Mon dieu, what is the fuss about, French ask

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La Seduction

How The French Play the Game of Life

By Elaine Sciolino

Times Books, 308 pages, $31

Here's another title to add to the heap of those decoding what makes the French different from mere mortals. But Elaine Sciolino, a longtime New York Times Paris bureau correspondent, offers something other than the standard line of how French women stay slim while artfully tying a Hermes scarf.

"For the French, life is rarely about simply reaching the goal," she writes in this delectable and thought-provoking book. "It is also about the leisurely art of pursuing it and persuading others to join in."

By a curious twist, the "affaire DSK" broke as this book was hitting shelves. It can't now be read outside the context of the scandal that brought down "le grand seducteur," as the former IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn is known in France.

Sciolino gets down to business after first clarifying that seduction isn't an explicitly sexual concept or word in French. "Seduire" means to charm, to win over, more than to seduce as we know it.

She then illustrates how seduction permeates every aspect of French life. Politics, perfume, and conversation, for example, are dissected under the seduction microscope.

Her book is broadly researched and the anecdotes she uses are well-chosen and amusing.

Seduction, "a game associated with the ideas of 'lightness,' 'pleasure' and 'banter,' " Sciolino writes, really took off in the court of Louis XIV, where clever conversation didn't have an end in mind, but had to be witty. "Puns should be avoided," would-be courtiers learned. "It becomes a verbal orgasm that brings the conversation to an end."

This template is more or less adhered to in contemporary French politics. When President Nicolas Sarkozy or Finance Minster Christine Lagarde make speeches about "getting down to work," they are mocked. "[One reason] Lagarde's speech was so savagely criticized is that it was brutally direct, Sciolino explains. "Had it been sweetened with understatement, or irony, it might have gone down easier. Simply put, it lacked seduction."

Refreshingly, Sciolino doesn't try to cultivate her "inner Frenchwoman." Rather, she plays the clueless American (although as a veteran NYT correspondent, she is anything but.)

This is in part for comic effect. She meets top model Inès de la Fressange, who tells her she can't possibly approach so "vast and serious" a subject without taking a French lover. Sciolino later strategizes on whom she should choose over breakfast with her husband.

She relates the amusing story of a Frenchwoman working in the U.S. who was obliged to take a "sexual harassment awareness test" and failed every question.

In contrast, she asks a female member of the Conseil d'Etat, the highest administration and public law court in France, if as the cliché goes, she gets dressed up to run out and buy a baguette. "Of course," the woman replies. "Because there is the odd chance that the window cleaner might whistle... and my day will be sunnier!"

Strauss-Kahn, by the way, rates five pages and a photo. Yes, most French people can separate the criminal behaviour of which DSK is accused from "normal" seduction. Nonetheless, the scandal has the country soul searching about whether its relaxed attitude to flirtatiousness really is more healthy than that of "uptight Anglo-Saxons."

If you're interested in that conversation, Sciolino's book certainly offers better reading than those on why French women don't get fat.

Karen Burshtein is a Winnipeg writer who specializes in contemporary European, and especially French, culture.

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition June 25, 2011 J9