French Lit Bike Advocacy Blogging

My sister once bought me a French bestseller, "La première gorgée de bière" by Philippe Delerm. A collection of essays on the "minuscule pleasures of life" such as that first [this is where I realise to my surprise that English doesn't have a word for gorgée. Neither gulp nor sip nor swig are quite right. Russian, though, has an almost direct translation - глоток.] gulp of beer. I mention it because, surprisingly, it has a message about biking that I want to talk about.

This is a book which is bad in general and good specifically. The mawkish nostalgic sentimentality of it all can make you roll your eyes (my sister and I jokingly looked for the part of each essay where Delerm talks about how the subject thing/action reminds him of youth - and indeed, everything from carrying a pocket knife to ordering port to shelling peas does get that mention). On the other hand, the book is rife with tiny mundane observations that you've never made but that strike you as exactly right when you read them. And the language is perfectly crisp and precise in a way even I, whose French is quite bad, can appreciate. It's a trifling book, written terrifically well.

The book, sez Google, has been translated into English as "The Small Pleasures of Life", or "We Could Almost Eat Outside". You can check out a couple chapters on google books. It seems to lack some of the charm and the crispness in English. Also, somehow the "you" pronoun just doesn't seem right.

The second to last essay in the collection is called "La bicyclette et le vélo". I couldn't find online in English so here it is in the original French. I would translate it "The Cycle and the Bike", but I see the actual translator called it "Cycle or Bicycle?" I would encourage you to read it, but the point I want to make is this: Delerm talks about two kinds of people who ride bicycles: "cycle people" and "bike people". For the former, biking is about lightness. For the latter, it's about heaviness. It's a good classification. Kind of an Unbearable Lightness of Biking, if you will.

The kind of people who bike in Seattle are predominantly "cycle people". They wear spandex and have clip-in pedals. Their bikes are good and they ride fast. (and yes, hipsters on fixies are "cycle people" too, just a different breed). These people are the people who care most about biking, so they are most involved in bike advocacy. They take the exercise and/or hobby aspects of biking quite seriously. In this I agree with them, but they are not good authorities on what to do in terms of bicycle policy if you want to get more people to bicycle. Seattle has very few "bike people". Where are they all?

Herpes

What's the difference between herpes and true love? When Bill Jr. doesn't answer - is now really the time for such jokes - Bill Sr. comes back with the punchline: herpes is forever. A grown-up slap on the back (added in the retelling) and that's the sex-talk part of parental lore done with. Done right.

On the wall beside the urinal in the College Inn Pub in fat black marker, "I Hate Disco Like Herpes." Will points out that this could mean many things. It could be that the writer hates disco in a similar fashion to the way he hates herpes. It could also mean, in brief directions-on-a-bus-window English, that he hates disco, whereas herpes he likes. Then there's the possibility that he hates disco-like herpes, the herpes that started some time in the late 70's, breaks out on the dancefloor, and won't let you sit still. Another, equally unlikely possibility is that he hates disco that is like herpes. But where's the punchline? Here it is again in blue pen on the wall beside the urinal - "and just like herpes, disco will never go away."

Herpes, the hilarity never ends. Sort of like herpes itself.

Writerly Aspirations

Being a professional writer is considered pretty fantastic. Wanting to become a writer, though, is not. My grandfather once taught a workshop for aspiring writers. In an article published after he died, one of his former students remembered fondly that he started the workshop by saying "if at least one of you stops wanting to become a writer by the end of the course, I will consider it a success."

Now, say you are taking a woodworking class and on the first day, the instructor goes "I'll consider myself to have succeeded if when this ends, y'all stop wanting to make shit out of wood." What would you think of that? I don't even know, because that will not ever happen. If you are a craftsman, wouldn't you want others to share your love of the craft, even if they can't share your craftsmanship? For woodwork, I think the answer is clearly yes, but for writing, it's not so obvious. Even if you don't buy my grandfather's opening statement, still it's true that aspiring writers are held in contempt. Why is this?

Is it that successful writers are snobs, who think they are so much better than their writing peers? Is it that successful writers are jealous of their own success, and resent the possibility of others doing well? Is it that non-writers think (like one of the sisters in Happiness) that they could easily become writers if they'd wanted to, or that writing is dilettantish and just what you do when you're a lazy good-for-nothing? I do not doubt that all these explanations play a part. But I think an important part of the explanation is this: there are no scribes anymore.

The world doesn't need scribes - and hasn't needed them for a long time. Being a scribe isn't even a reasonable hobby. But what would you think of a composer who had never played any music? Isn't trying to be a writer without first apprenticing as a scribe the same thing?