![[Divorce, Franco-American style]](divorce970218.gif)
Diane Johnson examines the not-so-innocents abroad.
near the end of Diane Johnson's latest novel, "Le Divorce" (Dutton, 309 pages), Isabel Walker, a young American who has moved to Paris to escape her California roots, asks herself a question that is likely to resonate with thousands of American expatriates: "Are Americans still Americans when they are transplanted, or do they become something else?" It's a question that has preoccupied Johnson since she began splitting her time between Paris and San Francisco three years ago. Through the misadventures of Isabel and her sister Roxy, a pregnant poet whose French husband has left her for another woman, Johnson examines those qualities considered to be quintessentially American -- naiveté, youthful idealism and a frustrating but often charming ignorance -- and juxtaposes them against the sophistication and stubborn rationalism of the French. The result is a funny and insightful twist on the classic American-in-Paris tale. Johnson is that rarity, a true person of letters. She is the author of numerous novels (including "Persian Nights" and "The Shadow Knows"), several nonfiction books (including a biography, "Dashiell Hammett," and a collection of travel essays, "Natural Opium") and a screenplay ("The Shining"), and she contributes regular pieces to the New York Review of Books. Salon caught up with Johnson at her part-time home on San Francisco's Telegraph Hill, where she spoke about American stereotypes, French feminism, automobiles and the irony of having to leave home in order to figure out where you're from.
Isabel, the protagonist of "Le Divorce," is very aware of living out a cliché -- the fresh-faced, and in her case, not-so-innocent young American woman abroad. Were you poking fun at her, or poking holes at the stereotype? I was completely sympathetic to her, but I did think of her as prototypical in some way, rather than stereotypical -- I hope she wasn't a stereotype. But also, I thought of her as the anti-prototype to Isabel Archer. It's just a coincidence that the film "Portrait of a Lady" has just now come out, but I did have Henry James' heroine in mind. Isabel Archer was all these American things, but in fact she submits meekly to her fate. She was also a 19th century woman. The new American woman has more options, more spunk, more sense of autonomy. But that too is a common stereotype. There's always a germ of truth underlying stereotypes. For instance, the French women do wear those scarves. And what do those scarves symbolize? I guess they symbolize a kind of gesture of participation in an ongoing collective, seductive enterprise of attractiveness. They are a way of getting up for being out in the world or on the street, in a way that we don't because we mistrust the street or people we're going to meet. If we act too seductive, there'll be all these issues of "Was she asking for it?" It's such a different attitude of being out there and interacting with the world. I don't think it's conscious, I think it's just the way it is. It seems some of those attitudes could be chalked up to the confused state of American feminism, something that has often baffled the French. French feminism comes from such a different place, in that French women have a better starting point. They have a somewhat higher status, though they might not agree with that. They're not really able to understand American feminism, which, for its part, has become rather baroque in its demands and perceptions. It's distanced from people's lives. French feminism, such as it is, is more pragmatic and more willing to analyze how the lives of women really are. But the French I find rather too unsympathetic to feminism; they just don't understand how things are in Anglo-Saxon countries. So I would have to say I'm an American feminist, rather than a French woman. Paris is always characterized as such a romantic place, yet the French are such stubborn rationalists -- a characteristic manifested in Edgar, the elder statesman Isabel falls for. Yes, it's almost anti-romantic. I think that's my perception of it -- that it's totally ruled by reason and calculation in a way. Not even in a bad way, really. Near the end of the novel, Edgar patronizes Isabel, telling her that "everyone knows" nations must build on the ruins of what came before. Yet that was never the case in this country. Yes, that's a good point. Americans are always criticized for their inability to respect or learn from history. We're always defining something as a new frontier. Given the rampant patriotism that Americans typically display abroad, you'd think more Americans were really proud of where they're from. But it seems most Americans are attached to the idea of our country rather than the reality of where they grew up. Funny, isn't it? It's paradoxical. I do think that there's a sort of inferiority complex, a national one, or an inferiority/superiority complex, which makes us wish to dominate and bluster. I can't explain it. But it's something that the French do in their education to convince their citizens that France is the greatest place. And we try to, but it's so unfounded on reality that the minute you test it against some reality you can't really agree. It's interesting, too, how having such a comparatively young national identity seems to manifest itself in individual personality, as with Edgar and Isabel. That has to be a lot of it. France has 2,000 years, and we have 200. It is an interesting question, but the French do a lot to reinforce people's sense of cultural identity, which I don't know if we do. I think we sort of dither because now we're onto diversity, for example, which is really not something the French would ever wish to promulgate. You can be a coal-black person from Africa, and you can start French school, and the history lesson is "you are a little French person and this is your heritage. Napoleon was your emperor 200 years ago." Everybody assimilates much more quickly. There's no cultural apology for pushing French culture on people, unlike here, where if you're a Serbo-Croatian-American, you want to insist that that is still some kind of distinct identity. What do you prefer about living in France? I'm a loyal American, but I have to say it probably is easier to live in France. One of the reasons is no driving -- the fact that you can just go out the door and either get a taxi, a bus, metro to transport you magically around. There's no parking, none of the anxieties associated with the automobile. I've come to understand how huge a role -- how huge a negative role -- that the automobile plays in our daily life. If Americans all would go and live in some other country that wasn't chained to the automobile, they would realize that we've sacrificed a third of our lives or something to it. It's a terrible misjudgment in our culture.
Details of illustrations from the cover of "Le Divorce" by Nina Berkson
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