I’ve been reading a collection of Ernest Hemingway’s first forty-nine short stories and I finally came to “Wine of Wyoming.” I suppose it’s a nice short story, except for the French dialogue of which there is quite too much. Two of the characters in the story are from France and, of course, speak French quite a bit, even though much of it is broken. But, enough of it is illegible to someone who does not, nor never has, spoken the language of France, Quebec, French Guiana, and other foreign outposts of the Parisian language.

I didn’t take French in high school. For some reason I don’t remember, I took Latin, an interesting language, but unless you’re going to the southern valleys of Switzerland where the populace speaks dialects of Vulgar Latin, it’s rather useless. Then in my one attempt at college I decided to take German, but that wasn’t going anywhere because the instructor came into the room on the first day speaking German. There were a lot of us up at his desk withdrawing from the class.

Why hadn’t I taken French? Is was the foreign language of the elite? I wasn’t anywhere near that class; they lived across the highway and over the far ridge. Maybe, if I had taken French in high school, things might have turned out differently, but speculation in that direction is futile at this moment in my life. I was lower middle class and the most I could expect was a dream of the impossible.

Unbeknownst to me and my parents, I was, even then, bipolar to the extreme. My dream going into high school was to enlist in the Army after graduation and go to the Defense Mapping School and become a cartographer. I like maps so much that I can read them like someone might read a book. A number of years ago I read that people who are so intrigued with maps may fall in the autism spectrum, possibly being identified as being afflicted with Asperger’s Syndrome. I’ve taken a few online tests and for what it’s worth my scores always point in that direction.

In the end, I decided not to try to read “Wine of Wyoming” after a few pages. The French simply was too much to figure out. It got in the way of reading the story for what the story was about. That’s the thing about French in American literature. I don’t read Updike because he’s always throwing in bits and pieces of French to intellectually challenge his readers. To me he was a pompous Francophile who belonged in the nearest wastebasket. To others he was a pompous homophobe. Not having read enough of him, I cannot attest to that affirmation.

I’ve decided that my next reading project will be a total reread of Terry Pratchett’s Discworld novels. From my memory of him back before I suffered a massive nervous breakdown in 2004, he was a great read.