The Purple Mango Post

Photographs, dispatches and writing by freelance journalist Corinne Purtill

I helps you, please

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I am working on an essay about my efforts to re-learn French at the Alliance Francaise last year. Here is an excerpt. 

            A little language instruction is a dangerous thing and I am armed with just enough. I want to speak French all the time, even though my desire to communicate dwarfs my actual ability to do so. I walk the streets of New York silently translating the world around me into a Jean-Luc Godard film.  I imagine stumbling upon some native French speakers – tourists, visiting artistes, a UN delegation, Bernard-Henri Levy, whoever, I’m not choosy – and striking up a spontaneous conversation en francais. All over Manhattan, every day, Francophones are missing out on the exciting exchanges we could be having, such as:

            Do you like the park?

            Yes.

          Me too! I also like the park.

            And then it happens. I’m sitting at Whole Foods, eating my plasticky California rolls with disposable chopsticks, when I catch a n’est-ce pas? from the table next to mine. A middle-aged couple is bent over a map of Manhattan. I look at their footwear. Comfortable. They are tourists. French-speaking tourists. This is my moment! They need my help! Je vous en prie, voyageurs!

            Casually I rise from the table and gather my trash. There is no need to overthink this. I am nearly almost fluent. I will simply ask if they need any directions to their next destination in this fair city of mine, exchange a few pleasantries, and be on my way. En route to the trashcans I sidle over, place a helpful hand on their table, open my mouth, and am overcome by a wave of panic that floods my brain and sweeps all my confidence and French vocabulary into far, unreachable corners.

            “I helps you?” I say in French.

            The couple looks startled, then uncomfortable. I am not a helpful bilingual urbanite; I am the surly deaf man who sold American flag pins table to table at the food court in my hometown mall. I can’t remember a word of French, nor can I remember why I ever thought it was a good idea to hassle these poor holiday-makers who are just trying to enjoy an affordable and healthy lunch.

            “Ah, non, merci,” the husband says, mercifully, but before I can retreat the wife leans in and says – and in perfect English – “Excuse me? Can I help you?”

            This is all so wrong. But it’s too late. Miserably I say in French, “I am a male French student. I see your card there and I aspire to practice. Excuse me. You are busy. I am sorry. Have nice travel.” The stairs are so close by; I could leap right over the balcony and end all this in seconds.

            But she won’t let me go. In slow, clearly articulated classroom French – I know because it’s the only kind I understand – she says, “That is wonderful! I am an English teacher. We would be happy to practice with you.” And then this exceptionally kind and patient woman pulls out the chair next to her, which is the last thing in the world I want her to do, including stabbing me in the face with her plastic fork.

            I sit. Her husband, clearly resigned to these kind of antics from his wife, stifles a sigh and offers a polite smile. I deserve this. I force a non-mortified expression and ask whatever questions my shame and limited vocabulary allow. Where in France do they live? Paris. Have they ever been to New York before? They have. That’s great. Do they like it? Of course they do. In what other city in the world can you be interrupted during lunch by a half-wit eager to strangle your native tongue?

            The husband is checking his watch. The fold-out map lies between us on the table. I want to ask if they need any directions, to be able to offer them something of value to compensate for ruining their lunch. It’s then I realize that although I know how to give directions – tournez a droite, tournez a gauche, tout droit and all that – I can’t think of a single combination of words that would ask someone if they need directions. Which means I should never have approached this table in the first place.

            Like a bad dream, I can’t remember how the conversation ends. I am at the table and then I am outside on 14th Street, surrounded by students in skinny jeans and vendors hawking bootleg DVDs and a man wearing a hula skirt who is arguing with a cop, and I feel more shame than all of them combined. 

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Incredibly Awesome and Cool: A Critic Looks Back

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A few weeks ago, my brother sent me a page from an old copy of The Oiler Times. The Times, as the New Yorker called us, was the Huntington Beach High School student newspaper. It was one of the greatest newspapers ever printed on 11 x 17 inch paper and hand-collated by juniors hellbent on getting into Berkeley. We were a publication unafraid to speak truth to power, if power was the girls’ varsity volleyball team and the truth was that they were going to have the best season ever! 

This particular edition (October 1995) contained an editorial on affirmative action, a review of The Brothers McMullen, a poem that includes the rhymes “taste her lips/teardrop drip” and “sinful night/envy’s searing bite,” and a review of the Patrick Read Johnson film Angus, written by yours truly. A good test of criticism is how well it holds up over time. Inspired by Grantland's Director's Cut feature, I decided to revisit my critique from the eyes of a woman now old enough to be that young writer's biological mother.

I was not a regular film critic for the Oiler Times. I was better known as the author of “Running on Empty,” a monthly humor column that – and I’m not bragging, I’m just being honest – was considered one of the most influential humor columns on the Huntington Beach Union High School District scene from 1996 to 1998. (Driver’s ed, huh? And parents! What’s up with them?) This was before the runaway success of that column, however, and I was still a hungry young scribe eager to prove myself. Coveted Times bylines were limited only to those who happened to hear the monthly staff meeting announced on the loudspeaker that morning and did not have anything better to do during lunch. Competition for assignments – a process by which the editor would read story topics aloud from a notebook, and the assembled journalists would raise their hands and volunteer to write that story – was fierce. I was obviously passed over to write the affirmative action commentary, but not so upset about it that I was moved to write the “tears for sale” poem. 

What do we learn from this review? In the opening paragraph, I level the charge that contemporary film did not accurately depict my peers and me, pointing to "Clueless" as Exhibit A. I know that I liked "Clueless" when I saw it, so I can say with confidence here that I had given the Failed Generation argument exactly zero thought before I sat down to write this review and found myself with nothing to say. Willingness to invent and/or sell out personal beliefs in order to move copy: check. Having established myself at the cultural vanguard, I go on to promote Angus as a refreshing antidote to the sugary pap that previous Oiler Times reviews lavished with praise. Lesser critics might have resorted to cliché, but I was not afraid to tell it the way it was – this movie was very real, and very cool.

It is not a coincidence that the movie I cheered was a movie about nerds. “Charlie Talbert’s Angus,” I write, “is a champion for the insecure and socially awkward,” a class of people whose needs and issues I was acutely aware of at the time. This is not something I wished my readers to know. (My readers were the same classmates who saw my daily wardrobe of flannel shirts and ill-fitting jean shorts, so I am not sure who I thought I was fooling, but still. A for effort.) Instead, I obscured my social status with dazzling moments of critical insight, like when I point out that Angus's obstacles and setbacks represent obstacles and setbacks. I rally their support - popular kids are a problem for "common teens" everywhere, right, fellow common teens? Right? Occasionally I tilt my hand, as in the admission that “one feels a sense of personal gratification” at the hero’s eventual vindication (“one” being a hypothetical Everyman, not any specific insecure socially awkward person who may or may not be reviewing this film). But readers, if I were unpopular, would I know that Green Day and Weezer were "cool bands"? No. I would not. 

This article also illustrates one of the lesser-known rules of great writing: If a word works once, it works better a second time. “Awesome” appears twice in this three-paragraph story. So does “cool.” So does “incredibly.” It is incredibly awesome and cool that film criticism was not part of the SAT verbal section, and that English was in fact my first language and not something I learned watching Star Gold.   

Some questions are lost to time. Why the grudging back-handed praise of Ariana Richards? Did I have a crush on scene-stealer Chris Owen? And was there really a time when it cost $3.75 to go to the movies? Did I attend high school during the Depression?

To see how my attempt at film critique stood up to the pros, I looked up Janet Maslin's review of Angus in the New York Times, dated September 15, 1995. Maslin reveals that star Charlie Talbert was an actual Wisconsin high school student at the time of filming, a fact my audience would have liked to know. She also examines the dynamic between Angus and his mother, played by Kathy Bates, an apparently central plot point that my review bypassed entirely (probably to make room for my withering attack on "Clueless.") 

"Angus," Maslin concluded, "is an easygoing if predictable alternative to more gimmicky teen-age fare."

That's what I said!! She just did it with bigger words, fewer awesomes, smoother writing, more accuracy, and less desperation. I could have done this for a living. 
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On the RedBubble Homepage

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My photo of a spice shop in Marrakesh is featured on the RedBubble homepage today. Check it out!

If you are shopping for wall art, RedBubble has also started offering photographic prints, which are nicer and easier to frame than the previous prints they were selling. 
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