Born in Milwaukee and repatriated to Tucson , Arizona when his father discovered the weather more to his liking Mort began his journalistic career is a young reporter for Tucson ’s Star. One of his neighbors was the transplanted New York Mafiosi Joseph Bonanno. He wasn’t often there, but once when he was back in town, Mort sneaked around his car in hopes of turning up something interesting prompting, FBI agents who were watching to call the paper and suggest that ’that skinny kid with the curly hair and big nose could get himself killed.’
He survived and worked as a reporter in Venezuela where he picked up the
Spanish that served him well when the AP sent him to Buenos Aires for three
years.
For nearly thirty years he has been a Paris resident as editor of The International Herald Tribune, head of the AP in France covering the French-speaking world and as a special correspondent for the AP.
Starting with the 1986 publication of the indispensable Mission to Civilize:
The French Way, he has balanced his journalism with richly detailed
observations of French life and culture in Secret Life of the Seine,
Olives and A Goose in Toulouse, all written with a generous helping of gastronomical
fervor.
From the deck of his houseboat moored in the Seine, we watched the sun set,
and talked about his life and Paris.
TG: When did you first come to Paris?
MR: 1977
TG: What was the occasion?
MR: I was the AP bureau chief. I had taken a year off for a fellowship at the
Council of Foreign Relations in New York and it was time to go back to work.
The head of the AP offered me a choice I could either go to France or Spain
and Portugal. He said to let him know in the next month and I said: ’I
can let you know in the next minute.’ So I went to France as Bureau
Chief and I ran the AP in France for the French-speaking world.
TG: You were a Francophone at that time?
MR: Yes. I had lived in the Congo and learned French down there.
TG: When did you decide to stay in France?
MR: Two years later in 1979. The publisher of the International Herald Tribune
asked me if I wanted to be editor and I said yes. So I moved over to the “Trib” for
a couple of years. Then in 1981 we had a difference over special supplements
and I left the paper. And the AP offered to create a job for me allowing
me to stay in Paris.
TG: So what about Paris resonated in your heart and soul? Why not New York,
for example?
MR: The French know how to live. They can be pains in the ass at times but
basically they are a good society and they have their priorities straight.
It’s a cliché but it is true: they work to live as opposed to
living to work. They eat well, they think about things, they take care of their
old “stuff” yet they are quick to embrace new things.
TG: They take care of their old people too.
MR: Yes, they take care of their old people too. The family structure in France
is much more solid that in America, I find it exciting. It is much more difficult
to make friends in France than it is here but you make real friends once
you go through the steps and the process of actually making the contact.
You actually meet more here.
TG: You spoke with French people and expatriates?
MR: No, mostly the French. The expatriates are who they are wherever they are.
It’s funny how the process of expatriation distills a very interesting
bunch of people. Some of the most interesting American friends I’ve
met have been outside the United States. It’s the curiosity that drives
people to travel and explore other cultures that is the common bond you find.
TG: Is America missing something that Paris has?
MR: I think Americans have forgotten how to live properly.
They are so censorious with each other. The business of how you are supposed
to act. As a small example, there is this business of taking on smoking-this
messianic zeal of trying to stop everyone else in the world from smoking. Trying
to pretend that a whiff of secondhand smoke from three blocks away in the open
air is going to cause the person who whiffs it to drop dead of cancer in the
next twenty seconds is a little much. It’s an attitude. Although there
is a lot of volunteerism in America, a lot of stuff that works, in terms of
society it’s much more self-conscious and slightly forced in certain
ways. I just think that Europeans, having had to live closely together for
so long have learned how to do it. Americans have not come to grips with where
they fit in the space around them.
TG: Speaking of fitting into space around you, what is your favorite café?
MR: I don’t hang out in cafés much. There is
one near me and a couple near my office but my favorite place is right here
on my boat where
I can watch the river go by. I make my own coffee. When I lived on the Ile
St. Louis I had a few. The famous ones are a little too famous-the Deux Magots,
Café Flore. They were great in the good old days but there are too many
people who know too much about them.
TG: So you are not a creature of habit?
MR: I am not a café goer. I’m not a guy who has gone to sleep
and gotten up in the same city for two weeks in a row since 1960 so I’m
not a creature of any sort of habit.
TG: Do you have a favorite arrondissement?
MR: I like the…well, actually I like most of them for different reasons.
I love Belleville because you can go around the world without having to leave
town.
TG: Good cous-cous?
MR: Good everything. I still like the Marais. The Places des Voges is fun and
I like the seventh near the Eiffel Tower.
TG: If you weren’t living on a boat where would you live?
MR: Probably near Parc Monceau because it’s near my office but the Ile
St. Louis is till the place to be for me.
TG: The Brasserie de L’Isle?
MR: The Brasserie is fun but the sense of the island…the old trees and
it’s still the old way of life in spite of the changing things around
it. There is just something “Parisish” about it. Paris almost changes
by the year for me and I like some of the more boisterous places and newer
rebuilt areas. I visit friends and discover neighborhoods I never thought of.
I have friends in the fourteenth that have little houses tucked away on side
streets-anything but the sixteenth.
TG: Why not?
