The Merde Files
Stephen Clarke in Conversation with Terrance Gelenter

The numbers on the Merde Phenomenon to date: 30,000 copies sold in France in English, 200,000 in the UK and roughly 10,000 in the United States.

TG: Why such relatively small numbers in the US?
SC: While i was there we found out there's a problem with the name. Lots of US media won't mention the word merde, even though it's French. The NY Times reviewer wanted to write about the book (and liked it) but the editor vetoed the story because of the book's "rude" name. i did an op-ed piece for the NY Times and the byline was cut back to something like "Stephen Clarke is the author of a book". This isn't an excuse, it just seems to go part way to explaining the huge difference between the UK and the USA. The book's sold more in Canada than in the US. The follow up is not going to be called merde, in America, it'll be something merde-free.

TG: You've recently completed a tour of the United States. What was the overall reaction to the book and your experiences as an expat in Paris? And what was
the most unusual or unexpected response?

SC:The reaction was twofold. Most people were at great pains to say, you know, all this anti-French sentiment since Iraq, it really doesn't concern most Americans-it's all political. I met lots of Francophiles who said that the book reminded them of visits to France or made them want to go there. I also did a couple of shockjock-type interviews where they were desperate to be nasty to the French and I was saying, if you look at the book you see it's not anti-French at all. It teases the French and the Anglos, but it's nasty to nobody, and the basic message is that we love each other but don't dare say it. I think the shockjocks were a bit disappointed.

TG: How have Parisians (press & public) reacted to MERDE?
SC: The astonishing thing for me is that the French love the book. I thought I was going to get deported. When you publish a book in France you have to send a copy to the Ministry of the Interior. I was waiting for the knock at the door in the middle of the night. (Actually I was hoping it'd happen - great publicity). But overall, the reviews have been great. L'Express magazine even compared "A Year..." to Montesquieu. I had to go and look him up in the dictionary and it's a very flattering comparison. The French love what they call "l'humour anglais" and they actually have a great sense of humour about themselves - but only if what you say is "juste". So many French people have said to me, "yes we're exactly like that". The remark they love the most is when I say that the only place in the world a French person will line up patiently is at the boulangerie. That cracks them up.

TG: Does your boucher, for example, treat you with more
respect or disdain?

SC: I'm a vegetarian so my boucher doesn't even know who I am. My French colleagues at work (I'm a journalist for a big French press group) either stare at me with a "hey he's that guy I saw on TV" look, or bound up and say "I've read your book, it's so funny", or look at me askance as if they're scared I'm going to write about them. But I can't say I've noticed any change of attitude with the vegetable sellers at the market. They still try to give me half-rotten raspberries if I don't keep an eye on them. The waitress at my local café is way, way too cool to let anything like that register. Brad Pitt could turn up and if he didn't say "bonjour" before ordering, he'd just have to damn well wait for his coffee.

TG: How has your life changed as a result of the book?
SC: I have to wear a lot more makeup. When you go on French TV they slap on half an inch of suntan to make you look as if you just got back from St Tropez. No, my life has changed totally. I was thinking about that when I was in San Francisco. A year earlier I'd been hawking my books around in a shopping trolley trying to sell them one by one to English-language bookshops. And there I was in California, promoting the very same book, walking up one of those hills I'd only ever seen in films, on my way to do a TV interview. Mindblowing.

TG: What's next?
SC: The follow-up, Merde Actually, is out in the UK on September 8. And then I'm off to Australia to do promo there. When I get back, I'll start working on a new novel. That's the great thing,–the change never stops.