Coup de cœur : A Year in the Merde

Francophile ou francophobe, chacun trouvera du plaisir a la lecture de A year in the merde by Stephen Clarke.
Délicate critique des originalités françaises et ode d’amour déguisée à un pays dans lequel l’auteur vit, ce livre condense en moins de 200 pages ce qu’on aime et déteste sur la vie a Paris.

Comment ne pas rire a gorge déployée face à cette critique acerbe de la société française :

- A propos de la grève du métro : “The unions were furious that the government had been rumored to be thinking about considering the possibility of maybe looking into the purely theoretical concept that it might one day (not now but in, say, eighty years’ time) be less able to pay for transport workers to retire at fifty.”

- Pour obtenir une carte de séjour:“All I had to do was take my passport, work contract, three passport photos, a recent electricity bill, and the marriage certificates of any hamster I’d owned since 1995, all photocopied on medieval parchment. No problème.The good news was, Christine told me, I was allowed to take a day off work to deal with the boring red tape. How civilized I thought. {…}A new day, a new lesson in French life: The reason they give you a day off is that you need at least three.”

- A propos des subsides pour l’agriculture française : “Everyone who examines France claim’s for European Union subsidies can see all too clearly the confusion in French minds between fiction and agriculture.”

Ne boudons pas notre plaisir quand l’auteur s’en prend a sa terre natale, il est toujours bon de bâcher les anglais n’est-ce pas ! :

- A propos du métro de Paris et de Londres :“The only major difference with London was that if you had to stand, you could actually stand instead of being bent double the way you are on the tube. Why did those London engineers build such tidily tunnel? Did they think that only hobbits would ride the tube?”

- A propos de la philosophie anglaise:“The good and only English solution to any dilemma that requires careful thoughts and planning – go and get pissed”

Une saine lecture pour un bon moment de détente…