Pumpkin Eaters
Aix-en-Provence, France — There is a tendency among the French to welcome certain aspects of American life with immediate and uncritical enthusiasm: hamburgers, Jerry Lewis, baseball caps, elderly television series (“Starsky & Hutch” is still running on French TV), Westerns, Marlboro Lights, button-down shirts — these and much more besides have crossed the Atlantic to become firmly embedded in le lifestyle français.
The Celtic-by-way-of-America celebration of Halloween is one more example that has always stuck in my mind because it arrived in France about the same time that I did, 20 years ago.
I remember the moment well. I was passing the window of a shop that specialized in avant-garde underwear when my eye was caught by a small pumpkin, half-concealed behind the lacy thickets of a black brassiere.… Seguir leyendo »