My Father and I My Father and I The Marais and the Queerness of Community David Caron Cornell University Press ithaca and london Copyright © 2009 by Cornell University All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or parts thereof, must not be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the publisher. For information, address Cornell University Press, Sage House, 512 East State Street, Ithaca, New York 14850. First published 2009 by Cornell University Press Printed in the United States of America Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Caron, David (David Henri) My father and I : the Marais and the queerness of community / David Caron. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-8014-4773-0 (cloth : alk. paper) 1. Marais (Paris, France)—History. 2. Gay community—France—Paris—History. 3. Jewish neighborhoods—France—Paris—History. 4. Homosexuality—France—Paris— History. 5. Jews—France—Paris—History. 6. Gottlieb, Joseph, 1919–2004. 7. Caron, David (David Henri)—Family. I. Title. DC752.M37C37 2009 306.76'6092244361—dc22 2008043686 Cornell University Press strives to use environmentally responsible sup- pliers and materials to the fullest extent possible in the publishing of its books. Such materials include vegetable- based, low- VOC inks and acid- free papers that are recycled, totally chlorine- free, or partly composed of nonwood fibers. For further information, visit our website at www .cornellpress .cornell .edu . Cloth printing 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 In memory of Joseph Gottlieb, my father And for all my other friends Contents IOU ix Prologue. My Father and I 1 Part I THE MARAIS 1 The Old Neighborhood 25 2 A Queer Ghetto 75 Part II THE QUEERNESS OF COMMUNITY 3 Things Past 113 4 Disaster, Failure, and Alienation 150 5 The Queerness of Group Friendship 183 Epilogue. My Father and I 222 Notes 243 Bibliography 251 Index 261 [ vii ] IOU Every book is a community. This one is no exception. I have written it nei- ther for myself nor by myself. It bears the imprint of many friendships and many sources of support, moral and otherwise. Throughout this long pro - cess, I have relied on the kindness of strangers and on the tough and tender demands of those close to me. My father’s dream was to own a bookstore. He never did, but with this book, which is his, he will now be in bookstores. I only wish he had been around to see what he inspired. My writing has allowed me to grow closer to him and to make up for so many years of misunderstanding. I miss him every day. I am particularly indebted to my friends Ross Chambers and Cyril Royer, who have been precious interlocutors from day one. Thinking with them was a challenge and a joy, and they made this book better. Along with Ross and Cyril, Alejandro Herrero- Olaizola and Juli Highfill have given me far more than I could possibly acknowledge here. Jarrod Hayes, Cristina Moreiras- Menor, Martine Delvaux, and Liu Haiyong also deserve special recognition for their friendship, advice, and encouragements. I also thank Lawrence D. Kritzman and Michael Sibalis, who read the manuscript for Cornell University Press and contributed much to its improvement. Peter J. Potter was an ideal editor, wonderfully supportive, engaged, and generous. Thank you all so much. Dilettantism is a lovely ideal but it is also a luxury. A luxury I don’t have. Without the support of institutional structures, I could never do what I love to do—read, write and, think about stuff—and do it for a living. For that I am truly grateful. First of all, I want to acknowledge the various units at the University of Michigan that have made this book possible thanks to their [ix] [x] IOU generous support: the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures; the College of Literature, Science and the Arts; the Office of the Vice Provost for Research; and the Rackham School of Graduate Studies. I was also very fortunate to have received a fellowship from the National Endow- ment for the Humanities, which allowed me to conduct crucial research in Paris for a year. Another fellowship, at the University of Michigan’s Institute for the Humanities, helped me greatly in advancing my thinking and writ- ing. Many thanks to all involved in one way or another: Martine Antle, Marie Lathers, David Halperin, Peggy McCracken, Marie- Hélène Huet, David Carroll, Didier Eribon, and Daniel Herwitz. And there are all the friends in France and elsewhere, the old ones, the new ones, and those whose names I never even knew. I’ll sing them all and we’ll stay all night! This is ultimately a book on friendship, and