Lunch in Paris (41 page)
S
erendipity brought me to my agent, Wendy Sherman, an expert guide and buoyant presence from the first day. To my editor, Judith
Clain, and the dream team at Little, Brown—I can’t imagine finer or more caring partners in this process.
A good book can always be better, and this one is, thanks to careful reading, editing, tasting (and the occasional cooking
lesson) from friends near and far: Sarah Kaplan, Betsy Levine, Amanda Gordon, Afra Afsharipour, Diego Valdarama, Mayur Subbarao,
Elizabeth Calleo, Kelda Knight, and Katherine Prewitt. A special thank-you to Courtney Rubin, friend and mentor, without whom
I might be a writer, but certainly not a professional.
Final thanks go to Mom and Paul, charter members of the Benevolent Parent Society, who believed in this and so much more.
And of course, to Gwendal.
Tout simplement, I’homme de ma vie
.
Lunch in Paris
A Love Story, with Recipes
by
Elizabeth Bard
Dear Reader,
Time flies when you’re making ratatouille.
The year since the initial publication of
Lunch in Paris
has been as wild and wonderful as any I could have imagined. Gwendal and I now have a son, Augustin, who was born exactly
one week after I finished editing the manuscript. He’s a beautiful, curious, clever blond boy who loves his hunk of fresh
baguette in the morning—in other words, a true Frenchman!
In addition to leaping into parenthood, our family has recently made another big move—to Provence, to be exact. Our house,
a turny, twisty (and for the moment, rather drafty) affair, was the wartime home of the famous French poet and Resistance
leader René Char. He buried his most famous manuscript in the wine cellar, next to the preserved pork cutlets and the bottles
of Bordeaux. You might say the house is haunted, in the best possible way.
My passion for Paris remains undiminished; it’s been my home for nearly a decade—the first real adult home I’ve ever had.
But Gwendal and I had been looking to make some changes—refresh our personal and professional lives—and give Augustin a world
of green to conquer.
We found the house by happy accident. My husband is a great admirer of René Char’s poetry, and in April 2009, when I was six
months pregnant and unable to fly, we decided to take our Easter holidays in the south of France to explore the region where
Char lived during the war, the landscapes and events described in his most famous poems.
When we arrived in Céreste, our English hosts were curious. They were accustomed to guests passing through for a day or two
on a tour of the hilltop villages nearby—but here we were, a round and waddling woman and a frankly tired-looking man, staying
for ten days. We know now, it was a date with destiny.
When our hostess learned about our special interest in René Char, she got very excited. Turns out, history was living just
up the road. During the war, Char had a passionate relationship with a young woman from the village whose own husband was
a prisoner of war of Germany. Char’s companion had a daughter, Mireille, who was eight years old in 1940. Now seventy-six,
she had just written a book about her childhood with René Char. Would we care to meet her?
The next afternoon, we found ourselves invited for coffee in the meticulously renovated coaching inn that Mireille shared
with her husband—and her mother. We looked at letters in Char’s hand, his pencil box, and his clandestine radio equipment,
and we listened to Mireille’s tales of the Resistance, the Gestapo, and Char helping her with her homework by the fire. In
true Provençal style, we lingered on through the afternoon: one coffee, a second, one cognac, and another. Before we left,
Mireille asked Gwendal if he had any other questions. He did. Char adamantly refused to publish under the German occupation;
instead, he buried his manuscripts in the cellar of Mireille’s family home. After the liberation in 1945, Char dug up the
notebooks and sent them to his close friend, the author Albert Camus, in Paris. Published
as
Les Feuillets d’Hypnos,
these poems remain Char’s masterpiece. “Where,” Gwendal asked, “was this famous hole in the floor?”
“That’s easy,” said Mireille. “We still own the house.”
The next morning, we found ourselves in the vaulted stone cellar of La Maison Pons, which had been Mireille’s family home
for five generations. Gwendal and I ducked as we followed Mireille down the impossibly narrow steps at the far end of the
room. She cleared away some empty wine bottles and pointed to a low wooden shelf, about a foot from the earthen floor. “That’s
where Char buried his manuscript,” she said. “He came back for it after the war.”
Gwendal looked down. This is the man I love, I thought. A man who can be so visibly moved by a dent in the dirt.
“We used to store pigs down here,” continued Mireille. “In those days we ate everything. We sealed the cutlets in a layer
of fat, and when you wanted one, you would dig it out.” As we were turning to leave, she stamped her foot on the packed earth
floor. “My uncle René—he was Char’s driver during the war—before he died he said there might still be guns buried under here.
But we never looked.”
Before we left, we went out to the garden, two large stone terraces overlooking the surrounding fields. “You can feel that
your family was happy here,” I said.
“We were.” She smiled briefly. “But I am sad now. I gave this house to my daughter, thinking that she would come back to the
village, but instead she wants to sell it.”
And there it was. Our date with destiny. We both felt something of our future in these walls. We went back to the B and B,
spent a sleepless night in front of an Excel spreadsheet, and the next morning went back to ask if we could buy the house.
It took a year to get ourselves sorted. One of the oddest things about writing and launching
Lunch in Paris
has been reflecting
about the past while simultaneously trying to construct our future.
We’ve only just arrived in Provence, and already we are seduced by the constant blue skies, tomatoes that taste like candy,
and peaches that glow like solid sunshine. I know I’ll have some wonderful culinary mentors here. Our next-door neighbor keeps
coming over with baskets of vegetables for the baby, and he just let slip that his grandmother was once the
chef de cuisine
for the American consulate in Nice.
