Fog in Channel, Continent cut off

There are some interesting figures from a new poll on attitudes to the European Union in four different countries (Germany, France, Poland and UK).

The survey of more than 2,000 people in the UK and over 1,000 in each of Germany, France and Poland, shows a clear parting of the ways. Just 26% of Britons think the EU is, overall, a "good thing" compared with 62% of Poles, 55% of Germans and 36% of French.

Accompanying this anti-EU feeling is an ingrained cultural resistance to the European ideal and the very idea of being European. Just 14% of UK people polled say they regard themselves as European, compared with 48% of Poles, 39% of Germans and 34% of French. Whereas most people in Germany, France and Poland name a fellow European country as their closest ally, the British name fellow English-speaking nations: 33% named the US, 31% Australia and 23% Canada.

Equally striking, in the context of Cameron's attempts to negotiate a new deal for the UK, attitudes to British membership are pretty negative among our partners, who will have to sign off on any future special terms of membership we may want to agree. When asked whether the UK is a positive force in the EU, just 9% of Germans, 15% of French and 33% of Poles say it is. Opposition to giving the UK special membership terms is strongest in Germany, where 44% are against and 16% in favour, with 26% of the French in favour and 36% against. In Poland there is more support, with 38% in favour and 23% against.

While the article in which these number are offered emphasises the apparently growing 'gulf' between the attitudes of Britons and those of their continental neighbours, arguably the most surprising result is the low level of French support for the EU and self-identification as 'European'.

The French also seem more positively disposed toward the British (at least with regard to questions related to the EU) than the Germans are. 

I wouldn't have expected that.

If we had to take up arms again, my heart would shed a tear

Am just getting ready to head off to Göttingen to give a talk (pdf) on my new project.

I've never been there before.

But this song about it sure is pretty.


(English translation of lyrics)

Neighbours

Something for the German speakers among you: an intriguing, if sobering, search for what ordinary French people think of Germany, by Olivier Guez in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.

The author himself notes that, despite suffering from a early Germanophobia, he also experienced some 'unsettling' Germanophile symptoms as a young man:

Daneben fanden sich bei mir auch früh schon beunruhigende Anzeichen von Germanophilie: meine Liebe zur rheinischen Küche meiner Großmutter Stein, geborene Glaser, 1917 im besetzten Lothringen, zu ihrem Rostbraten, ihren Kartoffelpfannkuchen und ihren Spätzle; meine maßlose und von kaum jemandem geteilte Liebe zum Krautrock und zur geometrischen Ästhetik der Autobahn; meine jugendliche Begeisterung für Aristide Briand und Gustav Stresemann, für den Geist von Weimar und dann für die Bücher von Sebastian Haffner, von Sebald, Remarque, Böll, von Thomas und Heinrich, Erika, Klaus und Golo Mann, für die gesamte mitteleuropäische Literatur, jüdisch zumeist, deutscher Sprache immer. 

(The short version auf Englisch: he discovered a love of Rhineland cooking, Krautrock, the Autobahn, the spirit of Weimar and German-language literature written--mostly--by Jews.)

The two world wars play, unsurprisingly if disappointingly, a predominant role.

The quality of German sewing machines is, however, highly praised.

Notes from the phone booth at the end of the world

I've never read any of his novels, and I wouldn't say that I agree with all of his views.

Still, Michel Houellebecq certainly interviews well. (Via A&L Daily)

On what seem to be the enormous challenges of French childhood reading:

And then there was Pif le chien, a comic book published by Editions Vaillant and sponsored by the Communist Party. I realize now when I reread it that there was a Communist bent to many of Pif’s adventures. For example, a prehistoric man would bring down the local sorcerer in single combat and explain to the tribe that they didn’t need a sorcerer and that there was no need to fear thunder. The series was very innovative and of exceptional quality. I read Baudelaire oddly early, when I was about thirteen, but Pascal was the shock of my life. I was fifteen. I was on a class trip to Germany, my first trip abroad, and strangely I had brought the Pensées of Pascal. I was terrified by this passage: “Imagine a number of men in chains, all under sentence of death, some of whom are each day butchered in the sight of the others; those remaining see their own condition in that of their fellows, and looking at each other with grief and despair await their turn. This is an image of the human condition.” I think it affected me so deeply because I was raised by my grandparents. Suddenly I realized that they were going to die and probably soon. That’s when I discovered death.

Yes....and American parents are afraid of the damage that might be caused by Heather Has Two Mommies.

Anyway...

On visiting your neighbours:

The biggest consequence of The Elementary Particles, apart from the money and not having to work, is that I have become known internationally. I’ve stopped being a tourist, for example, because my book tours have satisfied any desire I might have to travel. And as a result there are countries I have visited that you wouldn’t ordinarily go to, like Germany.

INTERVIEWER

Why do you say that?

HOUELLEBECQ

Nobody does tourism in Germany. It doesn’t exist. But they’re wrong not to. It’s not so bad.

[Ahem: as pleased as I am with this glowing appraisal, it is apparent that some people -- well...at least from the Guardian -- do do tourism in Germany, and in our little corner of it, even.]

On inspiration:

INTERVIEWER

In your preface to The Possibility of an Island, you mentioned a journalist who inspired the idea for the novel. Can you explain?

