Jon Henley, the Guardian's Paris correspondent -- and one of that paper's few worthwhile reads -- lightly reviews the Steven Clarke novel (from which this post takes its colorful title):

HOLDING THE MIRROR UP TO VANITY

Now, any of this sound remotely familiar to you: the French are lazy, over-formal, corrupt, grumpy, supercilious, sex-mad, favour suppositories over throat pastilles and are still in a state of shock after selling Louisiana, thus kissing goodbye to any hope of making French the world's lingua franca? They eat a lot of cheese, some of which smells like pigs' droppings. They don't wash their armpits with garlic soap, but their dogs do deposit unholy quantities of crap on the pavement. And going on strike remains the second greatest national participation sport after boules.

Their sandwiches are malodorous (I quote: "Apparently I'd just bitten into a pig's rectum"), their passion for oysters inexplicable ("lemony, salty bronchial mucus"), and, as for their bureaucracy ... getting a residence permit requires a passport, photos "and the marriage certificates of any hamsters I'd owned since 1995, all photocopied on to medieval parchment".

So that's them, then. Got 'em off to a T. To be fair, Steven Clarke, a Brit who has lived in Paris for the past 10 years working for a French magazine publisher...is actually very fond of France and the French. ... "There are lots of French people who are not at all hypocritical, inefficient, treacherous, intolerant, adulterous or incredibly sexy," [the book jacket] says. "They just didn't make it into my book."

Mind you, this book is a success in France. Mr. Henley speculates such success originates in an obsessive national narcissism, the French not being very particular what is said about them as long as they are the center of conversation.

If anyone reads this froth, drop us a line and let us know if the bother is worth the giggles.

(Mr. Henley goes on to recommend Adam Gopnik's collection of New Yorker dispatches from France, Paris to the Moon, as the better read.)

"[The French] are still in a state of shock after selling Louisiana, thus kissing goodbye to any hope of making French the world's lingua franca?"

Hey! That's my meme! Of course, I assumed that rather than in a state of shock, they were oblivious to the unbelievable blunder. Zoomer has heartily defended the sale on the grounds that the Napoleonic wars were a great investment of the proceeds which pay dividends to this day in hightened French influence and dispersal of the Napoleanic code. At least that is what they tell them in school, I gather.

Here is another link to a NYT article entitled "Were Rich, Your Not. End of Story". That's right, I said the New York Times. Anyway, here is the link, just in case any Europeans want to respond to the case that has been made, in my opinion, that their govts have been feeding them hog swallop all these years.

"it serves up a picture of the United States as a nation divided, inequitably, among robber barons and wage slaves, not to mention armies of the homeless and unemployed. It does this to keep people believing that their social welfare system, financed by lofty income taxes, provides far more in the way of economic protections and amenities than the American system. Protections, yes -but some Norwegians might question the part about amenities."

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/17/weekinreview/17bawer.html?ex=1271390400&en=44ea05b3e068feb5&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss

Does it sound like any of our correspondents? I feel about the French the way Mrs. Banks felt about men in Mary Poppins: "Although we adore them individually, we agree that as a group they're rather stupid."