Who said life is better in France "because the wine is cheaper?"

May 29, 2004 7:58 PM

Hunt the quote. For weeks I've been trying to track down a sort of litany about how much better life is in France, "because the wine is cheaper", or something like that. I thought it was Kingsley Amis, but it's not, and Google has let me down. Let loose the literary boozehounds!
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen to society & culture (3 comments total)

The New Statesman and Society, 15 Dec. 1995, has this:

"The article brought to mind a piece by the late Kingsley Martin--the greatest journalist ever to hold the editorial chair of this magazine--which he wrote during a visit to Paris soon after the end of the second world war. As far as I can remember, the article consisted entirely of sentences like: 'The politics are more interesting in France, because the wine is cheaper. The food is better in France, because the wine is cheaper. The girls are prettier in France, because the wine is cheaper. The literature is more profound in France, because the wine is cheaper...' And so on, ad infinitum."
posted by Mo Nickels at 5:58 AM on May 30, 2004

PS: I found this at Factiva.com, the Dow Jones full-text news archive. I could not find any other source for this quote, with or without Martin. You might try the Amazon search-inside-the-book; I searched there, but there were too many hits, and I didn't want to commit the time dealing with the awful, awful Amazon search algorithm. I also checked Google Print, Newspaperarchive.com, and Lexis Nexis Academic (checking all news and magazines/journals).
posted by Mo Nickels at 6:36 AM on May 30, 2004

Perfect! That's exactly it, and now I know why I kept thinking it was Amis.

Thank you!
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen at 1:06 PM on May 30, 2004