ROSECRANS BALDWIN

Rosecrans Baldwin longs to brunch with Young Jeezy. “We could have a lot in common,” avers the author, who studied poetry in college. Who favors Bach’s arias when editing. Who brunches.

Dissimilar as Baldwin and Jeezy may seem, both artists have dared to bait peril: Jeezy slung dope for Atlanta’s Black Mafia Family, while Baldwin grappled with the most diabolical of literary genera—memoir—and triumphed, composing his just-released opus Paris I Love You, But You’re Bringing Me Down.

Let me bring you up to speed. The memoir begins in the summer of 2007, when Baldwin and his wife decamp from Brooklyn to Paris. Baldwin joins an ad agency on the illustrious Champs-Élysées, where menace is less gang-related than metaphysical. “My soul was turning into an egg carton,” says Baldwin, who was tasked with drafting pamphlets detailing breastfeeding dos and don’ts. Neither fluent in copywriting nor in French, Baldwin adjusts to an alien city, industry, and culture over eighteen faux pas-filled months. The comedy of his naturalization is anchored in, and balanced by, poignant vivification of the strain of greenhorn immersion.

Graduating from Francophile pilgrim to seasoned Frenchman, Baldwin becomes disillusioned of Paris, but never disenchanted. Holding the the City of Light up to the light, he dramatizes Parisians’ struggle to square capitalistic drive with socialist government and sensualist ethos. Bruno, Baldwin’s ad agency partner, embodies this dilemma. He is, according to Baldwin, “the symbolic wheelbarrow for the state of contemporary France.” Ambitious Bruno feels “frozen.” Stuck. He craves professional vigor, yet resents Baldwin’s Jeezy-esque hustle, bemoaning the hassle of keeping pace.

To truly keep pace, Bruno would have had to wake at five, scribble fiction until seven, then forgo steak-and-wine lunches to hone the morning’s prose. Such is how Baldwin composed his début novel, You Lost Me There. Not that Bruno could have known this: Baldwin kept his authorial aspirations hush-hush. “I’m not a big fan of over-sharing in the workplace,” Baldwin says, summing up the discretion that galvanizes Paris I Love You, But You’re Bringing Me Down. The page is Baldwin’s workplace, and his restraint from navel-gazing allows space for briskly-paced, compelling plot-lines that teem with deeply-felt characters. Baldwin’s memoir boasts the texture and scope of a fine bildungsroman. “It’s about more than just living in Paris,” he agrees. “It’s about being a young artist, or an artist of any age, but young in terms of success and recognition, where you work very hard on something that the world hasn’t recognized yet.”

“Check your watch,” raps Jeezy. “It’s my time.” Ditto for Baldwin. Has life changed, now that the world fêtes his literary gifts?

“I play more tennis,” says Baldwin.

How very French.

Rosecrans Baldwin’s Paris I Love You, But You’re Bringing Me Down is available now from Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

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