Vile France: Fear, Duplicity, Cowardice and Cheese [Hardcover]

Denis Boyles (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 1, 2005

In this bitingly funny and insightful polemic, Boyles, using his knowledge of history and his shrewd eye for current events, examines the internal crises -- a falling birth rate, an expanding Muslim minority, economic stagnation, a lessening of international prestige -- that have changed the personality of what was once 'La Belle France', transforming it into a nation afflicted with status anxiety. He explains how a country that endlessly repeats its credentials as America's oldest ally became one of our most resolute enemies, wielding the biggest weapon in its arsenal -- the European Union -- against the interests of an America that it fears and envies. While making clear his affection for the "France" of the French people, he targets the "France" of the ruling elite -- from de Gaulle to Chirac -- who have always run the country as a private club, often to the angry dismay of its citizens.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Boyles sweeps away the feel-good myths with which we’ve deluded ourselves for generations. This is a wonderful and important book." -- Harry Stein, author of How I Accidentally Joined the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy (and Found Inner Peace)

"Boyles' illustrations of the categories of French perfidy would make great comedy--if they were not so deadly accurate..." -- Victor Davis Hanson, author of Carnage and Culture: Landmark Battles in the Rise to Western Power

"Boyles' smart, caustic, laughing-out-loud funny take on France is long overdue." -- Harry Stein, author of How I Accidentally Joined the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy (and Found Inner Peace)

"Boyles’ illustrations of French perfidy would make great comedy—if they were not so deadly accurate and all so sad." -- Victor Davis Hanson author of Carnage and Culture: Landmark Battles in the Rise to Western Power

"Read it and weep—with laughter." -- David Horowitz, author of Radical Son

About the Author

Denis Boyles, National Review Online's popular 'Euro-Press' columnist, is the author of a number of other books. He worked for National Lampoon, Playboy and the New York Times Magazine, and is an editor-at-large of TV Guide. Mr Boyles lives with his family in a small town outside Paris.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 168 pages
• Publisher: Encounter Books (March 1, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1594030529
• ISBN-13: 978-1594030529
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.2 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (29 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,663,596 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

73 of 85 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A book both humorous and enraging, August 22, 2005

By 

Abdul - See all my reviews

This review is from: Vile France: Fear, Duplicity, Cowardice and Cheese (Hardcover)

Well, just to clear this up for the "one-star" reviewers, I did indeed read this book, and I found it delightful. This is not because I hate the French. I've been to France, though not since the early 1990's, and I happen to have some French relatives. In general, I found the French people to be perfectly nice and as hospitable as any other people in Europe. I am also a great admirer of many aspects of French culture, from their Romanesque and Gothic churches to Jean-Philippe Rameau and Francis Poulenc in music, to the Impressionists.

But long before Jacques "Chiraq", I had my doubts about the worth of France as a political ally. Today I no longer have any doubts that in this respect the French are mostly - though not entirely - worthless. Boyles' book is a head-on attack against French political and intellectual "elites" - their pomposity, their arrogance, their repellent envy-driven hostility to America, and not least their laughable, yet invincible, self-delusion that kneejerk anti-American bigotry constitutes a form of sophistication. Only a guy like John Kerry could find the French elites sympathetic.

On the other hand, it is important to stress here (so that the "one-star" reviewers don't deceive you) that Boyles' book is NOT an attack on the fundamental decency of ordinary French people, or a denigration of everything in French culture. If it HAD been that I can honestly tell you that the book would have bored me. I find what's happened to France politically in recent years to be not just loathsome, but deeply depressing. Yet I have trouble feeling a particular animosity toward her, because I think France is an illustration of a wider phenomenon affecting most of Western Europe: a continent-wide cave-in to the most puerile forms of political correctness vis-a-vis Islam and the Arab world that isn't going to buy the Europeans peace and tranquillity, as they seem to think. The Islamic world's misery is largely a product of the Islamic world's indigenous backwardness and corruption, and for any Western country to apologize to Muslims for any suffering purportedly caused by European colonialism only generates an unhealthy lack of realism in an already deluded Muslim world that their problems are somebody else's fault, and that therefore they can masquerade as victims of oppression, rather than the perpetrators of it that they have been for most of the last 1400 years. Indeed, it is in light of Arab Islam's 1400-year-old imperialism and violent intolerance of non-Muslims that the conflict with Israel must be properly viewed, a fact all too often lost on French and Western European "intellectuals" who seem to think that Jews are worthy of sympathy only when they're being slaughtered by Germans, but not when it is Arabs doing the hating and killing.

