SUBORDINATE CONJUNCTIONS
I once taught English in Paris, so when I learned a novel set in Paris had been published, I became curious. After reading a hundred pages of Ellen Sussman’s French Lessons (Ballantine, 2011), I realized I had stumbled across a genre of literature I did not understand.
It’s a mystery to me why some people read only romances, or literature written with one gender in mind. Is it possible to write modern romances that veer dangerously away from convention, that say new and provocative things without losing one’s audience? And what about Paris? So many great novels have been written about Paris it’s hard to imagine anyone tackling it in our time. But there it is, still tempting the American writer with all its cultural cachet.
Unfortunately, Sussman’s novel about transnational love and language-tutoring turns the famed City of Lights into a Capital of Pain (no thanks to Paul Eluard). Like the genre it represents, the book discourages intellectual honesty or wonder, replacing both with slim plots and facile artistries, culminating in a preachy allegory in which one sex assumes proprietorship over human sensitivity and language while the other accepts its fate as a race of moral inferiors. We’ve been coddled and pampered for so long in our national media bubble, one almost despairs of anyone finding inspiration abroad again.
In Sussman’s frame narrative three French tutors meet for coffee one morning before setting off on their individual assignments: three needy Americans in a fog of cultural displacement. Verb conjugations might be more interesting than what happens, since the stories just confirm the obvious cultural claims that girls will be empowered and boys will be bored. The tutors—Nico, Philippe, and Chantal—have all slept with each other already because that’s just what French people do in the American imagination. But will the sick, old-world crew manage to seduce the naïve, new-world visitors? That’s the big question in this kind of novel and the answer is almost always No—at least not in any way that will challenge our assumptions about the French, about sex, or about love (the last presented as a purely American value provisionally bestowed on pretty French girls who curb their instincts for pleasure and self-abasement).
The beautiful Chantal is at the center of everything. We know this because Sussman got the idea for her story while living in Paris and arranging a tutorial for her husband. But the tutor turned out to be gorgeous, giving the author second thoughts. Although Chantal is already entangled with Nico and Philippe, she complains that her handsome tutee, Jeremy, hasn’t hit on her. It’s their last lesson and Chantal is ripe for conversion to the American Way because her boyfriend Philippe is a serial lady-killer and Nico, his replacement, seems inadequate (he’s a poet who writes about something naughty he did as a boy, but he’s no Rimbaud).
What Chantal needs is Mr. Right. Unfortunately, Jeremy is married to a famous American actress named Dana Hurley who, like Sussman, is paying for her husband’s French lessons! It’s clear Dana not only wears the pants in her marriage but symbolizes authority in the novel. We know this because all tutorial trails lead to her big film shoot on the Pont des Arts over the Seine. The promised liaison between Chantal and Jeremy is doomed from the start thanks to the tough, professional woman who enforces the American fidelity factor. In fact, Jeremy is just like Nico—sentimental, anxious to please, safely domesticated in his artsy cocoon as an interior decorator and architectural restorer. How cutely apt it all is!
The real man in this novel is the brash, handsome Philippe. But he must be exposed as the shallow French cad he is. Sussman makes quick work of him, sandwiching his story in the middle of the novel like a slice of gamey meat between two thick pieces of white literary bread. He never speaks—he’s always the object of some weirdly Lacanian gaze, fetishized as pure irresponsibility. His tutee is the frustrated Riley, mother of two and wife of Vic, an American exec. Vic, surprisingly, speaks perfect French, works with French colleagues, and is having an affair with his French secretary. Naturally, Riley hates him, and we do too. But Riley also hates Paris and the Parisians, with their beautiful language, their sophisticated mores, and their obnoxious habit of looking splendid and leisurely all day long.
Though Riley is a victim of her choices, Philippe must be singled out as a sexual predator who hungrily consumes the buttered croissant she offers him. But in the end, she realizes she doesn’t want an affair (she knows it’s sordid because Philippe’s apartment is “shabby”). She wants real love. She quickly returns to Florida and her mother who’s dying of cancer. Now that’s real. We are grateful to see Riley go, for everyone’s sake. Sex is not love: Sussman draws a clear, hard line between the categories. The sort of people who substitute one for the other, or who confuse them, are clearly defective in the view of post-millennial American romancers.
The last of the stories is actually the first in the trilogy, but it’s too long and boring to go into, except to say that Josie is in mourning for her deceased lover and arrives alone in Paris to find Nico. She comes to terms with her loss by playing a mind-game with herself and acting out a pantomime of young love with her tutor. Nico hopes to consummate the affair by running off with his client to Provence, but Josie fails to come to the station, leaving Nico with a pair of unredeemable tickets.
In the end, we realize that the only acceptable lover for the intended reader of this novel is a faithful spouse. Jeremy fills the role perfectly since he recognizes, despite Chantal’s charms, the superior claims of his wife. Who could fail to see the allure of star-power and legitimacy over mere prettiness or exoticism? But is the author asserting that money, success, and influence are the keys to a good relationship, or are they just helpful adjuncts to the real thing—a deep, soulful unity that comes to those who wait?
While these might seem the only alternatives, I think Sussman is after something else—something writ large in the figure of Dana Hurley, as a celebrity, an actress, a mother and a wife. More than anything else she signifies the woman-as-artist in her many spheres of influence, tempering and taming her man of choice with apparent effortlessness. The lesson? Cultivate your art, gentle lady reader! The story affirms a woman’s natural gift of expression—she is a true creature of language and feeling, unlike those male pretenders. And with that insight, one can guess the value Sussman places on her literary abilities, which seems quite high.
I’m glad there is an entire genre out there to help people feel good about themselves. What bothers me about novels like this, with their calculated mix of literary pretension and popular pandering, is the refusal to commit to anything but to protecting the target audience’s feelings, its narrow sense of dignity or outrage. It’s a genre for people who live for sensation but who shun ideas except as confirmation of cherished platitudes. And although some of Sussman’s Amazon fans consider the book racy, even “raunchy,” it’s hard to see why. Just because there are one or two scenes of people assuming the missionary position or exposing a pubis doesn’t mean anyone’s values are going to be challenged. No, it’s all about puffing up the usual suspects for mass consumption. So while I might envy the success of writers who have learned this little trick, I’ll reserve my admiration for those who haven’t.
