Real Frenchmen are Stereotypical to a Fault.

They all agree, as ordained by their wonderful state-regulated traditionalist education system, that Andromaque is the most beautiful thing in creation, followed closely by the (three major examples of) fenestrations of François Mansart, and the château and gardens of Vaux-le-Vicomte. If Racine said it, or used a grammatical construction like it, it's French--what though nobody in the modern world understand it. Ditto for Molière. Double ditto for Voltaire. And if you are, as I am, nauseated by Bérénice, you may have un coeur de pierre--but if, notwithstanding, like me, you understand and approve of Claude Perrault's (existant) design of the east facade of the Louvre (over [fastidious mou] Bernini's), by itself this makes you a member of the Real Frenchmen Club.

Confronted with this massive native consensus, the non-native, or cousinly, devotee of French Culture would be best advised to concur immediately, totally and unreservedly,  in what may seem even its bizarre, arbitrary and rather unnecessary shibboleths. Because if you don't, you risk horrid, ironic Gallic Censure--of the sort where the whole world is laughing at you.  Myself, I can manage snails, such as you find in Parisian restaurants and are given special tongs and a little fork to deal with--though I should probably vomit if I had to eat them in the Spanish fashion, spearing them randomly with toothpicks--but I fucking draw the line at raw meat and raw eggs, and will not eat them, even though Real Frenchmen, on account of this idiosyncratic distaste of mine, call me sissy, and urge me to get psychotherapy.


Notice, if you please, the (admittedly) somewhat archaïc use of the subjunctive mode (or mood) in this nonsensical little essay: which must be virtually unintelligible to speakers of the castrate dialect of Received Pronunciation; but which will be perfectly comprehensible to Speakers (and Thinkers) of  (in) the Standard American Dialect of the English Language. I notice that RP speakers tend to be rather vainglorious--perhaps somewhat self-congratulatory--about their disuse of the subjunctive mode: As if it were a good thing to have eliminated the possibility of nuance and the distinction of being and purpose in their own language. It has to do, perhaps, with the habitual sarcasm and foul-mouthedness of Her Majesty's subjects, and is the parent of their inability, when at table, not to talk about vomit or shit.