SIXTY MILLION FRENCHMEN CAN’T BE WRONG
Jean-Benoit Nadeau and Julie Barlow
Sourcebooks
By Solange de Santis

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
June 27, 2003

It is hard to imagine a better moment for trying to understand the French, so recently the enemies of American foreign policy and still the butt of American jokes. With perfect timing, Jean-Benoit Nadeau and Julie Barlow, a Canadian couple, have produced “Sixty Million Frenchmen Can’t Be Wrong.” One imagines a corresponding book titled “But 60 Million Americans Want to Spit in Their Eye.”
In the late 1990s, Mr. Nadeau won a fellowship to study why the French were resisting globalization. He and Ms. Barlow moved to Paris from Montreal, only to discover they were barking up the wrong arbre. Leaving aside a few French farmers who destroyed a McDonald’s in southern France the French weren’t resisting globalization. French companies were major players in world commerce and the French economy—despite levels of bureaucracy and state control that would make an American blanch—was ranked fourth in the world.
So the authors “decided to just explore France and French thinking.” They discovered that the French are “aborigines” of a very old culture with very different notions of privacy, space and public display. For example, whereas Americans usually exchanges names upon starting a conversation, the French, while often quite hospitable, do not offer their names right off the bat and consider a direct inquiry about them to be rude. As for French institutions, the rigorous education and professional-training systems (a probation officer has to take a four-hour written test that might include such questions as “media and democracy: discuss”) put ours to shame but also encourage hierarchical divisions and conformity.
Of course, a big part of French self-definition, these days, has to do with its role in the new Europe and the world. According to Mr. Nadeau and Ms. Barlow, France realizes that it is not the biggest power but believes it is the best. Mix in such French characteristics as a desire to express strong opinions and a disdain for compromise and you understand some of the friction Americans couldn’t help noticing in recent months.
“Sixty Million Frenchmen” does its job marvelously well. After reading it, you may still think the French are arrogant, aloof and high-handed, but you will know why.
-Solange De Santis