France

All Wrong, All the Time: The Tawdry Literature of Nicolas Restif

Dirty books, quickly and carelessly written—almost 200 of them.

That’s the legacy of Nicolas-Edme Restif de la Bretonne, prolific French author whose works showcased the sordid aspects of French life and society in the 18^th century. Restif’s writings included a plan for legalizing and regulating prostitution, as well as a vast array of novels, plays, and essays on a wide range of topics.

His 16-volume autobiography, Monsieur Nicolas, begins with stories of sexual experiences beginning in early childhood, and continues through an amazingly frank recounting of his many and varied sexual exploits. It is said that the French word “restifisme”—meaning “shoe fetish”—was coined because of Monsieur Nicolas’ propensity for collecting women’s shoes.

This author of sordid tales caught my attention this week because of a play he wrote in 1789—tantalizingly titled The Year 2000. In it, Restif imagined what life would be like in the far distant future, in the year 2000 A.D.

Restif predicted that in the year 2000, all marriages would be arranged—with the bridegrooms selected by a council of elders according to merit.
He thought that married couples would be kept apart for years—thereby insuring that their passion would survive.
There would be no lawyers.
Society as a whole would be Utopian, and we would all be ruled by a fair and virtuous king. One of the King’s lines in the play was, “In the year 2000, virtue never goes unrewarded.”

Restif’s predictions, viewed from the vantage point of contemporary American society, are so far astray as to be laughable. Apparently, his faulty logic impacts not only his selection of themes for his books, but also his political analysis and social theory.

It makes me wonder, though: What do you think life will be like in the year 3000?

HAMSTERS JUST GOTTA HAVE FUN! Crops of Their Very Own—and a “Hamster Hotel” for Wannabes

A pesky little rodent from a small enclave in eastern France has nibbled its way into the hearts of the European Court of Justice—and the French government had better protect them, or else!

I’m talking here about the Alsatian hamster, a 10-inch bundle of fur that has been having a tough time in France’s rich farmland, especially since farmers began growing summer corn. Planted later in the year, the cornfields yielded no seeds for the hamsters when they woke from their winter hibernation in the spring.

Long considered pests, the hamsters were trapped and poisoned by farmers until the early 1990s, when they were listed as an endangered species. Expanding population centers had encroached on their breeding grounds and resting places, and their burrows along the river were destroyed.

So in 2008, the European Court demanded that the French government step in to protect the hamsters. One approach was to encourage farmers to grow winter crops and alfalfa, so that the rodents would find plenty of seeds on which to feast when they awoke from their winter naps. To this end, the French government ended subsidies to growers who produced summer-ripening maize.

But alas, this wasn’t enough! Although the population of hamsters in Alsace increased threefold in the past few years, this progress was too little for the European Court, which threatens to impose stiff fines if decisive action isn’t taken to boost the hamster population.

So the furry little guys will be protected, even nurtured, in France—the same country which developed mifepristone (RU486, the “French abortion pill”) in 1980 to enable French women to kill their preborn children in the comfort of their homes.

It boggles the mind.

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In another [related] development, I thought you’d like this article about the “Hamster Hotel.” Located in Nantes, France, the hotel offers guests the opportunity to become a hamster for a day—playing in a human-sized hamster wheel, sleeping in haystacks, even feeding on hamster grains. All this for the bargain price of just 99 Euros a night.