As for France, I wish that that country could regain enough of its self-respect that it would not need to indulge in the childish America-bashing and Bush-hatred that passes for intellectual discourse there. In the meantime, Boyles' wonderful book is a must read - not least for the French themselves.

30 of 34 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars This is not a book that bashes the French,,,, December 30, 2005

By 

ramonf (UK) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Vile France: Fear, Duplicity, Cowardice and Cheese (Hardcover)

...but it does take a good poke at the French ruling elite -- something the French themselves do in their own books incidentally. The author makes this very clear in his introduction: The 'France' in the title is the 'ongoing invention of its...elitist, self-satisfied, self-obsessed...Paris-dwelling governing class' who, the author goes on to point out, treat the typical French citizen with 'cynical contempt.' Surely many French men and women would agree!

I received this book for Christmas as it was on my list. However I am quite surprised at the way these reviews are done. So I shall write one of my own as many of these seem to be a collection of disingenuous rants.

Most of the one-star 'reviews' here seem to be by people who quite obviously have not read the book but assume anything anti-French must be a right-wing rant. That's very odd. I reckon the American left must be reduced to thinking well of anyone who speaks ill of the US. (The author of this book points out that French behaviour toward the US is the same now as it was under Clinton and other presidents.)

But what is even more odd is the lengths to which some of these people have gone. 'Jonathan' for example quotes a line from page 144 of the book and says:

"Let me give just one example of what I mean. On Page 144 he says:

"'The economy of the eurozone rests on the solid bedrock of irrational faith.'

"Okay, so far - so good. I think I know where he's going here and I expect he'll finish it off with some good solid examples of the European's irrational economic faith. But here's what he says next:

"'Take, for example, the EU's economic stability pact, an agreement intended to make nations obey the God-given law of the checkbook. But don't take it seriously, because nobody else does.'

"And in the next paragraph he goes on to talk about something else.

"So, am I crazy?"

To which I would answer, no -- but 'Jonathan' is either a lazy reader or a dishonest one, since the author goes on for several pages through an entire section of a chapter to discuss the European stability pact, giving a summary of its history and the reasons for and results of its ineffectiveness.

I found this book to be witty and insightful. I am giving it 4 stars instead of 5 because it lacks an index and is frankly too brief. I wish there had been more. I would recommend this book to anyone who wants a quick and balanced look at why the French govenment does what it does in relation to the US.

29 of 35 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Yep, it is all true, France hates both itself and America, October 7, 2005

By 

Bachelier ""1004"" (Ile de France) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Vile France: Fear, Duplicity, Cowardice and Cheese (Hardcover)

Too often American criticisms of France are circumscribed by cartoonish stereotypes from "The Simpsons," impressions of snooty waiters from old jokes, and unflattering photographs of arrogant French diplomats at the U.N.

Well, its all true, and even worse, as this book excellently spells out. I'm an American who lives in France, and upon first reading this book I kept saying to myself "well, what is groundbreaking about this analysis? That's obvious."

Then it dawned on me: Americans don't have any idea how bad it is here in France.

The sclerotic bureaucracy, the quiescent press, the stultifyingly monolithic thinking, the lack of any political difference between the `left' and `right,' the petty jealousy, the cowardice, the arrogance, the indifferent elite, the lack of upward or downward social or economic mobility, the confiscatory taxes, the religious hostility of the elite, the arrested and shattered creativity, and the hollow unspoken recognition that all that remains of their culture is a poor imitation of another, more successful culture that they consider more base, abhor, but embrace in a decadent gargantuan bite anyway. Their elites dream of regulating America away, and have nightmares with each recognition of their own lost opportunities. After all, blue jeans and French fires started here, but were perfected, uuuhhhhhhhhh, ....France would prefer not to say.

And the horrible, terrifying, omnipresent Cartesian worldview, believing in a mechanical perfection of man that forbids them ever to admit they were wrong.

It is all here for your reading pleasure.