HOUELLEBECQ

It was a pretty strange moment. I was in Berlin at a café on a lake, waiting to be interviewed. It was very quiet. It was ten o’clock in the morning. There was no one around. And this German journalist arrives and, it was very curious, she wasn’t behaving normally. She didn’t have a tape recorder and she wasn’t taking notes. And she said, “I had a dream that you were in a phone booth after the end of the world and you were speaking to all of humanity but without knowing whether anyone was listening.” It was like being in a zombie film.

I'm thinking of putting him on my to-read list, not least since he's written what sounds like an intriguing book about one of my favourite authors, H.P. Lovecraft.

Any views on the matter you might wish to share?

A taste of German unity: cheap. Certainly cheaper than the real thing.

It's the Tag der deutschen Einheit today, on which Germans mark ('celebrate' might be too strong a word) their reunification in 1990.

We dealt with it typically low-key style, which meant sleeping in a bit, taking an afternoon walk through the vineyards and treating ourselves to some nice Butterstrudel from the local bakery.

It also made me think of a moment from our recent French road trip. We had just left our friends in Carcassonne and had stopped by one of those ubiquitous French hypermarchés to stock up on diesel, baguettes and cheese for the long trip up to the Normandy coast.

I spotted one of those little machines that you might remember from your childhood: you put in some money, turn a dial, and out pops either some kind of candy or a junky toy-like thing encased in a little plastic dome. I used to love these things.

Anyway, what caught my attention was one of the excellent treats you could get -- if you were lucky -- for a measly 50 euro cents.

Notice it?

Yes, it's that curious little button in sky blue with the German flag on it.

Quelle bizarre!

Now, beyond thinking that this was an odd addition to a selection of what looked basically like a bunch of cheap -- and possibly toxic -- Chinese-made fake jewellery for children (no other flags were visible), I considered something else.

Just what, do you think, would run through the mind of the French child who, having parted with their precious 50 cents, turns the dial, opens the plastic dome and is confronted with the black-red-gold banner of their eastern neighbour?

Are they happy? Disappointed? Merely bewildered?

I don't know.

But sitting here on the Day of German Unity (in what a German friend of ours called 'the Germanest part of Germany'), I sort of wish I'd been willing to part with 50 cents.

Who knows, I might have gotten lucky.

Cause and Effect

It seems that some real change is afoot, as David Leonhardt points out in the New York Times, in comments on the declining sales of the F-series pickup in the US:

For more than two decades, Ford’s F-series pickup trucks have been the most popular line of vehicles in the country, selling more every year than any sedan, station wagon or S.U.V., foreign or domestic. But F-series sales have dropped more than 30 percent since last spring.

Last month, according to the new sales numbers released on Tuesday, the Toyota Corolla and Camry and the Honda Civic and Accord all surged past the F-series. It was the first month since December 1992 that a car — not a truck — was the country’s top-selling vehicle. The world doesn’t seem to have come to an end as a result.

Leonhardt looks at the mid-term comparative costs of buying and operating different vehicles across five-years, emphasising how much concentrating on fuel efficiency can save you:

While the F-250 costs $100,000 and a fully loaded F-150 — the better-known, smaller Ford pickup — costs about $70,000, a Ford Focus still costs less than $40,000 over five years. A Honda Civic Hybrid does, too. A Toyota Prius costs only a little more. A Subaru Outback station wagon runs $50,000 or so.

To put this in perspective, the difference between a Focus and an F-250 over five years is $60,000. The annual pretax income of a typical family in this country is also about $60,000. So choosing a F-250 over a Focus is like volunteering for a 20 percent pay cut. The relative resale values might cushion the blow a little, but not much.

The primary beneficiaries of this shift seem to be Toyota and Honda, who, I think, have pretty much dominated the small car market in the US for decades.

I wonder: is there an opportunity here for European car makers to also expand in the US?

Even...dare one say it...the French? Even if previous efforts in this direction (think 'Le Car', better known to European readers as the Renault 5) have been less than successful.

This was despite the excellent ad campaign for 'Le Car'. (Link leads to an extraordinary ad, on which embedding has sadly been disabled. But take a look. You'll be glad you did.)

I mean, how could Americans have resisted back in 1981?




In the mid-90s, a grad-school roommate had one of these, in the classic yellow colour with 'Le Car' written on the side, as I recall. It was, by that point, about 15 years old, I think, and he continued driving it for about 4 months even after the clutch went out.

(Some American readers may no longer know what a 'clutch' is. Explanation here.)

When I mention to Americans what make of car we have, most seem to think I'm suffering from some kind of speech impediment when I respond.

For a change, I don't think that's a result of my poor French pronunciation. (I've been told by one friend that I now have a German accent when I speak French, which is apparently quite comical.) Rather, Citroën stopped selling cars in America in the 1970s.

Interestingly enough, they are now promoting themselves in Britain by pretending to be German.



(I, actually, find the C5 to be sort of dull: the C4 is much more interesting.)

Happy motoring.

Les enfants de la patrie ... fatigués

Ever since he has returned from his UK charm offensive, things have become quiet around Le Petit Nicholas (ok, ok, the joke is wearing thin), the almost Emperor of La Grande Alliance Méditerranée. Currently, the political debate in France suggests a general lack of seriousness and a disturbing concern with the totally insignificant, involving a) a bill against the incitement to anorexia and b) a public debate around this year's French contestant at the Eurovision Song Contest (formerly known as Le Grand-Prix Eurovision de la Chanson). The song's in English -- which apparently is a problem.

Anyway, all this made me think of the following: