French Lessons: A Memoir by Alice Kaplan Page A

out of
my mouth so I could laugh with them. I had been so intent
on the idea of the dictionary that for a moment I had forgotten myself. I had unlearned my most automatic habit in my relationship to the object world; it was exhilarating to be
distracted by ideas.

    In Francis Ponge's Le Parti pris des choses, I found an expression of the overlapping spheres of words and things. Ponge
chose the most ordinary objects as the subjects of his
poems-the oyster, the orange, and the cigarette. Each of
his objects is a worker, sweating and straining to make its
place in the world. Language speaks about itself through
them. The oyster, in French-l'huitre-is spelled with a circumflex accent marking the place where, as recently as the
Renaissance, there used to be an "s"-uistre. Huitre, the
word, hides an "s"; huitre, the object, hides a pearl. Ponge's
oyster poem was peppered with words containing circumflexes, all of them necessary to describe the object:
"blanchatre" (the whitish oyster shell); ` opiniatrement" (the
stubbornly closed oyster), "verdatre" (the slimy greenish
sack inside), "noiratre" (the black lacy fringe edging the oyster meat). I understood from Ponge why I could lose myself
in language. Why I could read the same sentences over and
over, different meanings or possibilities coming to the surface each time:
    Parfois tres rare une formule perle a leur gosier de nacre, d'ou l'on
trouve aussitot a s'orner.
    Sometimes, very rarely, a saying pearls forth from their
nacreous throats; we get to decorate ourselves.
    I am walking down a road in Versoix. I know I'm in
Switzerland because the road is antiseptically clean. I
could eat on this street. I've bought a piece of Malabar
brand bubble gum from the tabac. I am proud of my conversation with the storekeeper. She is ruddy and round. Each of her transactions is utterly formulaic. I've said the
right words, as though buying a piece of gum in French
were totally normal. I've said' Je vous remercie, Madame"
(I know the verb "remercier," meaning "to thank"; I know
how to conjugate my thank-you's now, instead of saying a
simple "merci"). I open the Malabar wrapper, revealing a
cartoon tattoo on the inside. Directions say it can be transferred to any surface using water. I spit on the cartoon as I
walk. I roll up my sleeve. I slap the cartoon onto my arm
in the spot where I get vaccinations. The tattoo takes. I'm
marked. I use so much spit that the outline of the tattoo
streaks. I stop to examine my upper arm. It's a mush of
red and blue and yellow. I can't read it.

    I stayed up all night working on my final project for Ann
Smock's poetry class: a book of prose poems, including language dreams, etymologies, collages of advertisement snippets, and bilingual puns. I turned in the poems as my final
paper. I was buzzing with energy and creative satisfaction.
    A phone call from Louise took me by surprise. She was
celebrating the end of her first year at Vassar. There was tension in our conversation from the beginning:
    "Who are you hanging out with?"
    "Trip Murphy."
    "Oh yeah, I knew that guy. Sort of a snob."
    "Maybe to you."
    [silence]
    "What's California like?"
    "It's great, I'm in this poetry class and I'm in the movement here. You know, fighting capitalist pigs."

    The phrase slid out before I realized what I had said.
    "How dare you! How dare you talk about capitalist pigs after all my father has done for you!"
    Louise was usually so reserved. I had never heard her raise
her voice to anyone.
    "Louise! I wasn't talking about your father."
    "Well, who were you talking about then? He IS a capitalist.
    And you're saying that capitalists are pigs."
    "Louise!"
    It was one of those conversations that should have had subtitles, making clear what we were really arguing about. For
example:
    "I shared him with you!"
    "You'd never tell him anything. All he wanted was to talk
with someone who would really talk to him. No wonder
he liked me better."
    "He's