French Bred Culture

FRENCH OR FOE? Getting the Most Out of Visiting, Living and Working in France by Polly Platt (Culture Crossings Ltd., $14.95, paper).

What is it about the French, anyway? They don’t smile, they stand too close, they’re habitually late to meetings, they’re arrogant for no apparent reason, they dress up for no apparent reason.

Polly Platt, a businesswoman who has lived in France for more than 20 years, has the answer to these and other perplexing questions. Through myriad entertaining anecdotes, Platt explains the French cultural rules, how they came about and how foreigners can level the playing field a bit.

She often illustrates the pitfalls by telling tales on herself. In an engaging chapter on French linguistic chauvinism (a word itself derived from the name of a Frenchman), Platt, who is a fluent French speaker, tells how nuance can be fatal. In French, the word queue means a line you stand in, just as it does in English. It also has other meanings, as she once discovered at a busy market. While trying to get served at a counter she became so frustrated at the confusion of people in front of her she shouted at the vendor, “Mais, monsieur, ou est votre queue?” (“Sir, where is your penis?”).

“French or Foe?” is written mostly with the American business traveler in mind (there’s a lot of stuff about the French business management style), but along the way Platt has valuable insight for the vacationer. In any case, it’s fun to dip into just for the stories.

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THE SIERRA CLUB DESERT READER: A Literary Companion edited by Gregory McNamee (Sierra Club Books, $16, paper).

In his lyrical, broad-ranging introduction, McNamee concludes that deserts should not be defined by absences. Deserts, in fact, “swarm with life, albeit life that snarls, hisses, howls, bites, stings or sticks.” Apparently they swarm with writers, too. This is a marvelous grab bag of short stories, folk tales, poems, songs and travelogues. It’s divided into eight sections representing eight geographical deserts. Among the authors are Pliny the Elder, T.E. Lawrence, Marco Polo, Edward Abbey and Pablo Neruda. Some of them write about the desert; some use it only as a story backdrop; most are drawn to its austerity and mystery.

“Desert Reader” is a joy to thumb through. Two random quotes: “The desert is the Garden of Allah, from which the Lord of the faithful removed all superfluous human and animal life, so that there might be one place where He can walk in peace.”--An Algerian saying.

“The first air pocket whacks the plane like a fist. Just 20 kilometers ahead is a French fort, the only one in the area. The problem is getting there . . . .

“Centimeters below the wheels the final sand rivers loomed, tossing up shovelfuls of whirling gold. The plane cleared the last of the dunes. There, not far beyond them, the fortress lay. Thank God.

“The hurtling desert slowed. The world fell back into dusty chaos.”--from French aviator-novelist Antoine de Saint-Exupery’s book “Southern Mail,” about flying courier planes in North Africa in the 1920s.

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Quick trip:

SEEING EUROPE AGAIN: Confessions of a First World Traveler by Elaine Kendall (Capra Press, $11.95, paper).

In this series of supposedly humorous essays, Kendall rides a broken-down camel across a desert of travel cliches. Packing, shopping, French cuisine, renting a car--these subjects have been picked so clean of humor and charm, Kendall is left with nothing but dry bones. If this book were a sitcom it would desperately need a laugh track.

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Books to Go appears the second and fourth week of every month.