Diane Johnson has written nine novels, two biographies, a travel book, half a dozen screenplays (including “The Shining” with Stanley Kubrick), and countless essays and reviews. She’s always got good critical coverage, and been nominated twice for the Pulitzer Prize. But something new happened when she moved to Paris and turned her sharp and witty pen to chronicling the lives of American expats: the resulting novel, “Le Divorce,” became her first airport best-seller.
“It quite amazed me,” Johnson says, in her rather grand Left Bank apartment. She is a tiny, alert woman who perches on the edge of the sofa like a sparrow. “And I found that I really liked the idea that people were actually reading my books.” She blames the success on the American love affair with Paris, though the book’s clever mix of comedy, sensuality and astute asides about the collision of two cultures didn’t hurt. This spring she published a second Paris novel, “Le Mariage,” and after three years of hesitating, a French editor (le NiL) has just released “Le Divorce.”
The French title, Une américaine à Paris, fits nicely. “Le Divorce” is narrated by Isabel Walker, a young Californian who comes to Paris to babysit for her sister Roxy and ends up having a torrid affair with a 70-year-old French diplomat. “Le Mariage” features several of the same characters, but is more like a companion volume than sequel. The intricate plot involves two couples brought together by a murder in a flea market. One, American Tim and French Anne-Sophie, are engaged to be married, while the other, reclusive director Serge Cray and his beautiful American wife Clara, are bored after 12 years of conjugal life.
The setting, Americans in Paris in various stages of integration, confusion and discovery, is reminiscent of Henry James, but the light tone owes more to Jane Austen. The characters all have funny things to say — “most Frenchwomen over 40 are blonde,” for instance, or “you Americans with your tiring, incessant smiling” — but more serious themes are never far away. “Le Mariage” in particular builds to a powerful climax in which love, fidelity and honor are all in the balance.
Johnson first came here because of her husband’s work. But she feels part of a tradition of American writers in Paris. “When you think about it many writers, maybe even most, go somewhere else to write.” she says. “Think of D.H. Lawrence going to America or Joyce to Trieste. I don’t mean immodest comparisons, but for all those Americans coming to Europe, maybe it helps in getting detached from your roots.”
She’s quick to add that she is not fleeing anything back home. She appreciates the solitude and freedom of the expat. “But not that romantic dream that used to exist in Hemingway’s days. In fact, I don’t really know what Hemingway’s dream was,” she says with a laugh. “Probably just escaping. He didn’t seem to be that interested in France, actually. He was interested in the Spanish Civil War, and bullfighting. And drink, Europe represented cheap drink.”
“Le Divorce” is a coming-of-age novel, the story of a young américaine who comes to Europe and discovers sex, politics and the glories of high culture, mostly in the arms of an elderly lover. So do these old stereotypes — France as the Old World, civilized but cynical, and America as the New, naive and optimistic — still mean anything? Johnson believes that there has been an important role reversal since the days of Henry James.
“That was one of the things I wanted to suggest,” she explains. “That now it’s Europe and France that represent certain Old World values, like the family, stability, living in one place, having roots, which America has completely lost. So that when Americans come to Europe, they are in fact introducing division, crime, drugs, cultural cynicism, a-historicism, many things that Europeans find bad.” We are no longer the innocent ones: “the naïveté now belongs to the French, because they still believe in culture, and that you should go and see your grandmother on Sunday.”
Asked if the information age has helped the two cultures to understand each other better, she replies: “Well I think the French think that they know more about Americans, because they see all those movies. And the Americans positively do not know anything more about the French than they ever did! They still have these stereotyped ideas of French maids and haughty waiters, and that’s about it. French is still a synonym for sex, French letters, French ticklers. I’ve had to read French women’s magazines to get an impression about French sex, which makes it seem pretty much like American sex.”
Johnson is very good at describing the ambiguous relationship all expats have with our nationalities: we don’t want to be a representative of our country, or do we? “There’s a lot of ambivalence,” she agrees. “When I come to France I feel more American than when I’m in America. In America, you look around and you’re cast almost immediately into the role of critic. At least in France you have sometimes to be a defender.”
One of the themes of both books is that France can teach America a lot about pleasure. “I think the French have a huge grasp of the point of life, which is to be happy and comfortable,” she explains. “Not that they always succeed, but they aim for it, they try to organize their cities, organize their lives to incorporate pleasure. This is something that is completely unknown in America... The whole structure of American cities is designed for some sort of rather inconvenient ideal of commerce. The average Los Angeles person spends two hours in his car. Nobody ever thinks, that’s two hours out of your life! Every day. That’s a month a year that you’re spending in your car, when you could be having a vacation, like Europeans.”
She admires the long lunches, the leisurely Sunday meals with family and friends. “Europe is giving up some of these things, but at least they are aware of them as an ideal. The French see a point to life, which Americans really don’t.”
So can we look forward to a third Paris book? “I think I might be able to run it into the ground, yes. There’s a certain tradition of trilogies. I’m still here, and there’s certainly much more to say.”