The Flâneur: A Stroll through the Paradoxes of Paris by Edmund WhiteMy rating: 2.75 of 5 stars
The Flâneur is one who strolls aimlessly about without a destination in mind, wanders wherever curiosity strikes at the moment. This book replicates this approach, at least for the author. It wanders aimlessly through some curiosities in Paris, with a bit of French history, settling mostly on the culture of Paris, discussing artists: writers, painters, musicians, and others.
The first chapter is a general sort of overview of Paris, all the weird things that could be found or done there (such as a wife swap club), and of course the fashion. There are also some spots pointed out, cafés and through this meandering land on Collette, a leading woman writer in the 1920s, who was full of contradictions.
The next chapter begins wandering about touching on varied subjects, then lands on African Americans in Paris, how their experience of racism was completely different, and much more accepted. This morphs into jazz musicians with some details about Bricktop, Bechet and Josephine Baker.
And so we meander through the book on varied topics, history of Jewish people in France and Paris, with particulars on some people, multitude of museums, Hôtel de Lauzun in particular and Baudelaire, and gay culture and writers in another chapter. The last one discusses royalty, the descendants of the old Kings and Queens who where banned from living in France, and what they have been up to since the beheading of King Loius XVI and Marie Antoinette.
My personal interest in these varied subjects ran the gamut. If I read this book back when it was given to me over twenty years ago, when I was studying French, I suspect the book would have interested me more than today. It was quite a wandering about of subjects.
Writer and the City Series - book 1 of 7
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