Ep 77 - Navigating “Fête” with Samuél Lopez-Barrantes

When Hemingway called Paris a fête, he wasn't saying it was a party. Instead, he was evoking something far deeper – an essential element of the city that has long captivated many drawn to the French capital. To delve into what exactly that elusive thing is, Emily is joined by Samuél Lopez-Barrantes, an American writer, musician, and tour guide in Paris.



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Credits 
Host: Emily Monaco. @Emily_in_France; Website: http://www.tomatokumato.com and http://www.emilymmonaco.com Producer: Jennifer Geraghty. @jennyphoria; Website: http://jennyphoria.com

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Édith Piaf - La Vie en Rose (DeliFB Lofi Remix) 
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About Us 
From one Emily in Paris to another... just speaking French isn't enough to understand the intricacies of the locals, but it's definitely a good place to start. Famously defended by armed "immortals" of the Académie Française (no, we're not making this up) the French language is filled with clues that show interested outsiders what, exactly, makes the French tick. 

Each episode, listen in as Emily Monaco and an expert take a deep dive into a word that helps us gain a keener understanding of the French.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
You are listening to Navigating the French on Paris Underground Radio.
For more great content and a bonus episode of Navigating
the French, please join us on Patreon.

Speaker 2 (00:14):
Hello and welcome to Navigating the French, the podcast where
each episode we take a look at a French word
and try and see what it tells us about French culture.
I'm your host, Emily Monaco. Today I'm speaking with Sanuel
Lopez Barantes, an American writer, musician and tour guide in Paris.
He's here to discuss a word that's poorly translated as party,

(00:35):
given the richness it conveys of what it means to
live in Paris. Fit all right, Sam, Well, I'm so
excited to have you here on the podcast. Could you
give our listeners a little bit of insight into who
you are and what you do here in France.

Speaker 3 (00:53):
Yes, thank you first and foremost for having me pleasure
to be here in a chat some French language. I
am a novelist and a musician. I moved to France
in twenty ten to pursue both of those things and
I'm still there doing it.

Speaker 4 (01:07):
So.

Speaker 3 (01:07):
I've published just my second novel recently, and I was
in a band for seven years called Slim and the Beast.
We toured around France and Europe and COVID kind of
change that narrative. But I'm still in Paris doing the
bohemian life as it were, and I'm pretty content in
doing it.

Speaker 2 (01:23):
That's awesome. And you are one in a many, in
a very long line of people living that bohemian life,
and I know that you. Occasionally, if I'm not mistaken,
give walking tours of Paris's sort of Lost generation past.

Speaker 4 (01:37):
Yes.

Speaker 3 (01:38):
Yeah, so I give walking tours, both as for my
own company and then a company called Context Travel. We
kind of specialize in more niche subjects, so I do
Hemingway into Lost Generation and talk about Stein's influence on
him and Fitzgerald. Of course, I do James Baldwin and
negistentialism and get into that era, and then I do
the Nazi occupation history of has That's kind of a

(02:00):
main focus the past couple of years because I was
finishing a novel about the Second World War. That's what
I just published. So I do a kind of what range.
I also do Molmap and the Paris Commune, and there's
really no limit to the walks. I'll do in my life.
I hope in so far as my curiosity will remain.
If I'm not ning curious anymore, then I guess I'll
stop doing walks.

Speaker 2 (02:21):
You know, well, if you're not curious anymore, than what's
the point, right.

Speaker 4 (02:24):
I think it's time to head out. You know.

Speaker 2 (02:27):
Well, I'm excited to have you on because we're going
to chat about a word that I think there's a
The translation of it has always kind of bothered me.

Speaker 5 (02:35):
Because it's this word fet, which has the little hat,
the little circumflex on the e, which we you know,
learn in French two hundred three hundred god I can't remember,
means that at some point there was an s there
and the s went away, and so it looks like
the word feast.

