As I have many times remarked on this blog, I am simply awful at foreign languages, a fact that diminishes my enjoyment of Paris [or anywhere else where English is not the native language.] But I have now made an important discovery: If you wish to improve your reading knowledge of a language, plunge into the journalistic coverage of a particularly salacious news story. Nothing concentrates the mind like gossip! Ever since
l'affaire DSK broke, I have been reading
Liberation almost cover to cover daily and already I can see an improvement in my French reading skills. [Whether this carries over to the mastering of French philosophy is, of course, another matter.] When Susie and I first bought our Paris apartment, I thought to improve my French by reading serious stuff, so I read my way all the way through the French edition of
In Defense of Anarchism. It turns out not to be too difficult to read in a foreign language something you have written yourself. Mostly what I discovered was that in French I sound like Rene Descartes. But then, everyone sounds like Rene Descartes. I also plowed through the first 150 pages of
Das Capital in the famous French edition overseen by Marx himself. That was a bit like listening to the Brandenburg Concerti. I know
Capital so well that I could anticipate sentences before I came to them.
Which brings me to today's edition of Liberation. Most of the articles dealt with the bail hearing yesterday at which DSK was granted bail on condition that he post a million dollars bail and a five million dollar bond on his American apartment, waive his right to extradition, wear an ankle bracelet, be confined to a New York apartment rented by his wife, and be watched by a 24 hour a day armed guard. But on the editorial page was a column by a British/Lebanese spy novelist who lives and writes in France, named Percy Kemp. Kemp wrote a spectacular send-up of the entire affair, in the form of an open letter to the President of the European Commission, suggesting that regardless of which version of the affair turns to to be true, there is clearly a problem in contemporary politics caused by the uncontrollable libidinal urges of important men. Kemp proposed that Europe revert to the old, well-tested, and successful practice of placing the affairs of state in the hands of eunuchs. A castration would, he opined, be a reasonable prerequisite for a career in public life.
I picked up a lot of new words from that column, let me tell you!
