Over the years, author Scott Dominic Carpenter has made numerous trips to France and even negotiated several extended stays. “When a sabbatical came my way, I dragooned [my wife] Anne into the idea of France,” he writes in French Like Moi, an essay collection full of humor and trenchant cultural observations.

A professor of French Literature and Creative Writing at Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota, Carpenter’s a seasoned trans-Atlantic traveler. “The culture shock in both directions [gives] me whiplash each and every time,” he says. The cultural education cuts both ways as well. “You don’t really understand your own culture until you get immersed in another one,” Carpenter says.

French Like Moi is a detailed and perceptive account of Parisian experiences, adventures, and, most notably, misadventures. Kirkus Reviews lauds the collection for the range of writing: “Carpenter’s insights are humorous and deftly crafted, interweaving perceptive details about the French language with curious incidents and stirring events.”

But Carpenter aims to capture another aspect of Paris: how others experience and perceive the beloved city. “For travelers going to Paris, it’s hard to embrace the richness in difference because people are so protected from the real thing.” Carpenter describes the guided tours and curated encounters, all of which give visitors a canned and staid experience, nothing beyond the expected, then notes, “How much better it is when things go wrong in France.” Embracing an intrepid chaos has enriched his own experiences—and provided plenty of fodder for his writing. “I like it when things turn into catastrophes,” he says.

Carpenter’s reflections on the French language are as keen as his observations of the culture. Occasionally, he interrupts the narrative thrust of his essays to offer funny and perceptive asides, as in this passage from “Murders in the Rue Bobillot”:

Ça va. “It goes.” This expression is the Swiss Army knife of the French language. When used as a question (ça va?), the phrase contains its own answer (ça va!). Moreover, it can bat away any query slung in your direction. Should a pal inquire how your weekend was, you can shrug and say ça va, which means, “It was OK, but nothing special.” If the rental car guy asks if you’d like a green Renault, ça va will again do the trick, communicating that the vehicle will be satisfactory. Should someone offer you a second serving of calf brains at dinner, you can pause, reflect, and say, ça va, merci, which translates as “I couldn’t eat another bite, thank you.”

Carpenter offers a colorful assessment of such linguistic negotiations: “It’s always hard to tell which parts of a foreign language are the engines and axles,” he writes, “and which are the hood ornaments and air fresheners.”

Having traveled between the U.S. and France for years, Carpenter didn’t begin writing about Paris until about five years ago, at which point capturing his impressions and experiences became a creative priority. He can even remember the experience that inspired it all. “I was hired to accompany a group of American tourists in the southwest of France,” he says. The tour group had enlisted Carpenter to tag along as an academic presence, the resident scholar to give talks along the way. Carpenter describes the trip’s “incredibly detailed itinerary,” every moment scripted. “This is my experience of how most people encounter France,” he says. 

One day, the tour group went to a farm where geese were being fattened to make foie gras. Carpenter was struck by an unsettling realization: The tourists were the geese, being fed stock impressions of France. “I thought, ‘This is what they’ve been doing to us for the past ten days,’ ” he says. “They put a funnel into our brains and shoveled in these clichés.” 

Returning from the farm, the group was in for a surprise: “While we were out, the hotel had been burgled,” Carpenter recalls. “Wall safes had been ripped out of the walls. Wallets were gone, passports were gone, jewelry was gone.” Carpenter found himself enjoying the moment of unplanned bedlam.

“I thought, ‘Great! This is the first time reality has erupted in this whole two-week period.’ ” Carpenter appreciates how much richer experience can be once “you get off the rails of the standard tourist package.”

Carpenter sees himself as a latecomer to the field of creative writing. Moreover, the scholarly tendencies of an academic were less useful in his creative pursuits. “So many things to undo,” he says. “It was such a labor to try to exorcise all of the academic-ease. Scholarly projects…are so opposite to what one does in creative writing. They’re so expository. What I took was the wrong path to writing.”

No matter how circuitous the route, Carpenter’s writing has arrived at a definitive style of casual erudition and self-lacerating humor. While the humor comes to him readily, he deploys it strategically, calling it his “safety valve for pompousness.” “Part of the action of humor is to deflate,” he says. “When people think of Paris, it’s this sleek, sexy, urbane, luxurious sort of creature—but of course that’s when it’s all puffed up. One of the particular pleasures is to puncture that myth of Paris. And to puncture the myths I have of myself.”

Carpenter is critical of any writing on Paris that tries to burnish even further the already glowing city. “[These writers] engage in what I call ‘baguette polishing.’ Paris is the city that everybody knows before they’ve gone there—from movies, advertisements, books. It’s pervasive, it’s everywhere.” Carpenter’s advice to tourists? Find the signs for the hotspots and run in the other direction. “If you follow the signs to the Mona Lisa, you might miss the argument going on at the cafe,” he says. “[You will] find out it’s a real city. And maybe that makes it more interesting than expected. I can say with some confidence that I’d be happy never to go up the Eiffel Tower ever again.”

But even Carpenter feels the sway of familiar landmarks. Every now and then the city is as advertised: picturesque and stunning. “There is a real beauty to the place,” he says, “but I think the hope is that one won’t be blinded to the real life that’s happening.”

Walker Rutter-Bowman is a writer and teacher living in Washington, D.C.