Way to Ruin Paris for Everyone

This guy Rosencrans Baldwin wrote an essay for the Morning News called "Paris, I Love You, But You're Bringing Me Down." No offense, man, but I think that you're the one bringing people down. Or maybe your friends are bringing you down. I mean, you can feel the weight of this essay just pushing down on the guy's shoulders. First his wife has the flu, a cold, vertigo; then he's hanging around with some French guy who doesn't understand American humor (but he fails to see the humor in the French guy's snooty response!); then he invites someone to dinner who suggests that cheap real estate can be had near nuclear facilities. Get new friends; you'll enjoy France more!

I think he's trying to assign the qualities of his small group to all Parisians, and that can be frustrating for the reader when we're given generalities and expected to eat them up as truth. I mean, here's a guy who ends up standing next to Karl Lagerfeld during one point in his essay. Yeah, if I based my perception of New Yorkers on people I met at Fashion Week, then I'd say that a good 50 to 60 percent of NYers are dickheads—though that's not even true, it's just a perception that one might have of them at that point in time. To be fair, Baldwin acknowledges that his malaise is misunderstood by people like me and, well, everyone:

No one hears you when you say you’re sick of Paris. Sick of Paris: three words that make sense to people separately, but not in sequence. And they’re right—what am I talking about?

Don't know why this essay bothered me so much. It's very well-written and I certainly enjoyed it, but such generalities and it just sheathed Paris in this gray, gauzy cloth for me, making the city of lights drab and depressing. Which it isn't! Well, I don't think moreso than anywhere else. I think maybe there's a certain way we have of looking at cities when we're mad at them. I've certainly felt that way about NY, but only in rare moments. Maybe Baldwin is just frustrated and angry with Paris right now, maybe he really loves it, who knows. I think of Joan Didion dissing NY in "Goodbye to All That," it's a city for the very young or the very rich, she knew when it was her time to exit—but she still came back.

Update: Elaine Sciolino is stepping down as Paris bureau chief for the New York Times and offers some really astute and funny observations about France here.