Paris to the Moon

In Paris to the Moon, American author and New Yorker contributor Adam Gopnik presents a collection of essays that explore the five years between 1995 and 2000 that he spent living in Paris. Comprised of 23 essays and journal entries and published by Random House in 2000, Paris to the Moon blends the insights of a cultural historian with the firsthand accounts of a memoirist, giving one expatriate's unique perspective on the changing cultural, political, and economic landscape of the City of Light. Many of the pieces in this collection first appeared in The New Yorker.

The first portion of the book, titled "The Winter Circus," finds Gopnik arriving in Paris with his wife Martha and their young son, Luke. Their entrée to the city is at a time of great sociopolitical change, with Parisians in mostly public sector jobs taking to the streets in opposition to wage cutbacks and the slashing of benefits and social welfare programs. As Gopnik watches this movement gain power and eventually serve as a turning point in the battle against the social reforms advocated by the Prime Minister, he also sees the effects of the strike on daily life—particularly, its effects on a young family just arrived from the States. At one point, he tries to find a turkey to cook in celebration of the American Thanksgiving, but the striking city makes this seemingly straightforward task virtually impossible.

The book's second section, "Distant Errors," centers on Gopnik and his family attempting to navigate the labyrinthine bureaucracies required for Americans to settle in a foreign country. In the essay "The Rules of the Sport," Gopnik sets out to do something that appears, on the surface, simple enough. He wants to join a gym. But in tribute to the bureaucracies and endless cycles of petty paper-pushing that keep organizations of all sizes aloft, Gopnik must fill out reams of paperwork, attend meetings with gym bigwigs, and even submit to a physical examination. This ordeal serves as a symbol of all the larger systems in place—both in Paris and around the world—that make fairly simple processes needlessly complex.



But life is not all trial and paperwork in Paris. Gopnik and his wife settle in, and Luke immediately takes to the city, considering it his home. He learns English and French simultaneously, and it is this introduction to a new culture that Gopnik cites as his primary reason for wanting to settle there with his family. The Gopniks find great joy in the carousel at the Luxembourg Gardens, the public park in the sixth arrondissement of Paris. Gopnik does his regular jogging at the park as well, using the bust of artist Eugene Delacroix to map out his routes.

In the book's third section, "Lessons from Things," Gopnik discusses some distinctly French experiences as a way of addressing the country's waning cultural influence. The essay "Couture Shock" looks at Parisian fashion. "The Crisis in French Cooking" is a tribute to the country's rich culinary heritage and its faltering position of gastronomic superiority. The essay "Barney in Paris" charts Gopnik's attempts to save Luke from the ravages of a child phenom that, at the time, achieves overwhelming popularity: Barney, the big purple dinosaur. In all of the pieces of this section, Gopnik utilizes his position as a French outsider to fully illustrate how the effects of global capitalism wreak havoc on so many of the things the world considers quintessentially French. If things like fashion and cooking, once thought to be French strongholds, could fall victim to encroaching globalism, what's stopping a big purple dinosaur from taking over?

"A Machine to Draw the World," the collection's final section, continues this theme. In "The Balzar Wars," Gopnik and his neighbors stage a small-scale strike when a restaurant magnate buys out their favorite local brasserie. They organize a "dine-in," in which they reserve all the tables in the entire restaurant for a specific night and essentially occupy the space. Miraculously, the stunt works, and the brasserie remains open. But it is indicative of a problem that Gopnik sees all around him in Paris, the reach of voracious capitalistic influences that have little respect or regard for cultural boundaries or institutions. It is not a pattern unique to France by any means, but given his position as an expat on the boundaries of Parisian society, he sees the reality—and danger—of the situation with remarkable clarity. He seems to be reminding us that we are all at risk of losing the flavors of what make us who we are when the forces of greed and money bulldoze our cultural touchstones.



In the end, Martha gives birth to a daughter, Olivia—"a new French baby." Though the Gopniks eventually leave Paris and return to the States, these essays are both a love letter to the city the family adopts as their second home and a lament over the changes bearing down on the Parisian way of life. But their half-decade in the city is one Gopnik remembers as an overwhelmingly positive and educational time. "We went to Paris for a sentimental education," he writes in the book's first essay, "even though the sentiments we were instructed in were not the ones we were expecting to learn, which is why I believe they call it an education."