French Lessons

French Lessons, by Alice Kaplan, was a University of Chicago Press free e-book of the month that I downloaded several months ago and have ploddingly worked my way through for most of the summer. The briefest description is this: it is the memoir of a Duke French professor. In truth, it is a bit more than that, particularly for anyone who has ever navigated the vagaries of a university department, searched for a dissertation topic, or wondered how life might be different had they never traveled to a far off land or learned another language.

I came to see this book as neatly divided into three parts. Part one is the story of a young girl growing up in suburban Minneapolis in the 1950s and 1960s. That her father was a lawyer at the Nuremburg trials lends interest, and that he dies of a heart attack when she is still in elementary school lends tragedy, but at its heart part one is about being a kid in the midwest in the halycon days after World War II (and then attending a boarding school in Switzerland, but I digress).

Part two is the story of a graduate student searching for a topic, trying to understand theories and the people who create them, and forging an identity as an intellectual and scholar. Honestly, this is the part of the book where I almost gave it. Kaplan spends a bit too long, in my opinion, covering the theories of French literature, for a mainstream audience. (Or even an engaged, knowledgeable one. I was a French major, and I've only just read this book, but I'm drawing a blank trying to name a single theory that was described in detail over dozens of pages.)

Part three is the story of a professor, sometimes young, sometimes not, making her way through the politics of departments and universities, connecting with students, and asking herself questions that I myself have often wondered: how would my life have been different if I'd never spent time in a foreign country when I young? How would my life have been different if I'd never learned French? In what ways has it changed how I think about the world? Can I even separate it from the other parts of my life? (The answer to all four, for Kaplan as well as for me, is pretty strongly, "I don't know.")

I liked this book. If I were to read it again - or recommend it to someone else to read - I'd say to skip the theory. Ultimately, for this book - as for most of life - theory doesn't really matter.