Speaker 2 (02:50):
And we have, you know, translations of Hemingway's a movable
feast into fet in French. But there's this connotation in
English that a feast is going to include a lot,
potentially a preposterous amount of food. And I don't think
that most people, most French people would intuit that sort

(03:11):
of food minded aspect of fet. So we navigate like
that difference between what is a feast and what.

Speaker 4 (03:20):
Is a fet great question. I mean, I think you
kind of hit it on the head.

Speaker 3 (03:24):
The feast fundamentally is based on food and a large
amount of it, and I kind of imagine like a
Bacca and all type thing Roman times, with grapes and
cakes and legs of meat. VET for me, really is
about a gathering of people and there's a reason for
that gathering. That kind of it is more than just
an excuse to party. I mean, you can have a
good feast because it's the saltiest or whatever. But for me,

(03:47):
when I think of a FET, I think of, you know,
a housewarming party, or I think of a birthday party,
if it's done with the intention of bringing a lot
of people from various social groups together. For me, it's
really about that collective celebration of something that's kind of
you know, the cliche you look at someone in the

(04:08):
eyes when you cheer someone in France. For me, that
kind of extends to the fet as an idea. If
it's it's very interpersonal, it's not just about eating well
and drinking. It's about actually celebrating something together.

Speaker 2 (04:20):
That's such a good point, and I think it also
like triangulates in the other word in French we use
for party because fet can be party, but we also
use the word and a swapis means an evening, but
it also means like an evening gathering, but it doesn't
exactly bringing together of people, notion and the event side
of things that you're talking about with FETs.

Speaker 3 (04:40):
Yeah, well, I know, I mean, as I'm sure you're aware.
I did look up the etymology. I'm always curious, and
of course it's coming from Latin fest them and it
kind of maintains that idea. It really is just a
space for gathering that food can be involved, but it
is not necessarily whereas a feast. Yeah, we're a bit
in the English language poor when it comes to that
idea of types of celebrations, and fet build in that

(05:03):
gap very nicely. I think, to what extent as we'll
talk about movable feasts, is paris a fet like that.

Speaker 4 (05:11):
I'm not just.

Speaker 3 (05:12):
Sure that's exactly what it is, but uh, that's part
of the discussion.

Speaker 2 (05:16):
Yeah, definitely, Well, as we I mean, I definitely want
to dig into sort of the hemingway and idea of
a of a fet. One thing I did find interesting,
you know, when I was thinking about the word FETs,
is that in addition to things like birthdays in France.
You know, and this is again something that I learned
when I was learning French in school and then later

(05:38):
didn't really encounter that much in my life here, is
that there's this sort of religious connotation to FETs where
you have feast days, which you have in the Catholic Church,
and specifically in France, you often, even though it's a secular,
ostensibly secular society. If anybody's interested in hearing more about
why France it's only ostensibly secular, check out the podcast
episode on Lassite so into that there. But you'd celebrate

(06:01):
your name day, which is like the day where the
saint who shares your first name is celebrated in France.
Do you ever sort of encounter that in your life?
In Paris? Do people wish each other bunfettes on their
Saints Day? No?

Speaker 3 (06:15):
And I was actually when I saw your question just written,
I was really intrigued by it. I have never heard that,
and I was dated French women for a decade, so
I would have presumably seen it in very kind of
French situations. But maybe that's because I dated very non
religious people. But that sounds fascinating. I don't even know
what my saints. I mean, my name is Samuel, is there.

(06:37):
I don't think there's a Saint Samuel.

Speaker 2 (06:39):
I guess you'd have to go with the Saint Samuel like.

Speaker 3 (06:42):
That have Yeah, what do they do for that, I
mean celebration? Is it like a meal or what's the As.

