The Story Behind the Story
The inspiration for Opposites Attack grew out of my experience at a total-immersion language school in Provence d’Azur—a heavenly part of France where Provence and the Côte d’Azur meet. There were students of all nationalities there. As a certified story junkie, there was no shortage of entertainment in that department. One older American told me he had been coming back to the school every summer for many years. Perhaps it was my vivid writer’s imagination, but was his “friendship” with the instructor he always dined with in the school cafeteria more than that?
My goodness, I thought. What endless mischief could erupt as foreigners whooshed in and out of the lives of the locals for weeks and months at a time? It was like a cruise ship for language nerds.
The full story of why I went there and what it was really like can be found in the “Lagniappes” section at the end of the 2023 10th Anniversary edition. Bottom line: I entered the school in Hyères speaking like a one-year-old and left fourteen days later speaking like I was two. But it was worth it!
If this book inspires you to travel, take a cooking class, learn a new language, or fall in love with someone very different from you, tout nouveau, tout beau! What is new, is good.