So here we go. We are off on a new adventure. There’s so much to discover; I hope you’ll join us.
Perhaps René Char said it best:
Impose ta chance, serre ton bonheur et va vers ton risque. A te regarder, ils s’habitueront.
—
Les Matinaux
(1950)
“Impose your chance, hold tight to your happiness, and go toward your risk. Looking your way, they’ll follow.” (The translation
is mine, and rather liberal.)
You can follow along on the blog, Facebook, and Twitter.
Look forward to seeing you there,
Elizabeth Bard
Provence, September 2010
1. In
Lunch in Paris,
major life events are denoted by certain foods. Why is food such a potent force—and is this particularly true in France?
Has a meal ever changed your life? Do you have a particular food that brings to mind certain memories, certain people?
2. Elizabeth Bard is slow to assimilate into French culture, in spite of her eagerness to do so. Which parts of this adaptation
do you think would be the most difficult for you?
3. Elizabeth faces some linguistic challenges as well as cultural ones, especially when she meets Gwendal’s parents—and then
introduces them to her own. How does she overcome communication barriers?
4. Halfway through a first date with her future husband, Gwendal, Elizabeth goes home with him. How key a role does food play
in the seduction that follows? How does sex on a first date play differently between France and America? Does the author seem
confused or liberated—or both—by the cultural differences?
5. Elizabeth has some difficulty adjusting to life in Paris after having grown up in New York. What are the main differences
she sees between French and American culture?
6. In the beginning, Elizabeth has trouble understanding Gwendal’s lack of a concrete “five-year plan.” Throughout the book,
how do Elizabeth and Gwendal’s different visions of success clash and, ultimately, complement each other?
7. In explaining his frustrations with the French system, Gwendal quotes the American author (and former Paris resident) Henry
Miller: “In America, every man is potentially president. Here, every man is potentially a zero.” To what extent do you agree
or disagree with this statement?
8. Elizabeth pushes Gwendal to pursue his career beyond what is generally socially acceptable. What do you make of her effort—and
his eventual success?
9. Despite some misgivings, Elizabeth is helpless but to fall in love with French cooking. What would you say typifies Parisian
cuisine? If you had to serve a typically “American” meal to a French person, what would it be like? What do you think our
way of eating says about American culture?
10. What meal or dish could you be seduced by? Which would you use to seduce someone?
11. When Elizabeth asks for a “normal”-size piece of cake at a family dinner, she makes a subtle cultural error that takes her
a long time to understand. Have you ever been in a situation
where you felt you missed a social cue but didn’t quite understand what you had done wrong?
12. Elizabeth voices serious doubts about raising a child under the French system of health care, after seeing how doctors treated
Gwendal’s father. Is her wariness justified? Would you be able to reconcile the French outlook with your own?
13. What might be the ongoing challenges—and opportunities—as Elizabeth and Gwendal continue to shape their life and grow their
family in Paris?
Even before I discovered the joys of the kitchen, books nourished my soul. Taste in books is as individual as taste in food.
Some like a creamy chocolate creation, lush and overflowing; some like the snap of a crisp green bean. Here are a few of my
favorites.
Two cookbooks I read in bed:
The Joy of Cooking
by Irma S. Rombauer, Marion Rombauer Becker, and Ethan Becker
Cooking for Mr. Latte
by Amanda Hesser
Two books that made me snort coffee through my nose:
Me Talk Pretty One Day
by David Sedaris
Bridget Jones’s Diary
by Helen Fielding
A book so pitch-perfect it made we weep:
Home
by Marilynne Robinson
Two books that made me say, “Dear God, I wish I’d written that”:
Fugitive Pieces
by Anne Michaels
For Kings and Planets
by Ethan Canin
Three books I wish I’d never read so I could read them again for the first time:
East of Eden
by John Steinbeck
Possession
by A. S. Byatt
The Known World
by Edward P. Jones
Four books I stayed up all night reading:
The Woman in White
by Wilkie Collins
In Cold Blood
by Truman Capote
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay
by Michael Chabon
War and Peace
by Leo Tolstoy
The only book I ever left on a train (on purpose):
Enduring Love
by Ian McEwan
The one book I wish I had the time to memorize, unabridged:
Paradise Lost
by John Milton
Two memoirs that made me want to have lunch with the author:
Eat, Pray, Love
by Elizabeth Gilbert
When a Crocodile Eats the Sun: A Memoir of Africa
by Peter Godwin
Two books I can’t wait to share with my son:
Dr. Seuss’s Sleep Book
by Dr. Seuss
Great Expectations
by Charles Dickens
CHAPTER 2: An Affair to Remember
CHAPTER 4: A Birthday Celebration
CHAPTER 8: The Long Winter
CHAPTER 11: Big Band, Smelly Cheese
CHAPTER 14: After the Fairy Tale, the Parsnip
CHAPTER 15: How to Make Cheesecake in a Pâté Pan
CHAPTER 19: Conquering the World
CHAPTER 20: When New Yorkers Come to Visit
CHAPTER 22: A New Year’s Feast
Applause for Elizabeth Bard’s Lunch in Paris A Love Story, with Recipes
E
lizabeth Bard is an American journalist based in Paris. She has written about art, travel, and digital culture for the
New York Times,
the
International Herald Tribune, Wired, Time Out,
and the Huffington Post. She makes a mean chocolate soufflé.
For more information, visit
www.elizabethbard.com
.
Lunch in Paris
A Love Story, with Recipes