Speaker 2 (06:49):
Far as I can tell, it's people wishing it to
you on your Facebook wall. But I've only lived here
since I was nineteen, so I think I probably passed
by whatever childhood you know, celebration you might have on
your name day. I remember being told in French class
that French people celebrated their name days the way that
we celebrate our birthdays. But I've never seen that, so

(07:10):
maybe it was a generation.

Speaker 4 (07:11):
Oh yeah, it might have been.

Speaker 3 (07:13):
Yeah, I mean, I definitely it's curious how much religion
has gone into the background of society in general, but
specifically in France. It might be on the tick backwards,
which I imagine. I can go listen to your episode on
that that sounds fascinating.

Speaker 2 (07:25):
Yeah, it's with Lindsay Tramuda, who has some very things
to say about it. Well, so we don't have so
much then of a religious connotation to fit these days
in France. And I think that you know, the big
crux of this topic that I wanted to dig into
with you, given your expertise and you know your lifestyle
in France, is this idea that it's sort of wrapped

(07:47):
up in this movable feast that Hemingway describes in his memoir. First,
right off the bat, when we say a movable feast,
like I when I think about that, the first image
that comes to my mind is the tea party Alice
in Wonderland where they just move down the table. It's
like an actual movable feast, which obviously is a mean
So what do you think he meant or what's your

(08:09):
interpretation of the movable feast that Hemingway was describing.

Speaker 3 (08:13):
Great question well at the end of that book, which
was published after he died. So I also think that's
kind of part of the folklore of Hemingway is that
he didn't actually finish the book. He was writing about Paris,
which says something about the nature of Paris. But at
the end of that book he says, there is never
any ending to Paris, and the memory of it differs

(08:33):
from each person, and for me a movable feast really
implies this place that you can go in your memory
or even your present experience with the Medland if you're
doing the Pustian thing. Paris always has a space in
someone's mind, heart, soul, whether it's good or bad. It
doesn't ever really end when you hear the word Paris
for the rest of your life, whether you've never been
or you've been living there for decades. For me, that's

(08:56):
the kind of close your eyes and imagine the Paris
that always was and will always be. That's for me,
my romantic interpretation of it, especially because he ends his
books saying that you know, the place doesn't end. It
hasn't in it won't. So that's why it's a movable
feast in the sense of you can access the spirit
of it really with just the mention of the word.

(09:17):
And now we just had the Olympics, so if it
weren't done by now, now, for sure, Celine Dion at
the top of life was tower. I will always remember that,
you know.

Speaker 2 (09:26):
I love this idea that it sort of continues, but
it also continues past one's actual time there. Like people
have an idea of Paris before they've even stepped foot
in the place, and it's why we have problems like
Paris syndrome. And it's also why I think a lot
of people who move to Paris. I don't know, if
you've encountered this in your time here. They'll come with

(09:48):
this idea of Paris and then become disenchanted when it
turns out to be just a place where you have,
you know, mold onto the bathroom wall and your landlord
won't answer your calls. Like it's an idea, and it's
also a physical place.

Speaker 3 (10:02):
Yeah, and that's part of what the space it inhabits
because it's on that spectrum of the surreal and the real.
I mean, surrealism was born in France, probably for many reasons.
But you're always in confrontation with the myth and the reality,
and you kind of have to decide what you want
to look at. I mean, it's a cliche. Last half
full Paris is the same way. You can decide to

(10:24):
look at the boulevards and the terraces and be enchanted
or think that this is not what it used to
be and I would rather be back home wherever home is.
I've felt like Paris has always been my home, so
I always feel like I'm coming back there, even when
it was there for the first time. Recently, more recently,
I've had trouble meeting people who didn't really enjoy Paris,
and I think you probably experienced this the longer we've

(10:46):
lived there. We have our paris Is that we can share,
and although more importantly the Paris is to avoid, you know,
rarely in life about what you want so much as
what you don't want, and then at least that guides
you towards some sense of the long and so many
people in Paris come there and just realize for the
first time what they don't want, which is maybe overly

(11:06):
priced coffees, or having to tip on something that they
didn't believe in tipping, or sitting on a Paris for
two hours and actually talking for two hours.