their love and hospitality have proved my point about community. When bad things happened—and they happened often during the writing of this book—they were there to help. In addition to those already mentioned, and in no par- tic u lar order: Annabelle, Alain, Denis, Laurent, Thierry, Anna, Gowen, Nico, Guillaume, Krysztof, Gilles, Bruno, Babar, Michael, Johnny Boy, Tet- suya, Mindy, Patty, Ed, Fred, Jean- Louis, Ronan, Amar, Sylvie, Xavier, Lil- ian, René- Pierre, Bruno, Kali, Mika, Sophie, Kane, Iannis, Laetitia, Lijun, Marie, Caroline, Didier, and Hervé who didn’t make it. And my family, of course. An earlier version of the prologue, “My Father and I,” was published in GLQ in 2005 (vol. 11, 265–282). Many thanks to the publisher, Duke University Press, for permission to reprint it here. Small sections of chapters 3 and 5 have appeared in Entre Hommes: French and Francophone Masculinities in Culture and Theory in 2008, edited by Todd Reeser and Lewis Seifert (251–266) and in Gay Shame, also in 2008, edited by David Halperin and Valerie Traub. Many thanks to the editors and the University of Delaware Press and the University of Chicago Press respectively for permission to reprint parts of these essays here. David Caron Ann Arbor, Michigan My Father and I “It isn’t fun to be free alone.” Alfred Jarry Prologue: My Father and I My relationship with my father was a disaster. Or at least that’s how it often felt to me. Let me give you an example. One day in the fall of 1998, my fa- ther and I took a little walk through the Marais, the old and emblematic Jewish neighborhood of Paris where he once lived and worked. My father, who by then lived in Caen, Normandy, was visiting my sister in Paris and took the opportunity to do a little shopping at Jo Goldenberg’s famous del- icatessen before returning home. Since we didn’t get to see each other all that much anymore—I have lived in the United States since 1987—this was also an opportunity for the two of us to be together. We were walking along the rue Vieille du Temple, and branching off to the west of there is the rue Sainte- Croix de la Bretonnerie, the heart of what has recently become an American- style gay neighborhood, rainbow flags and all, in the heart of old Paris. To the east, almost facing the rue Sainte- Croix but off by no more than a few yards, begins the rue des Rosiers, the cultural metonym for the French Jewish community. My father suddenly pointed to a shop window. “When I lived here,” he said, “I used to work in this store. And I had a big crush on a girl who was working across the street.” He said this seemingly blind to the fact that the store in question was now called the “Boy Zone” and sold a totally different line of clothing—tight and shiny (you know the kind). All the signs were right there in the window for him to see, but he didn’t see them. At that moment he was in a different Marais, at a different time in history. In fact, during our entire stay in the area, my father was completely unaware that the neighborhood was no longer just Jewish but also conspicuously gay. The bath house, the S&M store, the bookstore with its unmistakable window display, not to mention the people—none of this was immediately legible to him the way it was to me. [1] [2] Prologue Once I was over my inner hilarity at imagining my father selling reveal- ing lycra underwear to a bunch of gym queens, I started thinking that the gap between us seemed unbridgeable. Although we were walking side by side, my father and I were strolling through two different spaces and two differ- ent times—I through the new gay Marais where I would perhaps return that night for fun, and he through the old Jewish Marais where he used to live and work in the 1950s. But let me backtrack a little. My father’s name was Joseph Gottlieb. Everyone called him Jo. He was born on 17 August 1919, in Sátoraljaújhely, a medium- size regional capital in Hungary near the border with what is now Slovakia. Between nine and ten thousand Jews lived in the city, he once told me—25 to 30 percent of the total population. These figures may not be historically accurate, though. Before going any farther, I should clarify a few things. In telling my father’s life story, I am not relying on objective historical research but on his own rec- ollections, which I gathered in a series of taped interviews. What emerged from these recordings was highly subjective, since it was the sum of what I asked and what he volunteered, that is, what was important to me and what was important to him—all this caught up, of course, in the treacherous dy- namics of a personal relationship.