#8 – Premiss Girl

Premiss Girl: Sure, I have the room to myself

GinDrunk: Sexy.

Premiss Girl: Quite.

GinDrunk: So, you and Premise Guy are an item – how the fuck did you end up this schlub anyway?

Premiss Girl: I like foreigners

GinDrunk: Ha! That he is.

Premiss Girl: Seriously though, we met at school through a friend and I stuck around for his cooking

GinDrunk: …his cooking?

Premiss Girl: Girls can’t resist roast chicken.

GinDrunk: Wow, that’s – give me a second here to readjust my worldview.

GinDrunk: Ok, ok, so you realize this guy’s a sucker who’s good with a spoon, nice deal – how long were you guys dating before one of you up and graduated?

Premiss Girl: we got together in february (ish) of our senior year

however I was writing a thesis so our dates consisted of me bitching about it until late april

6:18 PM GinDrunk: Hey, me and Premise Guy have bitch dates every day…but neither of us can blame our thesis (we usually blame the economy). What was so ugly and irritating about your undergrad thesis?

Premiss Girl: It was on French literature about WWII

GinDrunk: Sounds pretty brutal.

Premiss Girl: in particular, an 800+ page volume called Les Bienveillantes

GinDrunk: NOw did you read this [“The Kindly One”] in French, or wait for an English like us lazy scholars do?

Premiss Girl: Oh en francais – although that doesn’t mean I was not also a lazy scholar

GinDrunk: pfft, like I learned logic to read philosophy! When did you learn French?

Premiss Girl: I started in middle school…I actually don’t really have a good story for how I got into French. Like, I feel like a lot of people started by idolizing paris, or one particular french artist or writer; I just kind of fell into French.

GinDrunk: Language was a requirement, right?

Premiss Girl: yup. I didn’t fall in love with france until I spent a summer working in the dordogne

GinDrunk: The Dordogne…wazzat?

Premiss Girl: it’s a region of southwestern france (or thereabouts). Rolling hills, chalky cliffs, winding rivers, renaissance chateaux, etc etc.

GinDrunk: And when did you end up going there?

Premiss Girl: the summer after my junior year of college. I had just spent a semester in paris and didn’t really have anything to do over the summe. So I figured why not.

GinDrunk: Let me get this straight: You studied french for a while, weren’t in love or anything, and then stumbled upon this section of France you came to love on a hunch basically. That’s pretty cool!

Premiss Girl: Thanks.

GinDrunk: How, if at all, did your new love come to influence your thesis then?

Premiss Girl: I stayed at this 16th century chateau that had basically been in the same family since its construction. Seeing the way that they lived in this great old building and the pride they took in their family’s history

I guess I realized that I didn’t just want to write about literature, I wanted to write about something that dealt with france’s history. And how some people are still dealing with the country’s history, whether in their homes or through their books.

GinDrunk: From my keen understanding of the themes and historical relevance of The Kindly Ones (i.e. I read the synopsis on Amazon), this isn’t a book that’s about the lovely-dovey romantic period of France, right?

Premiss Girl: To put it mildly: Hells no. If you thought Emma Bovary puking up charcoal was gross, you may want to turn elsewhere in French literature.

GinDrunk: …that’s sound pretty intense.

Premiss Girl: Intense, horrifying, with a chance of dear-god-why-am-i-reading-this…but I recommend it!

GinDrunk: Right…so, here you finally develop a deep love for this country who’s language you’ve been slaving over for years…and you go and read a historical novel about a French man that actively participated in the Holocaust.

…but why?

Premiss Girl: wellll…there was a lot of controversy when it came out because a) it was written by–quelle horreur–an American, and b) a lot of contemporary french stuff about WWII is written by people born in the 50s or 60s. So there was lots of hand-wringing about whether it was acceptable for them to write about or fictionalize events that they hadn’t lived through.

GinDrunk: Well, I can see that being a problem yeah. In your expert opinion, was the controversy really about a “foreigner” writing some fiction…or was it because an AMERICAN that did it? What do French people think about AMericans digging around their not-so-pretty cultural history?

Premiss Girl: I think it was more about his being a foreigner and young whippersnapper – although lots of critics claimed to have found grammatical errors in his French

GinDrunk: But did all this reading about the horrors of Vichy France and whatnot didn’t turn you off to the country? Or make it that much more interesting?

Premiss Girl: Oh no, i’m very nosy and very interested in all the gray areas

GinDrunk: Alright, enough nerd crap: What was the most outrageous thing you did in France the last time you were there?? Something Premise Guy doesn’t even know about.

Premiss Girl: Let’s see: got locked in a metro station, got lost in a thunderstorm and knocked on a farmhouse door at 2 am…got naked in the garden of said 16th century chateau. (That last one was in 2007, so technically not the last time I was there)

GinDrunk: It’s okay, we’ll let it slide if you give us more details about, um, why.

Premiss Girl: Well, lots of fighting in the hundred years’ war took place in the Dordogne, so it was very well defended. Meaning high walls. And it was lunch break on a sunny day…

GinDrunk: Sounds perfect for some light exhibitionism. Was there anyone else there?

Premiss Girl: wellll.

Like I said, I like foreigners.

GinDrunk: yowee. Sounds like you’ve gotten to see some of the best of France and it’s people, and france and it’s people have gotten to see the best of you!

How poetic, how French.

Premiss Girl: haha, well put

GinDrunk: Is there anything about France you don’t like? ANything you would change?

Premiss Girl: Oh sure: I think I would start by getting rid of the pigeons in the jardin du Luxembourg, and also make bank accounts easier to open. But then again, who really loves their bank?

GinDrunk: THE GERMANS