Speaker 4 (11:16):
You don't have that.

Speaker 3 (11:16):
I'm in the States right now and I have to
drive to a coffee shop and tell someone to meet
me there, and it's very intentional decision to have a discussion,
whereas in Paris, if I see you on the street,
I can just say, Emily, take a seat, espresso.

Speaker 4 (11:29):
And it becomes a.

Speaker 3 (11:31):
Much more natural way of moving about the world when
you have the ability to have this feast as it
were at any moment. It could be on the metro
conversation with someone, or in the park or on the
walk home. It doesn't have to be like a week
out reservations tonight. Let's have a memory, which I find
is a bit more constructed in my experience in the

(11:51):
US because you have to drive cars, and because people
are busy, and because places are expensive, and there's so
many factors always for a social gathering, whereas in Paris,
like you said, here's the address, here's the code, come up,
you know what it is.

Speaker 4 (12:04):
You're going to bring some wine.

Speaker 3 (12:05):
There'll be a lot more wine than probably wants to
be drunk, but it will inevitably be drunk if you
stay late enough.

Speaker 2 (12:12):
Definitely, And I like that expanse that you get in
a soiree or a gathering in France where I think,
you know, coming from New York, even though that is
a city where ostensibly you should be able to just
grab someone and say hey, let's sit down. Well, first
of all, your coffee is probably going to be way
more expensive, but also people plan out their evenings where
they're like, oh, I'm going to have you know, pre
dinner drinks with so and so, and then I have

(12:34):
a dinner reservation at this time with different people, and
then I have a post dinner thing with these other people.
Whereas in Paris, I feel like you go and you
start hanging out with someone and there's not really a
projected end, like unless you're really trying to last metro right,
it's going to keep going.

Speaker 4 (12:51):
I think that's part of it.

Speaker 3 (12:52):
The movable feast idea is allowing the energy to dictate
itself instead of predefining what the thing is going to be.
And you have a reservation, there's a pressure to get
your orders in, get the conversations in before you have
to move somewhere else. It's just a different lifestyle, and
it's one that once you get it's very hard to forget. Yeah,
whether or not you believe in it, it's a thing.

(13:13):
It's its own vibe. Every city has its vibe. In
Paris for certain I think it's that movable idea of
if we're enjoying ourselves, why would we stop for some
other reason?

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Speaker 2 (14:00):
Tests Navigating the French will be right back after a
word from our sponsors, and now back to Navigating the French.
You alluded earlier on in our conversation to sort of
the timing of Hemingway's book and his reflection on his
time in Paris, and I think it's important for us
to sort of break down that timeline because he came

(14:20):
to Paris in the twenties, right, and then he left,
and he came back later and then wrote this book
No Longer living in Paris.

Speaker 4 (14:28):
Is that right, exactly?

Speaker 3 (14:30):
Yeah, So he comes to Paris in the early nineteen
twenties and the first years he's of course writing and
struggling to write and deciding what he wants to write.
When he published this on Author Rises in nineteen twenty six,
he becomes kind of an overnight celebrity and he leaves
very soon after. In nineteen twenty eight he goes to Florida,
to Key West, and from that moment onwards he will

(14:51):
visit Paris various times, but he never lives here again,
not as a resident. You know, his famously liberates the
writch during World War Two. And I always talk about
immovable feast, especially in I Walk, as more of a
cautionary tale than a romanticized idea, because I don't think
we don't talk enough about the fact that Hemingway had
an entire life of legendary writing career and all his

(15:11):
adventures and wives and misanthropy and all of his life.

Speaker 4 (15:16):
What he decides to write about at.

Speaker 3 (15:17):
The end is those first four years in France before
anyone really knew who he was. And he doesn't even
finish it right. He means he dies, and then two
years later, the book having been compiled by a lot
of well his son, his first son, and his wife,
his fourth wife.

