▷▷▷▷▷ Check Out Paris to the Moon for $2.00

Paris to the Moon Review

Excellent, overnight service for getting this delicious book to friends for Xmas. Strongly recommend this warm, subtly-hilarious work to any American who has lived in Paris in recent decades.

Paris to the Moon Overview

Paris. The name alone conjures images of chestnut-lined boulevards, sidewalk cafés, breathtaking façades around every corner--in short, an exquisite romanticism that has captured the American imagination for as long as there have been Americans.

In 1995, Adam Gopnik, his wife, and their infant son left the familiar comforts and hassles of New York City for the urbane glamour of the City of Light. Gopnik is a longtime New Yorker writer, and the magazine has sent its writers to Paris for decades--but his was above all a personal pilgrimage to the place that had for so long been the undisputed capital of everything cultural and beautiful. It was also the opportunity to raise a child who would know what it was to romp in the Luxembourg Gardens, to enjoy a croque monsieur in a Left Bank café--a child (and perhaps a father, too) who would have a grasp of that Parisian sense of style we Americans find so elusive.

So, in the grand tradition of the American abroad, Gopnik walked the paths of the Tuileries, enjoyed philosophical discussions at his local bistro, wrote as violet twilight fell on the arrondissements. Of course, as readers of Gopnik's beloved and award-winning "Paris Journals" in The New Yorker know, there was also the matter of raising a child and carrying on with day-to-day, not-so-fabled life. Evenings with French intellectuals preceded middle-of-the-night baby feedings; afternoons were filled with trips to the Musée d'Orsay and pinball games; weekday leftovers were eaten while three-star chefs debated a "culinary crisis."

As Gopnik describes in this funny and tender book, the dual processes of navigating a foreign city and becoming a parent are not completely dissimilar journeys--both hold new routines, new languages, a new set of rules by which everyday life is lived. With singular wit and insight, Gopnik weaves the magical with the mundane in a wholly delightful, often hilarious look at what it was to be an American family man in Paris at the end of the twentieth century. "We went to Paris for a sentimental reeducation-I did anyway-even though the sentiments we were instructed in were not the ones we were expecting to learn, which I believe is why they call it an education."

Paris to the Moon Specifications

In 1995 Gopnik was offered the plush assignment of writing the "Paris Journals" for the New Yorker. He spent five years in Paris with his wife, Martha, and son, Luke, writing dispatches now collected here along with previously unpublished journal entries. A self-described "comic-sentimental essayist," Gopnik chose the romance of Paris in its particulars as his subject. Gopnik falls in unabashed love with what he calls Paris's commonplace civilization--the cafés, the little shops, the ancient carousel in the park, and the small, intricate experiences that happen in such settings. But Paris can also be a difficult city to love, particularly its pompous and abstract official culture with its parallel paper universe. The tension between these two sides of Paris and the country's general brooding over the decline of French dominance in the face of globalization (haute couture, cooking, and sex, as well as the economy, are running deficits) form the subtexts for these finely wrought and witty essays. With his emphasis on the micro in the macro, Gopnik describes trying to get a Thanksgiving turkey delivered during a general strike and his struggle to find an apartment during a government scandal over favoritism in housing allocations. The essays alternate between reports of national and local events and accounts of expatriate family life, with an emphasis on "the trinity of late-century bourgeois obsessions: children and cooking and spectator sports, including the spectator sport of shopping." Gopnik describes some truly delicious moments, from the rites of Parisian haute couture, to the "occupation" of a local brasserie in protest of its purchase by a restaurant tycoon, to the birth of his daughter with the aid of a doctor in black jeans and a black silk shirt, open at the front. Gopnik makes terrific use of his status as an observer on the fringes of fashionable society to draw some deft comparisons between Paris and New York ("It is as if all American appliances dreamed of being cars while all French appliances dreamed of being telephones") and do some incisive philosophizing on the nature of both. This is masterful reportage with a winning infusion of intelligence, intimacy, and charm. --Lesley Reed

Available at Amazon Check Price Now!

Customer Reviews

too much preening, too little insight into Paris - hmf22 - New York, NY
Paris to the Moon is a languid, fussy book that is likely to disappoint readers who really want to get a feel for Paris or to be reminded of their own experiences of the city. A self-conscious, self-absorbed, sentimental tone dominates the book; Gopnik does offer some sound insights into French culture, but most of them are not very original. I would have expected someone who spent five years in Paris to have more substantive things to say. Gopnik's prose is polished to the point of dullness-- faultless but unmemorable. The two passages that stuck in my mind were Gopnik's condescending generalizations about household pets ("mere courtesans of affection, feigning a feeling for food": p. 42) and children ("Luke of course took it for granted, as children take all things": p. 316). I closed the book feeling very glad that I was not a child or small animal in Gopnik's life.

If you want to read a good book about the experiences of North Americans living in Paris, I recommend Sixty Million Frenchmen Can't Be Wrong by Jean-Benoit Nadeau and Julie Barlow. Despite the silly title, Nadeau and Barlow offer the piercing, thoughtful observations about French culture that Paris to the Moon mostly lacks.

A different opinion - A Sophisticated Reader - Mill Valley, California
Some people seem to love this book - I will admit I enjoyed reading the political background about Paris and the history, and I am an avid reader of the New Yorker. However, the bulk of the work was devoted to Mr G's interpretation
of his experience in Paris, and it struck me as an endless series of complaints that life there was not as he experienced in New York. I suppose to some this is interesting, but I found it tedious, boring, and sad. I had to stop reading the book around page 80 - I think after his complaints about not having a decent New York style gym to go to. Rather than understanding that Parisians get their exercise by walking he complains that he can't use his walkman and workout like he's used to. As one who loves Paris I can't jive with so much kvetching.

Not Quite the Moon - A. G. -
I like Gopnik's writing--some of his magazine work is brilliant--and I opened the cover wanting to love this book, especially since my wife and I were doing a lot of walking around Paris at the time. But as a travel piece, it doesn't get into orbit. Some of the reviews seem overly harsh, based more on the book's focus not ending up meeting the reader's expectations; I founding it annoying at times for the same reasons. The five-star reviews, though, need questioning: I mean, no way can this be up there with the best of the genre, starting with Mark Twain. Essentially, though Paris to the Moon has many insights into Frenchiness, it is essentially about a New York writer taking his family to Paris, rather than about Paris.

I would love to see Gopnik write a novel on the same subject, a dramatic comedy, since he has all the elements for a great work--writers, models, foodies, artists; NY meets Paris.

audio book narrator - Sheena Carver -
The author, who narrates the story, speaks so quickly that it is somewhat difficult to get interested in the book. There are interesting parts, but I often found my mind drifting off.

*** Product Information and Prices Stored: Aug 28, 2010 12:05:05

Books Travel

Saturday, August 28, 2010