Yet when we heard the news of liberation, being unable to think of anything else to do, we sat down and read it straight through, from beginning to end.
In 1944, at the liberation of Paris from the Nazis, EB White wrote, "Probably one of the dullest stretches of prose in any man's library is the article in Paris in the Encyclopedia Britannica. Either way, it is a lot more than the actual population of Paris, which is 2.1 million.Īmericans have dreamy and romantic ideas about Paris, more than other places, I think. The US government says it was more like two and a half million. The French government says that three and a half million Americans visited Paris last year. From WBEZ Chicago, it's This American Life. Today in our program, Americans in Paris and how our Paris sometimes has very little to do with the one familiar to the locals. Just from people that I know that have come here, they go to the Louvre because somebody told them that they have to. Maybe, for them, it doesn't get any better than this. I might remember eating something, or buying something, or seeing something, like an accident, or somebody who's really twisted up in some way, but not looking at a painting. Do people look back and remember the experience of standing in front of a painting? I don't think that they're all museum-goers at home. So I'm guessing that a good number of these people are just standing here because somebody told them that they should do it. I mean, I think so many people come here and they feel like they have to do certain things because somebody told them to do it, or they're going to go home and people will say, what do you mean you didn't see the Pantheon? What do you mean you didn't go into the Louvre? I'm close to Notre Dame, too, but I've never gone in there either. I'm probably about a 12-minute walk, 15-minute walk from the Louvre.
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