MR: If you have a family or money it’s nice. It’s Park Avenuish
but I’ve had the hustle and bustle.
TG: What’s your favorite restaurant?
MR: Pierre Gagnaire is my absolute favorite. Most likely to go to when I go
frequently is probably Thoumieux on the rue St. Dominique. It’s a nice
mix of old style brasserie/bistro, nice classic dishes. I also like ethnic
restaurants in Paris and there are lots of them.
TG: Because of your experience of traveling a lot?
MR: I’ve been in France for a long time so I’ve had a good shot
at eating all the classic French dishes. I like Creole food especially La Creole
in Montparnasse. There is a great Senegalese restaurant called Chez Aida and
a Berber restaurant.
TG: What is your favorite market?
MR: My favorite is the Place d’Aligre. It has everything you could possibly find. It is down by the Faubourg St. Antoine.
TG: Are you a brocantiste?
MR: No, but I used to live with one. I don’t know much about the markets.
To do it well you have to get up at 4 or 5 in the morning when the marchands
come down and unload their vans. That is when you get the good stuff.
TG: When you are kicking back on the boat what are you drinking? What is your
house red?
MR: My house red is seven year-old Havana Club rum. It changes because I have
a really good wine lady on the rue de l’Univeristé. She’s
always making suggestions. We drink a lot of Brouilly. We go towards Burgundies
when we are just sitting and drinking. Wine is such a mood thing so I try to
keep a varied collection.
TG: What is your favorite museum?
MR: I really like the D’Orsay, the impressionists. It’s near here
(my boat.) The Grand Palais often comes up with good stuff. Every once in a
while an occasion comes up when you can be in the Louvre by yourself. I was
there last month and we were walking around with some chefs and all of sudden
this painting kept following me and I realized I was alone in the Louvre with
the Mona Lisa-nobody else but the guard sitting quietly in the corner. Good-looking
woman! So the old favorites are still favorites for a reason.
TG: Is there a time of year that you prefer?
MR: Spring is obvious. Spring is really great in Paris. Things are coming up.
The colors are there, the air is fresh, it’s not hot yet and there
aren’t a lot of people. September and October if you get Indian summer
are great and August because there is not a soul on the streets–I love
that! Before Christmas is impossible. Everyone comes to shop and you can’t
move.
TG: How has your writing changed in Paris?
MR: I can’t write in New York for some reason. It’ so highly charged
that it’s like sticking a fork in a wall socket for me. But in Paris
I can write. I can just sit down and get things done.
TG: How has Paris affected your life?
MR: I am certainly not as ethnocentrically American as when I got here. I’ve
learned that there are many different societies on this planet. A place like
Paris enriches you in a lot of ways. You see a lot of jerks. There is no society
in the world of such extremes as the French in general and Parisians in particular.
You can get so mad at a cabdriver that you’ll want to rip his head off
and at the same time someone will do something so unusually nice, so kind,
thoughtful, giving, trusting. Once I was in a café in the south with
some friends who were visiting. They were about to go off on a long trip and
we were having drinks and I put my car keys on the table. For some reason when
they left I thought they had mistakenly scooped up my keys and taken off. I
was frantic and the woman who ran the bar asked me what happened and she handed
me the keys to her car and said: ‘It’s over there-go chase them.’ I
couldn’t find them but when I came back, sure enough, the keys were hanging
on the inside of my car door. That’s not going to happen in America.
I have come across an entirely different type of person. There is something
about Paris that tends to collect every sort of person for every sort of reason.
So your pool of experience is deep and wide. Also, you’re always on your
toes because when you get into a conversation it’s about things, about
ideas. In America people go on and on about how much something costs, how long
it took to find a parking place, is the stock market up or down-give me a break.
In Paris they flirt, they have verbal by-play. It’s the national sport.
In America when you meet a jerk, usually the person is a jerk. In France when
you meet a jerk you can usually turn him around if you’ve got the energy
and time. I don’t mean to say, and this is important, that French society
is good and American society isn’t. I would say that French society is
more complex, structured and sophisticated than ours. I think that Americans
by and large have a much stronger urge to do the right thing; to be good people
but not many know how and they don’t care enough about things beyond
what they can see and touch. But for all of it’s (France) faults, and
there are many, I think it is a more challenging, more invigorating, more interesting
society. But when you say that you have to take into account that there are
so many American films, so much American music, why is New York drawing so
many French people? So let me say that there is some great energy and creativity
in the United States. That’s the exception, the high point-but by and
large I prefer Paris.
Paris Through Expatriate Eyes will present Mort
Rosenblum at
San Francisco’s
Mechanics’ Institute on January 24 to discuss his latest book, CHOCOLATE:
A BITTERSWEET SAGA of DARK and LIGHT
Dessert Wine & chocolate tasting
Tickets: PTEE & MIL
members $12 or Public
$15
Reservations: 415-388-4956 or terrance@paris-expat.com
Order Mort's books today!
Chocolate:
A Bittersweet Saga of Dark and Light
A
Goose in Toulouse: And Other Culinary Adventures in France
The
Secret Life of the Seine
Olives: The Life and Lore of a Noble Fruit