Speaker 4 (15:32):
That's what is the result.

Speaker 3 (15:34):
Is an idea of what Paris was to Hemingway from
his loved ones, his closest ones, but it wasn't necessarily
how he compiled that book himself. So he visits Paris often,
and I think, being the depressive that he was, he
can't really get past the idea that in some sense
Paris isn't a movable feast for him because he's still
longing for the life that it first revealed, and it's

(15:55):
it's not accessible to him anymore because of his ego.
And that's you know, that's a whole other question. That's
part of the walk I give is. The myth and
the legend are very different when it comes to the
mail ego. In the nineteen twenties and nineteen fifties, in
the twenty twenties, it's still a thing, you know, this
idea to be great and very American obsession with moving oneself.

(16:18):
As the top of the ladder turns out, there's always
a higher rum. So for me, movable feast is very
much a cautionary tale about what I mean. People ask me,
and you want to be the next Hemingway in Paris,
and I I chuckle and say, well, he had four
wives and he killed himself when he was in his
early sixties. So if that's what being Hemingway results in,
then I certainly would rather not.

Speaker 2 (16:41):
I mean, yeah, it doesn't sound like a particularly nice end.

Speaker 4 (16:45):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (16:45):
Yeah, it was tough, tough time for him at the
end of that period.

Speaker 2 (16:49):
Do you think that he situated himself within a greater
canon of you know, literary minds in Paris, within this
movable feast.

Speaker 3 (17:00):
He specifically, he's of course very Hemingway about making it
sound like he is the best and everyone else is
trying to be him. He has this infamous chapter called
a Matter of Measurements where he feels it necessary to
discuss the size or lack thereof, of Scott Fitzgerald's manhood.
And you know, for a guy that was at the

(17:21):
top of his game as well and helped Hemingway got
him contact with the big publisher, the fact that Hemingway
goes to this, I mean, you can't ask for a
better cliche of a guy who was seriously though self
esteemed to go do that. I think Gertrude Stein was
his great mentor, and he had a big falling out
with her for kind of professional reasons that blended into

(17:42):
the personal and he never really gave her full credit
for just how valuable she was to his early writing
as an editor, but then also as a theorist. I
mean she devised this idea of the continuous present, which
is about repetition, which she says is more about insistent
because I'm inclined to believe there's no such thing as repetition,
only insistence, and Stein for me, is at the top

(18:02):
of that pyramid of influence on the modern canon.

Speaker 4 (18:07):
You can see.

Speaker 3 (18:09):
Of course, Joyce was a bit different with his stream
of consciousness kind of maximalist style. Hemingway was very much
a minimalist in that sense. And then the Impressionists, I
mean the painters. Hemingway really did look at a lot
of Impressionism as a way to evoke something real that
is more than the real, which is why you don't
have photorealistic paintings by Impressionist but more kind of grainy,

(18:30):
pointless style. That for me, that's what Hemingway really set
himself apart, was in this Iceberg theory where you do
not reveal at least sixty seventy percent of the story,
let the reader participate in the own experience, and whether
or not you know Hemingways could be read. I still

(18:50):
believe though I live in Paris and I read a
lot of writers who inevitably read him because they came
to Paris. But I do think he had it outsized
influence on people like James Baldwin and Henry Miller, and
I mean Annias then was there afterwards, Janet Flanner was
a great friend of his, and so many people that
he was a part of. I think that's the thing
we forget. He was not at the top. Janet Flanner

(19:11):
was already there, Grichard Stein was already there, Joyce was
already there. Yeah, he is part of a conversation, which,
of course, as Americans, we want to believe he was
at the top of that conversation, but the still will
not the stake, you know.

