Hashtag The French
Early 2000s style, the fallibility of memory, and the Gouffre de Padirac
Once, I visited a giant hole in the ground.
I can hear you now. Gee, Marissa, how descriptive. But in all fairness to me, how else would you describe this?
This my fellow chaos readers, is the Gouffre de Padirac. Its English website calls it a ‘chasm,’ which, sure.1 Not that different than giant hole in the ground.
I visited in the summer of 2007 while on a French immersion program through my high school. We were stationed in Rennes (in Brittany/en Bretagne) for 5 weeks, and then spent the last week and a half wandering around France.2 And by wandering I mean: there were 20 of us in a coach bus being supervised by 1 adult. It’s a miracle no one died.
It was a different time. The Internet was not a wide spread thing. Neither were personal cell phones. Hell, laptops were barely common at this point. Most of us had iPods and we passed them around to listen to something different. Or we slept. Or we talked, loudly, in English. There was a lot of driving. A LOT of driving.
We didn’t do that all in one day, mind you. But just to give you an idea of what our itinerant traveling band of high schoolers was up to. We eventually made our way back up to Paris, which would have taken another 6 hours or so. I remember stopping at a gas/truck stop and eating brioche and Nutella out of a jar next to the highway. Truly, what dreams are made of.
More than anything, I wish I had an accurate itinerary of that trip. I was just about 16, and held the youthful arrogance that I would just be able to ~remember~ all of the places we visited. I do have many, many pictures, and many, many memories, but you’d think as a writer I’d put more stock in writing this stuff down. I’ve been able to track down some of the place names by reverse engineering my pictures, but for most, I’ve just had to accept that the names are long gone.3
Hence, the Gouffre de Padirac. In college, before I did my semester abroad in Paris, I was explaining the high school trip to a friend. I got to the Gouffre, and for the life of me, could not remember the name of it. Even worse, I could not describe it.
“It’s…a giant hole in the ground. But there were underground caves. And we had to go down in an elevator to get to the bottom. And it’s not the famous caves, either. But it’s huge, and there’s a boat ride in it, too.”
Needless to say, my friend was not convinced by my description. Aside from the fact that I couldn’t remember the name of the LASCAUX CAVES,4 either.
None of this should be surprising, as we already know the French have an interesting concept of field trips5. Some amateur internet sleuthing led me to the actual name of the Gouffre, and voila. The rest is history.
This really has nothing to do with anything other than it was in France, and I just finished reading Madame de, suivi de Julietta a French book by Louise de Vilmorin. Yes, my friends, I read and write and speak and listen French. No, I will not subject you to a summary en français. But if there’s anything that I love about the French, it is how insanely chaotic they are. As a people, as a group, as a culture. Just…pure chaos. I’m not even talking about the people dining outside during the riots next to flaming garbage cans, though that is up there. I’m talking about the moments, when I read them in literature, and go “Yup. Only the French.”
Here’s some examples from my last few French reads, translated for your perusal:
Madame de…
This short story involves a comedy of errors plot line that involves a scorned and spurned husband rebuying the same pair of earrings for his wife 4 times. Nothing says ‘let me torture my wife’ than by buying her jewelry that she keeps trying to get rid of. Oh and she dies in the end. Morals!
Julietta
This plot hinges on an 18 year old, Julietta, being engaged to a 50 year old man. She gets cold feet on the way to marry him, and through another comedy of errors, ends up missing her train while returning a bejeweled cigarette case to a 30 year old man. Through another series of unfortunate, she ends up HIDING OUT IN THIS MAN’S HOUSE, and through this, the 30 year old falls in love with Julietta? And they decide to get married after *checks notes* knowing each other for 2 days? How exactly is this better than the 50 year old? She’s still 18! I cannot.
Odette Toulemonde
The offending book. There is a story in this collection, Tout pour être heureuse (All to be happy) that just truly blows my mind in terms of logic. The unnamed female protagonist has fertility issues, and she has discovers that her husband has a whole separate second family. Obviously, this leaves her feeling a bit distraught, because she can’t have kids. She is then told BY HER PSYCHIATRIST that she SHOULD BE GRATEFUL that her husband decided to stay with her even though he has a whole other secret family because MEN HAVE NEEDS. Yes, this was written by a man, and yes, I wanted to rip my eyes out.
Exercices de style
This book by Raymond Queneau is one of his most popular. The premise is simple: he tells one story (about seeing a man be rude on a bus and then later at a train station) in 99 different ways. Ninety. Nine. By the end, I truly did not know what I was reading and I think my soul ascended to another plane of reality.
Madame Bovary
If you’re new here, I have a vendetta against Madame Bovary. No I will not explain further.
The funny thing is, I enjoyed reading Julietta! Louise de Vilmorin’s writing was easy to follow, and wasn’t dense, which was very much appreciated as someone who is not a native French speaker. I just could not get over how unrealistic the plot lines were. Which, I guess is my fault, for the French, if nothing else, have never promised to be faithful to reality. I picked a book at random from my collection for my last French book of 2023, and ended up picking the book that spurred the French government to change their age of consent laws, so the joke’s on me.
Here’s some more giant hole in the ground pictures for you. Please clap, I dug out my old computer for this.
https://www.visit-dordogne-valley.co.uk/discover/natural-heritage/prehistoric-caves/gouffre-padirac
This is the same immersion program that brought you the Normandy D-Day Cemetery trip.
Don’t be like me, kiddies. Write down the names of the places you visit!!! Even if you have a fancy GPS phone now!!!
Casual UNESCO World Heritage site, no biggie.
https://archeologie.culture.gouv.fr/lascaux/en
As we talked about in my love letter to cemeteries.