Monday, July 17, 2006

A Must Read

Looking for something to read while you bask in the summer sun? But you want something sophisticated, European...perhaps even French? Soon to be released, there is a blockbuster memoir just for you.

The one and only Nicolas Sarkozy, interior minister of France and possibly Chirac's successor, is publishing his memoirs today for release in time for the European holiday season of August. There will, of course, be the requisite book signing tour, and by joining Nic's mailing list you can get a sneak peek at his prose via his website. Yet you doubt that he actually did the writing? Accuse him of hiring ghostwriters?

"I wrote it all myself," M. Sarkozy has been quoted as claiming. The French Prime Minister, the intellectual Dominique de Villepin, has a list of poems to his credit, along with a biography of Napoleon, and Nic is not going to upstaged by the likes of de Villepin. And it turns out that Chirac was not going to be upstaged by Sarkozy last Friday, when the memoir was supposed to be released to coincide with Chirac's last Bastille Day speech. The two came to an agreement so that Chirac could flap his gums without anyone being distracted by Sarkozy's purple prose, every word penned by his own hand he says.

It looks to be a page turner, this memoir. Besides the usual stuff, about the immigrant parents coming to France in search of a better life, there are promised to be many pages devoted to Sarkozy's undying love for the missus. Who had left him for the bright lights of New York City with another man, but apparently, she missed Gay Paree. Or she got tired of her American lover and the dull provincialism of New York.

I have no doubt that the overriding theme of the section dealing with the lovely Cecilia and her return to Nic's arms will be: How do you keep them down on the farm after they've seen Paree?

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