Speaker 2 (19:25):
And I think that compounded with the fact that, as
you mentioned, you know, people are constantly asking you, oh,
do you want to be like Hemingway, Like he has
this sort of presence for us. I think we often
read his image of Paris as this kind of nostalgia
of when Paris was at, you know, its peak, and
it really did feel like a movable feast in the

(19:46):
way that it's portrayed maybe in Midnight in Paris, when
Woody Allen gets his fingers on it. That's kind of
this idea of Paris, and I think a lot of
you know, young writers might move to Paris thinking that
that's what their life is going to look like. In
what ways do you sort of see that the feast
that Paris was in the twenties, in this feast that
Hemingway is describing in a movable feast, is still in

(20:10):
Paris well, and which are gone?

Speaker 3 (20:13):
Well, you bring up a great reference, because Midnight in Paris,
I think, is a quintessential example of the ways in
which we can decide to view Paris. In that film,
of course, Owen Wilson's character decides to view Paris in
one way, and it's kind of invited into a deeper
strata because he chooses to believe in the magic and
the romance of it.

Speaker 4 (20:31):
His wife is the opposite.

Speaker 3 (20:32):
She thinks it's dirty and smelly and French people are
rude to cliche. And to this day, I think you
can choose how to live in Paris in that way,
especially as a young artist who has little money. But
that's not kind of the point you can live in
Paris very cheaply. The biggest difference between then and now
was certainly financial. I mean, it's much more expensive to
live in Paris now than it would have been right

(20:53):
after World War One when the dollar was so strong.
I remember, as we might, you know, the dollar used
to be much better than it is now in terms
of the euro. So that is a big challenge, but
it still doesn't really change the fundamental reality of walking
to Thenewe and sitting down on the banks of the
Seine with a ba get in the cheese. I mean,
it's a cliche for a reason. By get in cheese

(21:14):
costs you less than five euros, and that's a meal
if you're twenty five and don't care about getting a vegetables.

Speaker 4 (21:19):
You know.

Speaker 3 (21:20):
So for me, it is still fundamentally the same Paris,
because I choose to view it as the same Paris.
When I go past a cafe that I know James
Baldwin or Hemingway stat I think about the fact that
they sat there, and I say, wow, this is me
sitting in front of this cafe. I could also look
at the busy traffic in the bus beeping at me
and say, oh, Paris is too loud. I got to
get to the countryside. I mean, your perception really is

(21:43):
your reality in Paris, arguably more than most places, because
there's so much opportunity to really live in that dream,
which is why so many people who meet folks like
myself who live in Paris get annoyed by my constant
romanticization of it. But that's a choice in life, is
to romanticize, and Paris allows you to do it in
a very visceral way, So I don't really see.

Speaker 4 (22:06):
Much of a difference.

Speaker 3 (22:08):
I mean I talked to my wife, Shoots, a photographer
who met me and moved to Paris within a year
of knowing me, because she'd always had the dream of
Paris too. But we talk often about, you know, if
we will one day think of the good old days.
And my kind of goal in life is too not
imagine that the good old days is something that has
to be over. I mean, I do believe you can.

(22:29):
Each chapter in life has an opportunity to view it
within its own context, and Paris has been You see
the old people in Paris walking around, They're still part
of society. One of my great friends, John Baxter, he's
eighty four years old. He's still more vivacious than a
lot of thirty year olds I know, and it's because
he still reads about Paris, learns about Paris, writes about Paris.

(22:50):
There's never the Hamingway's point any ending to it, So
it's up to your own perspective how you want to imagine.
This is not like it used to be, or this
is the extual just as good as it always has been.
That's my political platform for Paris.

Speaker 4 (23:06):
I love it.

Speaker 2 (23:08):
I think there is something there's something interesting about the
fact that we have all of these sort of storied
locations that have you know, that are almost haunted in
the most pleasant way by these past literary grades. The
kinds of places where people go to meet today are
not necessarily the same as those old school cafes you know,

(23:32):
having way used to go is still there, but these days,
you know, when people say, oh, let's meet up there,
meeting up at like an Australian style coffeehouse to get
a flat white with oatmel Paris is a modern city.
Now do you see any of that modernity or globalization
threatening what's always made Paris so quintessentially Paris?

