FRANÇOISE SAGAN’S FRANCE FOR EDWARD ALBEE

 

FRANÇOISE SAGAN’S FRANCE FOR EDWARD ALBEE

FEBRUARY 1,1965ESQUIRE 

Françoise Sagan’s France for Edward Albee

"I would very much like to meet Edward Albee and show him around.

But he can go to the theatre or the films on his own.

I prefer people, sitting and talking, looking at each other, not side by side, looking at something else.

I would take him to meet Sartre and Genet—people like that.

We’d ring up, make a date, meet at a café. Any café, really.

The best way to show the town is without a project.

Just wander the streets.

Or we’d get in my car and just go—just run—go, go.

The best café? When we are in the car and going and he feels thirsty and wants to stop, then we see a café—that’s the best.

Late at night we go to New Jimmy’s in Montparnasse.

There are records and dancing and much talk, funny people.

It starts at midnight and goes till eight in the morning.

It is best at four. That’s when the dancing is hottest.

It is very chic up till then;

then everyone is muddled and it gets less elegant.

Or we go watch the girl shows at Le Sphinx or the Jockey along with the B-girls and the Belgian shoe salesmen.

It is funny to go there sometimes.

We meet the night people in Montparnasse.

The sculptor Alberto Giacometti, others.

Or we sit and talk about books, about everything—all night.

And we see the dawn. This he must see. This I must show him,.

There is a light then in Paris that is like no other anywhere else in the world. You are tired, very drunk from liquor and cigarettes, and this dawn happens.

It must be seen. It is funny.

In the spring we go to St. Tropez to the beach, before the tourists come. We stay at La Ponche— it is a small hotel, full of nice people.

You know what’s going on on the third floor even when you live on the fifth floor.

Or we go gambling. I like it very much.

We go to Deauville, though, not to Monte Carlo.

I have my house near there and we drive back after gambling.

My house is in Normandy, near Honfleur.

Full of trees, nobody around.

The farmer there keeps cows. I never drink milk, but I love it there. Or I take him to something he’ll never forget: the Province of Lot, far in the southwest where I was born.

There is no television, no radio—no money to speak of.

People don’t care about money. It is the Middle Ages.

People exist on their own, come into town once a year for shoes. People go crazy there, living alone.

Men, women, they live alone, many of them, and see very few people.

It is different from the France of the cities

and as different from America as anything I can imagine.

It is different from anywhere.”

©1965 Esquire