April 15, 2012
Jean Touvet

Elise's husband, Jean Touvet, was born in 1950. As a child of the post-war era, he remembers how frugally it was necessary to live before les trente annees glorieuses --the thirty years of prosperity considered a "golden age" in modern France-- became a reality for his family. From a bourgeois family, he studied to become a doctor, completed the required eight years of study, but abandoned the profession, because he found that most doctors did not treat people individually, but according to the formulas learned in medical school. Upon graduation, he worked as a physical therapist, and as a nurse in a mental hospital. In 1985 he took a part-time job working for Besancon, developing anti-smoking and anti-alcoholism campaigns, a job he has held to this day, and thinks worthwhile.

He and Elise met in Besancon, and decided to raise their children while working part-time. One of their sons was born in the mountains, with only a mid-wife present, one was born at home, and one was born in a medical clinic. All were born naturally, without the placenta being cut immediately, without silver nitrate drops, without glaring lights. Jean was there for all three births. Jean and Elise worked hard to make their children responsible adults, home schooling until the children were ready for the French school system, finding a music program at the Besancon Conservatoire where they could study music, even sitting in on the classes and taking up instruments themselves. --All their sons play at least one instrument, and all have completed their studies: Basile, 31, is an osteopath in Bath, England; Gaspard, 27, works as an information technology manager in Geneva; and Theo, 24 --who studied physics at MIT and CalTech-- is now at circus school in Paris, trying to find a way to combine his interest in physics with circus performance, but leaving open the possibility that he will return to physics in a few years.

Jean readily acknowledges that the French educational system made it possible for his children to achieve the professional success they now enjoy. The French health system was not as much of a factor in their lives: Jean and Elise did not vaccinate their children against tuberculosis or measles, although they did vaccinate against polio, diphtheria and smallpox. Jean was the doctor-in-residence, but the children, like their parents, are in rude health, so they rarely saw a doctor.

There was also no television in the house, and no telephone. Elise's mother had a tendency to call to ask about every little thing, so Elise and Jean got rid of the telephone. Vacations were spent with the children, camping summer, fall, winter and spring. Jean did not play the role of head of the household: If Elise wanted to go skiing in the mountains, she went on her own, or with friends, and Jean stayed with the boys. Once, while Elise was away, and Jean was camping with his sons,Theo split his lip after falling off his bicycle. Rather than drive to the hospital, Jean sewed the wound closed on the camp table, reasoning that if he drove to the hospital, it would take longer than if he sutured the wound himself, and perhaps some further mishap would ensue there.

When I ask him how he thinks about the United States, he tells me that at university in France, students are taught that to live like Americans would take the resources of five planets like Earth. In saying this, Jean is underlining a major distinction between the two countries: decades after the end of the Second World War, France is still very frugal in some ways. In private homes, many lights have a timer, --le minutrie-- which shuts off lights in stairwells, or in the foyer, after so many minutes --if not seconds. Le minutrie is also often employed in public toilets or hotel bathrooms.

Jean freely admits, though, that most of his countrymen would, if given the choice, like to live like Americans, without thinking about how much electricity they are using, or without having to bring a bag to the grocery or pay for one, or having to pay as much for gasoline (Maybe even without having the lights go out suddenly in the toilet-- --but I write as an American). As to Americans themselves, Jean hitchhiked through the United States forty years ago, and always found them welcoming and generous. Human beings, he thinks, naturally want to consume ad libitum without regard to limits, even if it is wasteful. Americans are merely those who can, at this moment in history, indulge that impulse.

When I ask Jean how he sees the upcoming elections in France, he observes without the least excitement that France, like Spain, Greece and Portugal, is perhaps on the brink of great social unrest, if not actual civil war. The room for maneuver of whoever wins, Sarkozy or Hollande, is limited, due to France's deficit and its lack of competitiveness in the international economy. Whatever hopes the Socialists may have of a victory, Hollande has been pushed further to the left than he would like, due to the candidacy of Jean-Luc Melenchon, of the Marxist Parti de Gauche ("Left Party), --whose slogan is Prenez Pouvoir --"Take Power".

"Nothing much will happen over the summer: everyone will go on vacation, and forget about politics. But come the fall, Melenchon will continue to agitate: if Hollande is elected, Melenchon will criticize him, making it difficult for Hollande. There is a segment of voters on the Left in France that refuses to concede that much of the Socialist program --let alone the further Left parties-- is unworkable. They will choke off any efforts at reform Hollande makes, and nothing will happen, except that Melenchon will take advantage of the frustration to encourage more militancy. Then 'To the barricades!"

Asked about Marine Le Pen, with whom I tell him I imagine he does not sympathize, he surprises me: "I respect her for talking about the problems of immigration, something the Left does not do, because they do not want to offend by being 'politically incorrect'. There is a limit on how many people France can take in and assist that do not contribute anything, who do not assimilate. France and French culture is despised by many Muslims: In this neighborhood, we have many very pleasant Muslim neighbors, but if you go to the mosques, what the imams are preaching is hostile to France and anti-democratic. If the imams have that kind of power, even those Muslims that are normally friendly and pleasant, will turn against us."

All this is said without Jean ever becoming passionate about any of the points he limns. Which is not typically French, inasmuch as it takes a gift for analysis and a cool temperament, to formulate the nature of a problem so precisely --gifts not widely found in any population. But it would be fair to say but that this quality reflects an intellectual ideal France still holds dear: the ability to be dispassionate about serious matters, to be Cartesian.