Parisian Manners: Irascible or Passable

By Abbott Katz

Paris Kiosque - June 1996 - Volume 3, Number 6
Copyright (c) 1996 Abbott Katz - Used with permission

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The matter of the deportment of Parisians - or, perhaps, the lack thereof - was long ago staked to a hallowed niche in the tourists' canon. The belief in the abiding nastiness of the city's natives is something of a conundrum, too; this most becoming of metropolises is yet the one whose natives are so often thought irascible and nettling, especially to those who happen to be passing through..

Who visits Paris for its people? I don't know, but the standard incentives for coming here accord little honor to the idea that its residents have something to bring to the tourist experience. Parisian pique seems to roil the memories of many of its visitors; even my very own brother the doctor came away from here with a fairly dour diagnosis. Indeed - the recent French government drive to press for decorum among its constituents seems to accord with that notion, and a Parisian who wrote me over the Net confirms that "even the Parisians agree that the Parisians are surly and unfriendly. The people the French hate most are Parisians," though the latter opinion may merely embody generic big-city animus.

But proof for the incivility of Paris residents is likely spottier than the stereotypist contends, and this New Yorker knows about stereotypes. Your jaded-to-the-bone, curmudgeon of a correspondent, who is lobbying hard to make chewing food with one's mouth open a capital crime, must nevertheless report that his Paris experiences have been, by and large, rather salutary. My visits here have never wanted for the routine urban kindnesses that make city life endurable, and while I would like to credit these courtesies to my unmistakably doe-eyed, benign, even piteous persona, others can and do corroborate my experience, too. (Note that I am tabling the serious questions of French racism and anti-Semitism here.)

My informal sense, and one that I believe is ratified by others, is that some facility with French will stand the tourist in smashingly good stead here. A standard correlate of the "ugly Parisian" image is the conviction that a great many of the residents speak English but will not deign to do so, the better to spite their helpless American sojourners. Yet a Frenchman told me that English fluency here is in fact not widespread, and an uncomprehending look to a question in that tongue may be more properly laid to native ignorance than a bad case of attitude.

Another Net interlocutor, an American who now lives just outside Paris, informed me that in her judgement the city's collective disposition has changed notably for the better in recent years. Her explanation? "I figured that there might be a difference between my first visit [to Paris], as a poor student, and my return visit, fully equipped with several credit cards." The language of tourist commerce may now be more universal in Paris than either French *or* Esperanto. AMEX spoken here, might be the operative credo at last.

I will close with a heartwarming story that should serve to throw an epiphinal light on the dark side of the Parisian temperament. In search of a taxi to the airport for a return trip to New York, I stood by the curbside on Rue Magente, gesticulating helplessly at the cabs steaming past my three bags and me with monotonous disdain. But I was soon approached by a young man who notified me, in English that far surpassed my French, that cabs don't stop for passengers on the streets the way they do in New York; whereupon he proceeded to point me to the nearest taxi stand at Gare du l'Est a few blocks away, command one of my bags, and accompany me all the way to the station. This curmudgeon was duly moved.

Of course it turns out he wasn't from Paris, but let's not get technical.

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Abbott Katz is a PC support analyst who lives in Brooklyn and has written for New York Newsday and other publications. He will be sure to let you all know when he plans to be in Paris next, and can be reached in the meantime at akatz@juno.com.