Kelly At Large #125 The Generic Edition
In which anywhere could be anywhere. But not libraries. Plus bonus photos.
Hello from Paris! At least I think it’s Paris. My neighborhood could be anywhere. Most places are.
I grew up in a generic Louisville suburb in a small brick house whose only regional markers were found in the yard in the form of a dogwood and redbud tree. There were no horses, or burning crosses, or chickens. No chickens at all. The closest church wasn’t some mega-Southern Baptist monstrosity, but laid-back Catholic Saint Pius where they had delicious fish fries in the school gym during Lent, and held carnivals during the summer to raise funds.
In Paris, none of my friends live within gazing distance of the Eiffel tower. Nobody’s apartment overlooks the Seine, and nobody hangs out smoking cigarettes or drinking absinthe in cafés during the day. We shop less at street markets than supermarkets. Mostly I stare at a laptop which accompanies me from country to country, flat and grey except when its angry mouth is open, gibbering away like a monkey in any language I choose. My view consists of apartments blocks and a garden that a couple of women colonized bit by bit during the Covid lockdown until it’s practically a farm.
If demos don’t reach here, it’s because there are no chances for photo ops with revolutionary monuments or capital or seats of government. Even the closest McDonald’s—that symbol of neo-imperialism worth a broken window or a flame—is several blocks away. Across the street is a restaurant called Chicken Times which mostly serves pizza, gyros and French fries with lashings of mayonnaise and harissa. The nearby bakery offers baguettes, but also Tunisian sweets and flat thick bread cooked on a griddle. At the Aldi down the block I buy Trader Joe’s brand dried cranberries and the bottle of wine I’ve been sipping at all week, both of which you can buy in New York.
It doesn’t feel particularly French, though I’m pretty sure I’m wrong. When you’ve been in a place for a while, when it feels like home, it’s like becoming nose blind. You no longer sense what’s unique. What may have seemed foreign, once, is banal. Like when I first came to Paris from New York and when the metro came to a halt would stand patiently in front of the still-closed doors, while angry Parisians cursed at me, shoving me aside to pull up the lever before it was too late. “What?! You think doors open by themselves?” Also, in France, you bag your own groceries, preferably in your own bag. I’d forgotten about that until I saw an American film recently and noticed that was its own job.
All these thoughts about foreignness and familiarity are shaping the way I think about identity, the language we use to describe ourselves, being something versus identifying with or as it, which almost requires an outsider status. It’s almost making me question that increasingly ridiculous word authentic. And who gets to decide what that is.
At any rate, one of the few nearby places that still says, “France” to me, though I’ve never seen it in a photo or film or foreign headlines, is the local library, a médiathèque where there are still whole floors of books. At the entry, bordered by a large selection of graphic novels and manga, (a veritable French obsession), are many shelves of magazines and newspapers with comfortable chairs around them in which humans actually sit to read and think. Beyond them are a couple shelves of cookbooks and how-to manuals that the tinkering French couldn’t live without, then a whole area for CDs and sheet music where you can listen to jazz or hiphop, classical, or that terrible soft rock that the place produced years ago. If you want not just to listen but play, there are electric keyboards you can sign up for.
Up one flight is a children’s section, a small English-language section, lots of fiction and poetry, and mysteries and more places to sit and read. The next floor is nonfiction, I think, and at one end boasts a whole room with broad tables and plentiful plugs and shelves of reference books where high school and college students (and the occasional American dyke) set up their laptops and work.
Sure, there’s wifi. But here, no one seems tempted to remove most of the books and create a giant digital center complete with cafés which resembles nothing more than a giant Starbucks. Which was apparently the plan in 2013 for the Manhattan Midtown Library in New York before a round of lawsuits and petitions and demos made them keep the books (and readers) when they finally did a renovation.
It’s odd. I always mean to take tourists there, my local library, promising an experience as authentic as Notre Dame or the Louvre. (Look how many people there are of all ages! Look how many books!) But I usually forget.
In Other News
In A Conversation About Crime Freddy deBoer creates an imaginary dialogue to take on the (il)logic of the defund the police people
You know, if I thought that the Water & Sewer department was terribly corrupt, violent, and racist, I’d be very invested in Water & Sewer reform. I’d find Water & Sewer reform to be a moral necessity. I’d advocate for major Water & Sewer reform. But I wouldn’t say “Water & Sewer can’t be reformed, we need to let shit flow through the streets.
Macron Makes an Ass of Himself Abroad (I never said he wasn’t a dick)
One of the rules of political leadership is that when in trouble domestically, a leader should go abroad, or start a war. Emmanuel Macron effectively did both last week, when in the vapours of his visit to Beijing, he carelessly distanced the EU from the US, the international fight for democracy and the cause of Taiwan (Macron spoke as five dozen Chinese jets harassed Taiwan, and China war-gamed missile attacks on the Taiwanese mainland).
June Purvis and the herstory of Women's History Review
I was not particularly happy with the approach outlined by Gender & History. Although 'women' and 'gender' are closely intertwined, I feared that putting 'gender' rather than 'women' in the title would again lead to women's history being marginalized.
Bonus photos
After I went to Ikea this weekend, I walked down rue St. Honoré to Les Halles, the phone burning in my pocket, demanding photos, demanding selfies. Proof of where I was. I mostly refused until I got to Saint Eustache. I didn’t want to have the burden of showing, feel accompanied by people looking over my shoulder, and thinking things. I wanted to be by myself. It was nice. I recommend it.
That’s it for this time.
Disgruntledly yours,
xoxo K