Barack’s Way

How happy our president seemed at the White House the other night! Funny, almost relaxed. Nothing like the agitated and harsh Sarkozy that we are used to seeing on this side of the Atlantic. It’s true that we were far removed from the usual annoyances of France. There was no agitated uprising of the UMP members, no debate on the defensive shield, no lessons to be drawn from the regional [elections]. No, nothing but important files to discuss like Iran, the Middle East and Franco-American relations. These are all heavy and solid issues.

The American president, still wearing the halo of his successful reform of the health care system, was playing the game of a renewed cordial entente. It’s a great classic move by presidents of the Fifth Republic: When things are going badly in the country, we go abroad to try to renew our political health.

After a brief press conference, there was “the” dinner in the “private” quarters of the Obama couple. Total blackout, no photos. Even the menu remained a secret. Only one detail was revealed by the Elysée [government]: The Sarkozys intended to offer the American president’s daughters “Asterix” comic books. It is evidently a sympathetic if questionable choice. Let us hope that among the possible editions of “Asterix” he did not choose “The Battle of the Chiefs,” “La Zizanie” or “Caesar’s Gift.” Generally, we can ask ourselves if the adventures of “those unrelenting Gauls who resist the invaders, now and always” will be to the tastes of Malia (11 years) and Sasha (8 years). Were there not other works to offer to them that would evoke French genius?

For Goscinny [author of the Asterix comics], “Little Nicholas” would have perhaps been a wiser choice (homonyms aside). If, perchance, in the coming years the Sarkozys had to return to the White House, they could think of bringing “In Search of Lost Time.” In the introduction to the beautiful edition of “Swann’s Way,” published by GF- Flammarion (2009), the American writer Daniel Mendelsohn explains why he likes Proust so much. “I was 20-years-old and I was in my second year of classical studies at the University of Virginia,” remembers the author of “The Lost” (winner of the Prix Médicis for foreign writers in 2007). With Jenny, one of his Hellenistic friends, he decided to read a few pages of “Swann’s Way” out loud every day. “It was love at first sight from the first lines,” Mendelsohn adds. “As soon as Jenny started to read, I was struck by the feeling of recognition, I was certain that this book would accompany me all my life.”

In the interesting report “Proust Found” in the latest edition of Magazine Littéraire, Antoine Compagnon writes the following: “We must read Proust — quickly, but also slowly, while laughing but also at times crying, with a grain of salt, but also with the greatest seriousness (…) To read the ‘In Search (of Lost Time)’ — and also other novels — helps one to become the author of one’s life.” We should all read (or re-read) “In Search of Lost Time.”