Call It Sleep?

First Edition of Call It Sleep

Manhattan is an enormous Jewish ghetto that many don’t want to escape. French anti-Semitism has deep roots, going back to the Dreyfus case, that could be awakened by the Jihadist violence. While the French don’t like being under siege, one wonders if there isn’t a certain part of the electorate that believes the Jews are only making matters worse, in terms of increasing the level of violence on French soil. First comes the outrage against the killers and then comes the second stage, which mirrors in some ways the response that cancer victims sometimes get when the initial sympathy for their condition has passed: did they bring this upon themselves? It’s always nice to let the blame fall on the victim. An etiology is better than bald-faced tragedy. But Manhattan is a little like Israel. It’s where the Diaspora ended a long time ago for some Jews. Jews may not outnumber other ethnic groups but they're a significant force politically, economically and culturally. Those who talk about Manhattan seceding from the United States, which is really an extended joke at mid-America’s expense, are really talking about the other Promised Land. Indeed Tel Aviv and New York, as two of the most cosmopolitan cities in the world, have many things in common. There have been reports that as many as 15,000 French Jews, who no longer feel safe, are contemplating moving to Israel (“15,000 Jews to leave France for Israel, Jewish Agency says,”The Telegraph, 1/13/15). In the meanwhile New York’s Jews aren’t going anywhere. They've already arrived, a journey whose birth pangs were documented in Henry Roth’s novel about turn of the century immigrants, Call It Sleep.

Paris Journal XIII: Voix Douce

American radio and television commercials have a rendezvous with reality. It’s as if they’re stuck in the Ashcan School of art. Even advertisements for Charmin toilet paper or feminine hygiene products designed to prevent embarrassment on heavy days, or Cialis for men, created to prevent embarrassment on soft ones, have a guttural appeal. It’s as if the advertising were based solely on the principal of identification. Naturally, all advertising also functions as idealization, but how do you idealize the adult diaper or the ambulance-chasing law firm that will win you millions after a neuro-surgeon operates on the wrong side of your brain? But  if American advertising is marooned in the world of stark reality—with lingerie ads for plus-size women that make them look like paratroopers about to make a jump—then the Twilight Zone of French advertising is a combination of the romantic pre-Raphaelite world of Millais and the painting of academics like Poussin, with their classic figures in sylvan settings. There is nothing like the female voix on a French voiceover. Listen carefully and you will fall in love with her, or at least the Trojans she is trying to sell. No one has ever talked to you this way, in or out of a commercial. Listening to this voix douce féminine, or even its strong, all-knowing male counterpart, you begin to question your own existence. You are in love and you wonder why you have wasted a lifetime using Charmin when you could have moved to Paris and wiped your ass with an infinitely more desirable French product. Driving from the airport in a taxi and hearing a female voice intoning mangez un sac de nos cacahuètes is like listening to Mata Hari. You will gladly forswear your nuts.