Is there anti-American sentiment in France? And did I experience it?

The simple answers are “yes” and “no,” but the questions must be viewed within a broad historical context. The affection between the French and Americans has a long and turbulent history going back to the American Revolution, the French admiring our energy and enterprise, and Americans traveling to France for its art, theater, cuisine, and fashion. The French fascination with American pop culture arose during the jazz era and has steadily increased. The recent tension over our administration’s policy in Iraq has been described as a “lover’s quarrel,” not to diminish the seriousness of the cause but to put the rift in perspective. It cannot last because there is otherwise too much underlying sympathy and interdependence, and the disagreement of governments does not translate perfectly into antipathy between peoples. Feelings were far worse during the early 1970s, when I recall being taken to task by total strangers because American fighter jets were bombing Hanoi.

In those days the working-class French, by and large, did not speak our language. It was while Jacques Chirac was Mayor of Paris in the 1970s that the city at last admitted that tourism was so important that it would behoove one and all to learn English. Now the American who hopes to practice his French must insist upon it, as every cabdriver and schoolchild is eager to speak English. I insisted and found people to be obliging.

So it was