Muslim community proportionate to its population.

M: But getting to the truly important issues, how come those bloody Parisians won’t pick up after their dogs?

JB: Because the thought doesn’t even cross their minds. Partly because the whole French system doesn’t rely on civic initiative. The government picks up after the dogs. It’s as simple as that. The French couldn’t imagine it being any other way.

M: And what the hell is up with French humour? How come these people are so desperately unfunny?

JB: What?!

JBN: English humour is often characterized by understatement or self-derision, but the French never do that. It’s just not part of their culture. It doesn’t mean they’re not funny. They’re quite witty and spirited, actually. They just like comedy that is very fast—like slapstick.

M: Thank you. I rest my case.

Sixty million Frenchmen Can’t Be Wrong: Why we love France but not the French by Jean-Benoît NADEAU AND JULIE BARLOW, SOURCEBOOK, PB, 351PP, $26.95