Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

David Lebovitz's book might better be re-titled: "The Self Absorbed Self Pitying Life In Paris: Semi Acceptable Experiences In A City That Would Be Beautiful If It Was More The Way I Wanted It To Be And There Weren't So Many French People There". The author's preciousness is insufferable, and I can see from his many anecdotes why he has had so much friction in his life with French customs and behavior. I don't care how good a cook he is, or how close he once was, during his prior life in Berkeley, to the ground zero of ALL THINGS RIGHT AND VIRTUOUS in American cookery. I cannot imagine a book about cooking in France more contrary to the kindness, humility and good humor of Julia Child's "My Life In France" than this self-conscious whine by David Lebovitz. Mr. Lebovitz's book is a prime example of a minor literary genre that might be best described as "Memoir of a Paris loving French hating Anglo-Saxon and/or American". There are many examples of this, many of them British, that combine a love of things that the author thinks wonderful in Paris with a Francophobic dislike of all things about the French that -- the author always seems to willfully ignore -- make the place the way it is, make it the way that caused the author to want to be there. A good example of this sort of noxious schizoid writing, pretending to be witty and observant, would be "A Year in the Merde" by Stephen Clarke. American and Brit audiences love this kind of drivel, because it at once allows them to feel they are sophisticated and partaking of all that is good in exotic romantic Paris, while maintaining all their prejudices and ignorance. It's all rather like an 18th century British writer saying something like "I loved India, a magnificent country in every way, although one must be careful of the bloody wogs!" Lebovitz's book is in this line, with updated politically correct attitudes about food and a lot of self aware nattering on about minor offenses, fragile emotions and stress levels. Mr. Lebovitz rhapsodizes at length about actually being proud of being rude in public -- this in a city where the word "pardon" is spoken endlessly by everyone at the slightest suggestion of offense in public, where loud talking (usually by thoughtless and oblivious Americans) is considered rude and abrasive, and where people go out of their way to observe common courtesies that have all but vanished in the US. The fact that he seems proud of not understanding what people are saying to him in French, after living for six years there, stressed that the people of Paris have not thought of him in designing their customs and habits, and annoyed endlessly that the French seem to behave like incompetent staff at his own personal theme park, is appalling. Speaking as someone who lived for many years just a few steps from where Mr. Lebovitz lives, and who knows exactly the neighborhoods and places and culture that he reports on, all I can say is that he is the new age, Berkeleyfied replacement for the classic "Ugly American". He is, instead, the Precious Bobo (Bourgeois Bohemian) Narcissistic American. I won't even start on a litany of the complaints that he makes in his book, while purporting to praise Paris and recounting how beautiful his own life has been there. But I know that if I were to run into him at the Bastille Market, or witness some of the attitudes in practice that he display in his book, that I would conclude that the Marais had, finally, been ruined beyond repair by the toxic bobo sludge spreading east from the Centre Pompidou. Are there "beautiful" thoughts and experiences in this book. Of course there are. Lebovitz writes well, and can be funny and charming in a prissy, put out with things sort of way. But if Lebovitz thinks he has become Parisian then he obviously must also think that he has become "African" when he visits Disney's Animal Kingdom, or "Chinese" and "British" when he tours Epcot. No one who complains about the things that he complains about is Parisian. They are, at heart, no matter how long they have taken up residence, a tourist.