Où est la bibliothèque?

By Larry Cohen c. 2026

I have never been enamored with the French. I never thought much of their morose and gory revolutionary tactics of chopping off the heads of their royalty, something that they must regret dearly when they see the thousands of tourists flocking to Buckingham Palace each year. What’s more is that, according to historians, they liberated only seven prisoners from the Bastille on that day, July 14th, 1789. In the 20th Century, it was we Americans that had to “save their bacon” as it is said, in two World Wars.

Frankly, I am not a Francophile, a word that I don’t use often. I don’t even like their language, a language that, when written, looks nothing like the way in which it is spoken. And, why are they so obsessed as to where their library is located? “Où est la bibliothèque?” This is the first sentence that everyone learns in French class. From my own Latin class I do remember that “all of Gaul is divided into three parts”: I just can’t remember which three parts at the moment.

In my own mind, It doesn’t seem to take too much brain power for Descartes to come up with, “I think therefore I am”, though he did unify algebra with geometry (some say he plagiarized that from an early work). This allowed us to get a crack at taking a class in analytical geometry some 300 years later, No thank you, Monsieur Descartes.

And, who benefited the most from the Thirty Years War, the bloodiest war in European history? The French, of course. The same people who left us with a little war in French Indo-China called Vietnam that would cost us, in human terms alone, 60,000 dead and over 300,000 wounded. But, thankfully, it only lasted half as long. If the Peace Talks for that senseless war in Vietnam were held in Scranton, Pennsylvania insead of Paris, those talks (and the war) would have been over in a week.

Growing up in the era of television cartoons, who was the crazy trapper from French Quebec? Crazy Pierre, right?. And, what culture would allow their grand-père and grand-mère to bake in overheated, oven-like apartments in the city while the grandchildren are “hanging out” at the beach on the Riviera?

Why do the Swiss insist on putting a wine bottle opener on those Swiss Mountain Army knives? It’s because their French outdoorsmen would rather drink wine instead of gathering wood like everyone else.

Most of us don’t realize it but the Eiffel Tower was constructed for the Paris World’s Fair in 1889. It was going to be dismantled when the fair was over. However, the French military got wind that they might soon be at war and the tower could be used for radio communications. Now the Eiffel Tower is the very symbol of Paris.

When the Germans marched into Paris in June,1940, the French applauded. When the Americans marched in a few years later, they applauded again. If space aliens were to hold a parade down the Champs-Élysées before they were going to invade and occupy France, the Parisians would most likely be applauding them as well.

No, Sir. There is no love lost between me and the French. Maybe I should go and watch “Casablanca” again. (b/w, 1941)