住巴黎，毁三观

FT专栏作家Simon Kuper显然不喜欢巴黎，他用幽默的文笔把巴黎人引以为豪的东西差不多挨个黑了一遍，而最后的结尾却出人意料。

测试中可能遇到的词汇和知识：

hoot[huːt] n./v.喊叫；鸣响

snooty ['snuːtɪ];haughty haughty adj.傲慢自大的；目中无人的

city proper 城市市区部分

“Hell is other people.” “他人即地狱。”是让-保尔·萨特在剧作《间隔》中广为人知的一句台词。其原意简单来说：萨特的存在主义哲学认为“存在先于本质”，而人如何存在决定于自己的行为，也就是说人通过选择自己的行为定义自己的本质。而现实生活中，我们常常身不由己地被“他人”的目光所左右，甚至做出本不希望的选择，剧中主人公就在这种情况下喊出了这句话。

aghast[ə'gɑːst] adj.吃惊的，惊骇的

all-encompassing adj.无所不包的

faux pas['fəu'pɑ:] n.（法）失礼，失态

bona fide[,bəunə'faidi] adj.善意的，真诚的

cantankerous [kæn'tæŋk(ə)rəs] adj.脾气坏的；难相处的

When a man is tired of Paris … (840 words)

As we all climbed off the Eurostar on to the platform at the Gare du Nord the other evening, an electric luggage-truck rattled straight at us, hooting angrily. Welcome to Paris.

It’s the eternal paradox of Paris: why is the world’s most charming metropolis also the most unfriendly? As the universal phrase goes, “I love Paris. I just hate Parisians.”

When I moved here in 2002, I rejected that view. I was determined to learn Parisian codes. I knew this city has a complex etiquette. I thought that once I’d learnt the importance of saying bonjour at every encounter, or of not walking into a restaurant demanding dinner at 6pm while wearing shorts, I would gradually break through Parisian rudeness.

It was my mission. More than a decade later, I can say: beneath the snooty unfriendly façade, Paris is a snooty, unfriendly city. I can even explain why.

A good chunk of Parisian service-worker rudeness – exemplified by the luggage-truck driver – comes from the French Revolution. The storming of the Bastille culminated in a national motto of liberté, égalité, fraternité, which is understood by many French service staff to mean that they should never be friendly to a customer lest that be fatally misinterpreted as submission.

Overcrowding must take some blame too. More than two million people live in Paris proper, the bit inside the périphérique ringroad. The abyss beyond the périph is vaguely imagined by haughty Parisians as either hell or the void or both, and dismissed as “the suburbs”. Every day, hordes of suburbanites and tourists (Paris is on some measures the most visited city on earth) feed the throng inside the city proper. That was probably what the Parisian Jean-Paul Sartre meant by, “Hell is other people.”

In Paris, the only response is to fight them. Neighbours here seldom regard you as potential members of their circle. You are just people who happen to live in their building, and therefore potential sources of noise and hassle.

But the strongest explanatory variable for Parisian rudeness (and I’m aghast it’s taken me a decade to work this out) is Paris’s very perfection. If you overlay an intellectual capital on an artistic and fashion capital in a former royal capital, all of it in the country that invented how to eat, there are so many codes governing so many behaviours that the demands of sophistication become all-encompassing. No other city makes so many requirements. Every moment of their lives, even at family breakfast or in bed, Parisians must observe the rules that govern eating, talking, thinking, dressing, making love et cetera. There’s even a generally approved life-long pose: never seem surprised; bored is much better.

In Paris, Big Brother (often in the form of oneself or one’s spouse) is always watching to see if you commit a faux pas. Whenever you do, he’ll let you know – perhaps with a silence, or a pained glance away. There is no intimate Paris where you can slob out in old underpants. (Admittedly, Parisian dress codes are less strict than in, say, Italy. Most of the time here it’s OK to look dowdy – though never weird.) In all, Paris is a nightmare of sophistication. Only in one field of local endeavour do no rules apply: driving.

