法兰西特派

1. Narrator: It began as a holiday. Arthur Howitzer Jr., a college freshman, eager to escape a bright future on the Great Plains, convinced his father, proprietor of the Liberty Kansas Evening Sun, to fund his transatlantic passage as an educational opportunity to learn the family business through the production of a series of travelogue columns to be published for local readers in theSunday Picnicmagazine … Over the next ten years, he assembled a team of the best expatriate journalists of his time and transformed PicnicintoThe French Dispatch, a factual weekly report on … world politics, the arts – high and low – fashion, fancy cuisine, fine drink … He brought the world to Kansas.

2. Narrator: One reporter [was] known as the best living writer in quality of sentences per minute. One who never completed a single article but haunted the halls cheerily for three decades. One privately blind writer who wrote keenly through the eyes of others.

3. Narrator: His most repeated literary advice …

Arthur Howitzer Jr.: Just try to make it sound like you wrote it that way on purpose.

4. Alumna: Berensen’s article: ‘The Concrete Masterpiece’.

Proofreader: Three dangling participles, two split infinitives, and nine spelling errors in the first sentence alone.

Arthur Howitzer Jr.: Some of those are intentional.

5. Alumna: The Krementz story, ‘Revisions to a Manifesto’.

Story editor: We asked for 2500 words, and she came in at 14,000 plus footnotes, endnotes, a glossary, and two epilogues.

Arthur Howitzer Jr.:It’s one of her best.

6. Alumna:Sazerac?

Legal advisor: Impossible to fact-check. He changes all the names and only writes about hobos, pimps, and junkies.

Arthur Howizter Jr.: These are his people.

7. Mitch-Mitch:A message from the foreman: one hour to press.

Arthur Howitzer Jr.:You’re fired.

Mitch-Mitch:Really?

Arthur Howitzer Jr.:Don’t cry in my office.

8. Herbsaint Sazerac: All great beauties withhold their deepest secrets.

9. Arthur Howitzer Jr.:‘Rats, vermin, gigolos, streetwalkers.’ You don’t think it’s almost too seedy this time?

Herbsaint Sazerac:No, I don’t.

Arthur Howitzer Jr.:For decent people?

Herbsaint Sazerac:It’s supposed to be charming.

10. Julian Cadazio:All artists sell their work. It’s what makes you an artist, selling it. If you don’t wish to sell it, don’t paint it.

11. Julian Cadazio:I can only offer a deposit of eighty-three centimes, one candied chestnut, and four cigarettes. Everything I have at this present moment in time.

12. Julian Cadazio:Modern art. Our specialty. Starting now.

Uncle Joe:I don’t get it.

Julian Cadazio:Of course, you don’t.

Uncle Joe:Am I too old?

Julian Cadazio:Of course you are.

Uncle Nick: Why is this [painting] good?

Julian Cadazio:It isn’t good. Wrong idea.

Uncle Nick:That’s no answer.

Julian Cadazio:My point. You see the girl in it?

Uncle Nick:No.

Julian Cadazio:Trust me. She’s there.

13. Julian Cadazio:We all know this man is a murderer. Totally guilty of first-degree homicide, any way you slice it. That’s a given. However, he’s also that rare, once-in-a-generation guy that you hear about but never get the chance to discover for yourself: an artistic genius. Surely, there ought to be a double standard for this sort of predicament.

14. Lucinda Krementz:[Zeffirelli] is not an invincible comet, speeding on its guided arc toward the outer reaches of the galaxy in cosmic space-time. Rather, he is a boy who will die young. He will drown on this planet in the steady current of the deep, dirty, magnificent river that flows night and day through the veins and arteries of his own ancient city. His parents will receive a telephone call at midnight, dress briskly, mechanically, and hold hands in the silent taxi as they go to identify the body of their cold son. His likeness, mass-produced and shrink-wrap packaged, will be sold like bubblegum to the hero-inspired who hope to see themselves like this. The touching narcissism of the young.

15. Lt. Nescaffier: They had a flavor. The toxic salts in the radishes – they had a flavor. Something unfamiliar to me. Like a bitter, moldy, peppery, spicy, oily kind of earth. I’ve never tasted that taste in my life. Not entirely pleasant, extremely poisonous, but still, a new flavor. That’s a rare thing in my age.

16. Roebuck Wright: People may or may not be threatened by your anger, your hatred, your pride. But love the wrong way, and you will find yourself in great jeopardy.

17. Lt. Nescaffier: I’m a foreigner, you know.

Roebuck Wright: This city is full of us, isn’t it? I’m one myself.

Lt. Nescaffier: Seeking something missing, missing something left behind.

Roebuck Wright: Maybe with good luck, we’ll find what eluded us in the places we once called home.

Read more: 17 of the Best Quotes from The French Dispatch (2021) - Our Culture https://ourculturemag.com/2021/12/29/17-of-the-best-quotes-from-the