Financial Times
January 1998
Putting the Caffeine Back in Café
Society
Lunch with the FT
Philosopher Gale Prawda
tells Peter Aspden the truth about her plans for England’s
pubs and coffee-houses
I was doing some background
reading on the London-Paris Eurostar for my meeting
with Gale Prawda, and I came across and extraordinary
headline, from a post-second world war edition of the
French literary philosophical journal Combat:
"Too many attend Sartre lecture. Heat, fainting
spells, police. Lawrence of Arabia an existentialist.
I could not help reflecting
that they don’t write them like that any more;
that the intoxicating air of political liberation, sexual
posturing and pretentious philosophy that enveloped
Paris in the 1940s was very special and probably unrepeatable.
I have long held a theory, though, about what it was
that fuelled the whole movement: in a work, caffeine.
Gale Prawda, an American
in Paris, evidently agrees. She predictable chose the
Café de Flore, former Left Bank hang out of Sartre,
Simone de Beauvoir and a few other notables, to meet
me to discuss her ambitious new project. This is not
only to revive the heady days of espressos and existentialism,
but to take this galvanizing blend to a country that
has traditionally been less than amenable to both: Britain.
The aptly surnamed Prawda
is a leading light of the Café Philosophique
movement, started five years ago in France to unite
once more these two great native traditions. The first
London sessions held at the Institute Francais, took
place at the end of last year. The movement’s
organization is as minimal as you can get: find a café,
book a few tables, put up fly-sheets announcing a forth-coming
date, and see who turns up. Then, start a debate.
So, as we sat down to a kir
(me) and a cup of tea (she), I entered into the spirit.
Look around, I said and you see a left bank much changed,
not only since Sartre’s day but since I was last
in Paris seven years ago. The louche hotel next dor
where I sued to stay had become part of a chain; there
was a look-but-don’t-ask Louis Vuitton store across
the road; the café itself had opened its own
shop to sell souvenirs. A plaque next to the terrace
gave a tourist-friendly account of the café’s
imbibers of honor – Apollinaire, Trotsky, Breton,
Sartre, Zhou Enlai.
This all felt about as bracing
and bohemian as a day at Euro-Disney. Wasn’t this
crusade of hers just misplaced nostalgia? Shouldn’t
it be happening spontaneously, or not at all?
"I don’t agree.
There is a bit of a myth about France, like the one
about finding cowboys all over America, that the French
sit around and philosophize all the time. True, they
are more apt to sit around and chat, and they have a
strong reading culture.
"but the philosophical
discussions that went on in those days were mostly between
academics – it didn’t include outsiders,
business people, housewives, homeless people.
"That is how we are
trying to involve at Café Philo. And it is anything
but nostalgic. There is a real desire for people to
express their concerns, to try and understand them better.
And there are certain themes which repeat themselves."
Such as?
"The very complex issue
of diversity versus tolerance comes up again and again.
We go around and encourage diversity in the world, but
we know that there are certain cultural practices –
sexual brutalizing of young women, for instance –
which we wish to condemn. Are we tolerant of those?"
"This theme keeps expressing
itself. Clearly, people are facing it on a daily level.
Living in a world of constant change is very destabilizing."
I asked Prawda how she ended
up in Paris, and learned that she arrived in the summer
of 1968, of all years: "I was just travelling through
and like it. The Sorbonne was still occupied."
That was another year of
destabilizing change – how did it compare with
now?
"Café Philo tries
to bring back some of that spirit - you could go somewhere,
say what you thought try to understand in public what
life was all about. Now people are not so anti-Establishment,
there is more humor, it is less earnest. In the 1960s,
it was all based on group responses: love everyone,
peace on earth. Now people bring their own individual
experiences to the group."
Trying to apply philosophy
to their lives rather than their lives to a philosophy?
"Yeah, you could say
that."
We decided to move from the
Café de Flore to a local brasserie, where Café
Philo holds its dinners, a slightly more formal version
of prandial debate, with agendas announced in advance.
There waws an excellent set menu for FFr105 (L10.64),
and I toyed with choosing foie gras and red
wine, purely in the interests of my circulation.
"Go for it," announced
Prawda enthusiastically, while settling instead for
a rather healthy-looking salad.
The food was delicious, and
Prawda empathized with my purrs of contentment: "I
know how you feel. I’ve just come back from England.
We thought we would try a typical pub meal, toad in
the hole or coal in the toad or something like that.
It was horrible – we ended up putting ketchup
on everything."
But hadn’t she put
her finger on something important? Britain simply did
not share the French tradition of quality food and quality
chat at the same table. How did she hope to get Albion’s
version of Café Philo going?
"Easily. The two sessions
we have had were terrific."
But wasn’t the English
traditionally dry approach to philosophy rather unhelpful?
"We had some trouble
with some analytic philosophers at a session on truth,"
she announced in the tone of a police superintendent
who had run into a spot of bother with Saturday night
joy riders.
"It became bogged down
in semantics and we ran into dead ends. But then I turned
to a table of students who were studying existentialism
and said: ‘ Are you going to let these guys get
away with this?’ and it unblocked things. The
English are more reserved, but maybe we should eventually
hold the meeting in pubs. We are trying not to be too
dogmatic."
We talked further about Prawda’s
background. After completely her doctoral thesis (on
the relationship between the mass and the individual),
she went into business, importing Anglo-American books
to Paris and devising a new, and profitable, freight
charge system.
Not surprisingly, she thinks
philosophy has much to offer business: "They [business
people] talk about creativity, but then do everything
to make people’s thinking conform to a corporate
model. A philosopher will not necessarily settle any
issues, but will be able to see things differently."
But wasn’t that potentially
subversive?
"Well, that’s
the risk. But one of the criteria of being successful
in business is taking risks."
And then, quite suddenly,
as if all the talk of 1968 has suddenly propelled us
30 years back in time, she told me that she thought
there would be a revolution soon.
Come again?
"Business is booming,
but people are not letting by. All this financial speculation,
it’s like betting at the racetrack. People make
money, but it is not being distributed downwards."
But hadn’t those kinds
of idea been pronounced dead?
"People say communism
has failed, but we have not yet lived through the confrontation.
It will come, though. It may not be a head-on collision,
but on e way or another it will come."
I was momentarily silent,
savoring what seemed like an authentic Parisian café
moment. But after this apocalyptic interlude, Prawda
returned to her rosy view of the future of her philosophy.
"Philosophers are going
to become more important. They have always been put
to one side by society, but they are going to play an
increasing role in people’s private lives."
Like personal trainers?
"That’s right.
You may not have a psychological problem, but want to
learn more about the world. Why not?"
Our main courses dispatched,
I asked Prawda if she wanted to join me for something
"evil" for dessert.
"Actually, I had a dinner
on evil. It went really well."
There was no prising this
woman apart from her subject.
WE soon arrived at the moment
I had been waiting for: although our conversations had
already been adrenaline-charged, it was time for a thick,
dark, coffee to move it into another dimension still.
"Actually, I don’t
drink coffee. I never acquired the taste," responded
my guest. I was shocked.
I saw everything more clearly
now; I charged Prawda with not really being in the French
tradition at all, but, true to the custom of her native
land, more of a philosophy entrepreneur. Wasn’t
she just setting up a multi-national franchise?
"Sure. I had the idea
of doing some T-shirts: Café Philo at the
Café De Flore."
She didn’t find that
a little embarrassing?
"No, no. Why not? Why
should philosophy only be in the universities?
"it should be everywhere."
"I was at the evil dinner,"
was a good slogan, I suggested helpfully.
"…and survived
it," she added, laughing.
