Howard Waldman

Time Was Howard Waldman

Time Was looks back on the author's precarious existence in New York decades ago and his comically desperate quest for an ideal girl, culminating in alarming fiasco. A few years later, he does find that ideal girl and weds her, not in New York, but in Paris. The reader gets to know his new family, in particular, his mother-in-law, tender-hearted, but the worst cook in France, and his eccentric father-in-law who strove for immortality via cod-liver oil rubdowns. He learns the history of the family, once living in primitive conditions on a marginal chicken farm, and then forced out by the Nazi invasion into a new, difficult, existence in occupied Paris. The book touches upon a wide range of subjects, among others: the challenges of life as an expat in France; an analysis of anti-French sentiment in the United States; French versus American cooking; a comparison between obscenities in French and English; confrontation with an orange-haired anarchist during the student revolt of 1968; survival techniques for body and soul; cranky opinions; techniques for coping with writer's block and garden slugs; disappointments and satisfactions; books; dogs; cats; music; roses. Time Was provides the reader with a rare insight into France and the French, free of the clichés that obscure or distort the true image of this country and people.