Speaker 3 (23:54):
I do, in one very kind of evidence sense to me,
which has been the past couple years, of the amount
of signs or stores that are just all in English,
whether it's like a donut cop or to your point,
like a coffee roaster that says it's a coffee roaster
and doesn't even bother to have the French translation. I mean,
in France, there is the law for any advertisement you
need to have the French translation. You'll always see the

(24:17):
asterisk at the bottom of a poster in the Metro.
I find that at least disrespectful when businesses don't acknowledge
the fact that they exist in a French speaking land,
and that for me is the biggest threat is this
kind of instagramification of spaces that are good for the camera.
They look attractive to people from across the world. People

(24:37):
want to come there. I mean some of my favorite spots.
I used to have a lot of coffee at the
Swedish Institute, which is not even a French institution, but
beautiful courtyard and great coffee. They serve filter coffee, but
one of the few places you can get a free refill,
so I would often go there and I noticed a
couple of years ago they have beautiful Swedish pastries, but
then there's a huge line of people trying to take

(24:58):
photos of it. So I do think that the lack
of desire to speak French for a lot of the
Anglophone expect community, or maybe not even anglephone. I mean,
English is an easier language to learn from most people
in the world. In French, though it makes sense. I
have noticed signs, especially in stores that do not have
French on any part of their marquee, as kind of

(25:20):
a threat in the sense of I don't I'm not
in Paris to drink flat whites. I'd like a flat white.
I'll order a flat white, and there's great places to
get it. But I would not want to see a
world in which that was the predominant business because the
French are nationalists, were better and for worse, but they're
proud of it. And I do think in this era

(25:40):
of we see globalism as an idea that works very well,
but also doesn'tily give people their sense of belonging to
a space that they grew up in, in a heritage
that they believe in. So that's that's the constant balance
of being, you know. I was born in France to
a Spanish dad and American mother and grew up in

(26:01):
the States but moved back to France. So I'm certainly
a hodgepodge of things. But if you're a business owner
out there, yeah, put some French on the window too.
You are in Paris, you'd like to attract the French clientele.
Those are there going to be the stalwarts, not the
tourists who are here one year and then did appear.

Speaker 2 (26:18):
One thing I think can be a little irksome in
the way that we talk about France, especially when we
talk about France from the outside looking in, is that
we look at all of the amazing elements of French culture,
from the hour long lunch breaks to the five weeks
of vacation to the presence of robust healthcare and you know, childcare,

(26:39):
and we try and cherry pick elements of what works
in the French system. I mean, from that to even
just you know, how do you be a Flannel when
you're not in France? And I always find it hard
to sort of divorce any aspect of the culture from
the rest of it. But I do wonder is there
anything that you would say, you know, if you did
want to sort of appeal to this idea of a fet,

(27:01):
of including more fet spirit in your life. What would
sort of your approach be to stop having so many
you know sahe and have more of a fet.

Speaker 4 (27:15):
That's a great question.

Speaker 3 (27:18):
I mean, one thing I've done for done, I've just
enjoyed doing for the past thirteen years, is going to
a bar every Monday night, and whoever is there is there,
and whoever isn't isn't. But that almost becomes a religious
attitude towards certain days that are sacred. I mean, you know,
the weekend comes from that idea, and the French certainly
have a history of what is sacred and not. The

(27:41):
cafe and the terrorists is sacred, the lunch is sacred,
the vacation is sacred. And I think part of that
ritualized way of life is something that the French do
extremely well, whether it's the cheese plate and the way
that the cheese is served and what it's served with,
or thetif after.

Speaker 4 (27:57):
A long meal.