Nor are Parisians allowed to laugh off their codes. My native informant Sophie-Caroline de Margerie – top civil servant, writer, fashionable Parisienne et cetera – says: “I’ve never met a bona fide French eccentric.” There is a right way to do everything in Paris, and it was probably decided before you were born. All the French provincials, Africans and romantics from everywhere who land here battle to adapt, sometimes forever. You try to be Parisian, to meet all the standards of perfection that mark this city, and so you sneer at anyone who falls short – for instance, by sitting down at the next restaurant table wearing the wrong jacket. Paris is a sneer. This attitude was summed up by the definitive Parisian film, Dîner de Cons (“Dinner of Fools”, 1998): a bunch of stylish Parisians hold a weekly dinner to which they each invite an unknowing con, “a fool”, in order to crow over their cons’ appearance, tastes, conversation etc. Parisian life is like a dîner de cons except that nobody would ever really invite the poor cons to dinner.

Especially in this most miserable month, when everyone has flu and you walk the children to school in the dark, you think: well, where else to go? Every city I’ve spent longer periods in has drawbacks. In New York it’s the battle for status that ceases only while you (briefly) sleep.

In Miami it’s the near absence of sentient conversation. Boston’s climate is uninhabitable. London is so big, grimy and unwieldy you often end the day feeling you have just paid a fortune to run a marathon in a coal mine. And so on. So I stay here (Paris has certain redeeming features), and every day I become older, ruder and more cantankerous.

请根据你所读到的文章内容，完成以下自测题目：

1.The columnist describes "the eternal paradox of Paris", what is it?

A. Paris is the world’s most charming metropolis, also the most unfriendly.

B. "Liberté, égalité, fraternité" is understood by many service staff as "never be friendly to a customer".

C. Beneath the snooty unfriendly façade, Paris is actually very charming.

D. Parisians living inside the ringroad believe that "Hell is other people".

答案(1)

2.Why in Paris, are there so many codes governing so many behaviours?

A. Paris is a capital filled with intellectuals.

B. Paris is a capital of artistic lifestyles and fashions.

C. Paris is a former royal capital.

D. All of above combined.

答案(2)

3.What can we learn from the movie "Dinner of Fools" and "the country that invented how to eat"?

A. France is the country that invented cooking.

B. Parisians enjoy provicial cuisine.

C. Parisians have a tradition of inviting the poor to dinner.

D. French people enjoy mocking English food.

答案(3)

4.The columnist describes drawbacks about some cities he has lived in.

Which of the following is correct?

A. Miami's weather is too hot.

B. People in Boston are indifferent.

C. In New York people battle for status everyday.

D. London's price level is high but the air is cleaner.

答案(4)

* * *

(1) 答案：A.Paris is the world’s most charming metropolis, also the most unfriendly.

解释：作者在第二段提出了这个看法，随后的文章由此展开。B是作者的一句半严肃半玩笑的话，用来嘲笑那些态度恶劣的服务业人员。C与作者观点相反，他说他花了10年才搞懂，原来巴黎的傲慢和冷漠的外表下，藏着的确实是一颗傲慢冷漠的心。D是没有根据的。作者原意是：巴黎市中心的人，本来就自命清高，对住市郊的人和外地游客每天成群的涌入市区更是感到不爽，这也许可以用“他人即地狱”的字面意来描述吧。

(2) 答案：D.All of above combined.

解释：ABC都是正确的。Paris is a nightmare of sophistication.因为它同时是三种首都，并且是一个"自认为发明了如何吃饭"的国家首都。巴黎人每分每秒的生活都要被一些规矩所支配，eating, talking, thinking, dressing，只有一个例外，那就是如何开车。 作者顺便吐槽了巴黎的交通。

(3) 答案：D.French people enjoy mocking English food.

解释：A显然是夸张的说法，是作者为了嘲笑法国人的自恋——尤其是在美食上的自恋。——因此D也就可想而知。B在文中并未出现，不过根据上下文推断，巴黎人估计是只许“外省人”喜欢巴黎的美食，而不大愿意曲下身段去欣赏外地的美食.C也是不存在的，这只是一部电影中描述巴黎人的情景，说他们爱嘲笑各种“没有巴黎范儿”的人。

(4) 答案：C.In New York people battle for status everyday.

解释：AB文中未提到。作者原意是迈阿密人给人一副事不关己高高挂起的姿态，波士顿的天气太差了（亏他还是英国人）， 纽约人简直是《金钱永不眠》，而住在伦敦，就像是倾家荡产来参加煤矿中的马拉松一样。

在这里作者笔锋一转，So I stay here (in Paris)…

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