Paris - History, Romance Languages, European Studies - France, College & University Faculty - Biography, Teaching - Language Arts, U.S. Authors - 20th Century - Literary Biography, 20th Century French History - General & Miscellaneous, Teaching - Reading
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Overview
Richard Watson, a well-known American scholar of Descartes, can read French. He can translate French. But he has never learned to speak it. When he is invited to deliver a paper in Paris - in French - he begins a hilarious and often harrowing voyage on the rough seas of learning to speak a foreign language in late middle age. In the course of the book, Watson digresses on the contrasts between France and America, on Americans in Paris, and on the mysteries of French engineering. He introduces eccentric French cave explorers and still more eccentric French scholars. But above all, we meet Watson himself - a cave explorer and a teacher with a mid-western reluctance to make his mouth perform the contortions required by French - as he confronts his own national prejudices and his obsession with learning to speak French.Editorials
Booknews
A well-known American scholar of Descartes can read and translate French but has never learned to speak it. When he is invited to deliver a paper in Paris--in French--he begins a humorous and sometimes harrowing voyage on the rough seas of learning to speak a foreign language in late middle age. 5.5x8". Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)Mary Carroll
Francophiles and Francophobes alike will take pleasure in Descartes scholar and novelist Watson's meditation on his decision, at age 55, to learn to "speak" the language he had been reading (and occasionally translating) for several decades. Asked to deliver a paper in French at a Paris conference, Watson spent six months in tutoring sessions with a friend in St. Louis (where the author teaches philosophy at Washington University) and then set off for the City of Lights, where he devoted most of his time to an intensive course at the Alliance Francaise. His goal became an obsession; Watson was convinced that conversational fluency would win him entree to the elite circle of Cartesian scholars in Paris. For the first time in his life, however, the distinguished professor did poorly in school. Could he "ever" learn to speak French? Blending confession with observation, "The Philosopher's Demise" is full of fascinating commentary: on the charms (and din) of Paris, on Watson's French friends and the teachers and multicultural students he encountered, on Americans abroad, and on the nature of language itself. A small delight.Book Details
Published
May 1, 1995
Publisher
Columbia, Mo.: University of Missouri Press, c1995.
Pages
144
Format
Hardcover
ISBN
9780826210036