A house in France becomes an American writer鈥檚 portal to history
Journalist T.D. Allman bought a centuries-old house in a French mountaintop village. His 鈥淚n France Profound鈥� offers an idiosyncratic take on rural life.
On a whim, American journalist and foreign correspondent T.D. Allman bought a centuries-old house in the French mountaintop village of Lauzerte.聽
He returned there for over three decades, until his death earlier this year, soaking in the shifting atmosphere of rural French life. He got to know the local eccentrics and, perhaps inevitably, became something of a local eccentric himself.
Allman鈥檚 latest book, 鈥淚n France Profound,鈥� completed before his death, distills the view from his roughly 12th-century house as well as describes the years he spent rambling the countryside and browsing through books on the region. The result is an idiosyncratic but often lively tour of French history, from the Crusades and the Black Death to Nazi occupation and all the way to the latest supermarket opening.
鈥淭he melodramas of many epochs lurk in its ancient beams and period parquetry. From my House you also perceive the structure of the universe,鈥� Allman writes. 鈥淢y House breathes. It teaches. It speaks. You can hear its wooden beams shifting in the night, and when there鈥檚 a storm, the House moves like a ship.鈥�
He writes that he purchased the house as a refuge and escape from the globe-trotting reporting on conflicts and disasters around the world. Allman鈥檚 articles were published in a number of America鈥檚 best-known publications, most notably Vanity Fair. That magazine鈥檚 generous pay rates during journalism鈥檚 heyday in the 1980s, Allman notes in the acknowledgments, helped foot the considerable bill for his home鈥檚 renovation and upkeep.
Allman dubs the region that surrounds and includes Lauzerte as 鈥淔rance Profound,鈥� a play on France profonde (鈥淒eep France鈥�), a widely used term for provincial society in the French countryside 鈥� somewhat akin to the frequently invoked idea of a 鈥渞eal鈥� America beyond the big cities. 鈥淧rofound,鈥� Allman writes, 鈥渉as the force needed to convey how special it is.鈥�
He likens the region to the fictional聽Yoknapatawpha County in Mississippi, the setting for most of William Faulkner鈥檚 work, packed full of 鈥渕any strange truths鈥� and 鈥渃urious characters.鈥�
The French town, in Allman鈥檚 telling, finds itself both tied to nearly every major historical development to roil Europe and yet simultaneously insulated from the upheavals. 鈥淭hroughout its long history, as today, France Profound doesn鈥檛 make history. History periodically remakes it, and then rolls on its way. Somehow what remains is revelatory,鈥� writes Allman.
The author鈥檚 style is at turns bombastic, entertaining, eccentric, and insightful. His writing, which verges on the baroque, sometimes spills over into overwrought. For fans, that is surely part of the charm, although it can be exasperating. There are also moments that call his rigor into question. He mentions the Children鈥檚 Crusade, a religious movement in the 1200s, for instance, but never brings up the scant historical documentation for those events 鈥� and the degree to which they may have been pure mythology. Elsewhere, he claims that Europeans were 鈥渋nnumerate鈥� before the Italian mathematician聽Fibonacci popularized Arabic numerals, a claim that would astound the ancient Greeks.
There are still plenty of deft and vibrant bits, but 鈥淚n France Profound鈥� remains thin on the texture of everyday life, especially in the descriptions of decades spent in what 鈥� Allman repeatedly assures us 鈥� is a bustling village packed with big personalities.
Readers only rarely get to meet any of Lauzerte鈥檚 present-day residents, who are largely relegated to the acknowledgments in the back of the book.聽
At one point, while digging through records, Allman discovers that a certain 鈥済enial old gentleman鈥� named Martial Paris 鈥� 鈥渨ho at every Saturday market provisioned me with poultry and wisdom鈥� 鈥� had once escaped from Nazi German captivity. Allman goes on to contemplate what the old men of Paris鈥� childhood might have once witnessed 鈥� and the chain of living memory into the deep past.
鈥淲hen I tried to calculate it, I was surprised. As few as a dozen, certainly no more than twenty, was all it would take to shake hands my way back to 1291,鈥� when the people of Lauzerte managed to push out occupying English troops in an episode long enshrined in local lore. It鈥檚 a lovely passage, but it also points to a shortcoming in the book. There鈥檚 not a word from Paris himself, no firsthand account of his life and little sense of his personality.