Speaker 3 (27:59):
There's such a lack of ual in a secular world,
which makes sense because that's a lot of the past
decades of the rejection of everything ritualized in the religious sense.
But the French have maintained and done a pretty deaf
job of maintaining that ritualized aspect of life, even if
it doesn't have a religious connotation, least on the service.
That's the thing about being in the US. Every time

(28:20):
I come here, people are just so busy, and the
reason they're busy is they stay.

Speaker 4 (28:22):
They're busy.

Speaker 3 (28:23):
I think that you have fundamentally crossed the threshold when
you stay, you're busy. You've already set yourself up to
be busy. And the French can be busy, but they
also recognize in that busyness there is ritual and the
time the meal is the meal. You don't eat your
sandwich on the go because that's lunch, even if you're
the busiest you've ever been. I would imagine most French
people do not sacrifice it just because they could, say

(28:45):
forty five minutes. And that's the value of ritual, which
is religious, I think.

Speaker 4 (28:49):
So.

Speaker 3 (28:49):
I think wherever we are in the world, ritual is
extremely valuable to create that sense of community and fetes,
which is a reason to gather that is more than
just an excuse. There's actual reason for it, and there's
never any limit to the reasons you can define, you know,
so that would. Yeah, the ritualization of life is something
that is definitely I've been taught by living in France.

(29:12):
In Europe, generally, each culture has its own rituals, and
you know what our best Americans are from everywhere else.
So it's about reconnecting with those rituals of our own
ethnic heritage and sharing them, not making them exclusive, but inclusive.

Speaker 2 (29:26):
You know, if you're enjoying this episode of Navigating the French,
you may also be interested in our sister podcast, Paris
a State of Mind, where real estate experts Gail and
Marie give you all the tips and tricks you need
about renting and buying apartments in Paris and beyond. Navigating
the French will be right back after a ward from
our sponsors. Well, thank you so much Samuel for joining

(29:55):
me today. I'm going to put a link to your
newest book in the show notes, so anybody who wants
to check that out definitely should. You also write a
great substack newsletter which I will link to as well.
I very much encourage people who want to hear more
of Samuel's approach to French culture and French life to
check that out and subscribe. Is there anywhere else where.

(30:15):
We can find you out in the world online in books.

Speaker 3 (30:20):
Honestly, yeah, those were great links. I mean my website,
Samuel Lopez Barantis semwell is actually just Stamuel, but there's
an accent my dad's Spanish, so just Samuel Lopez Barantis
dot com. That's my website and you can find everything
if you want, walks or writing and my music as well.

Speaker 4 (30:35):
Thank you for having me here.

Speaker 3 (30:36):
I'm also excited to delve into your substack whenever I'm
on vacation. I finally have some time to look in
to explore the contours of the world in Paris, so
we'll have to have a copy when I get back
and talk about writing in life and the fet and
all the rest of it.

Speaker 2 (30:50):
Sounds perfect. We'll have to find a Parisian cafe to
do it in.

Speaker 4 (30:54):
Yes, probably without a flat white, although I do enjoy a.

Speaker 2 (30:57):
Flat one cosforably with a menu in French.

Speaker 4 (31:00):
There we go.

Speaker 2 (31:01):
Yeah, amazing, great, Well, thank you so much, have a
fantastic rest of your day U and see you soon.

Speaker 4 (31:08):
Thank you. Emily.

Speaker 2 (31:12):
This has been navigating the French. You can find more
from me Emily Monico at Emily Underscore in Underscore France
on Twitter and Instagram. This podcast is produced by Paris
Underground Radio. To listen to other episodes of this podcast,
or to discover more podcasts like it, please visit Paris
Underground Radio dot com. Thanks for listening and abentu.

Speaker 1 (31:33):
This episode of Navigating the French was produced by Jennifer
Garrity for Paris Underground Radio. For more great content, join
us on Patreon at Patreon dot com slash Paris Underground
Radio