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Amazon.co.uk Review
But even caprice is never entirely random. White retreats into the privatised public spaces of writers, artists and collectors: from the Hôtel de Lauzun where arty denizens including Balzac, Gautier, Manet and the ubiquitous Baudelaire attended exotic dinners parties fuelled by powerful hashish, to the Musée Camondo, built by a prominent banking family who were wiped out in the Holocaust. He maintains that the contemporary vitality of the city lies in the teeming quartiers where Arabs and blacks live, but, tellingly, rather than lead into a discussion of France's postcolonial history, White uses these areas to peer into the jazz-soundtracked encounter between Parisians and American blacks between the wars, the stage taken by Josephine Baker, Sidney Bechet, Richard Wright and James Baldwin. White is quintessentially an American in Paris and his struggle with the tensions between US identity politics and the universalist citizenship of France sometimes reveals more about the walker than the streets he walks, most especially in his discussion of AIDS in France.
White's Flâneur is the city guide as story-teller, rather than inventory-taker--a guidebook of which Walter Benjamin would have approved. The Flâneur is a jewel-box of a book offering rich rewards, which, while not serving up Paris as a list of sights for us to check, certainly conveys some of the city's aura in a beautifully compact format.--Fiona Buckland --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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Edmund White is an accomplished writer who lived in Paris for fifteen years, from about 1983, before returning to his native USA. If he was in love with the French (which seems likely) it was never to the extent to being blinded to their flaws. Taking the notion of the Flaneur, the attentive urban ambler, as his inspiration he takes a gentle and informative stroll through some of the lesser known byways of the French capital, and French history, pausing to point out curious features and to cast light along the way.
Somehow, without ever forcing the pace, he manages to explore art, politics, and sex. He discusses the paradoxical attitudes of the French to race discrimination and the appallingly inadequate response of the state to AIDs in the 1980s. He examines the contrasts between the American and French attitudes to fashion. He ponders on flirtatiousness - how it cannot be avoided in Paris and how it cannot be attempted in New York. He muses upon the creation and endless re-invention of cities, . He writes perceptively about jazz music between the wars, including the danse sauvage of Josephine Baker and its effect upon (amongst others) Marshall Tito, and he struggles (as must we all) with the precise distinction between monarchist and royalist that so exercised the proprietor of his local café. There are many reasons for reading this book. One is that it is beautifully written (it helps). Another is that, without ever losing the objectivity of the foreigner, the author manages to empathise with his subject. When I finished reading it I wanted to start again.
The publishers, Bloomsbury, are to be complimented on producing a first class book. The Flaneur is intended to be the first in a series entitled The Writer in the City. If subsequent volumes match the quality if the first then there is a great deal to look forward to.
What Edmund White has as an edge is the perspective of someone who has lived in Paris for years and knows the ins and outs of its history backstreets and where those who know Paris like the back of their hands go to. It's like a much more personal and interesting Rough Guide in some ways, not that I am saying rough guides aren't well written. I just think this has an edge in terms of being a much more personal stroll through the streets.
Not only are you told the hotspots to go and where to visit for history that isn't in the Louvre or on the tour guides, you are given various histories of Paris. The book is quite short (I wish I had had this when I went to Paris last year) so is perfect to take with you should you go away but is also incredibly easy to read and wonderfully written. There are only six chapters in the book and each one seems to be an essay on a specific side to Paris. If the word `essay' makes it sound like its boring then ignore the word because it is far from it.
The first subject rightly so is simply just Paris and a kind of love letter to it. There are also chapters on the immigration of all different nationalities coming into Paris and making it the racial and cultured mix that it now is where as once it was a predominantly white city. I found this chapter fascinating especially in terms of the black soldiers in the war which made me think of part of the story in Hillary Jordan's wonderful `Mudbound'. Part of the book is dedicated to the literal `gay Paris' and looks at that side of the city and its flamboyant and yet very dark history. My favourite parts of the book were actually the literary history of the city. White wrote a biography of Genet and he is mentioned in this book too alongside the stories of writers like Colette, Balzac, Flaubert, Bechet and many, many more.
All in all if you enjoy White's work anyway you will love this book especially as it gives you even more insight into his life. If you are a fan of Paris then this is also definitely a book for you. I would recommend this to anyone who loves the history of cities, watching life pass by, literary history, travel and wonderful writing. It was a wonderfully surprising treat to read.
The Flaneur literally means a loiterer but purposeless this book is not. Loitering is also a slower description of the pace of this book. The visually driven descriptions of Paris intersperse beautifully with the history of how Paris came to be like it is. Through centuries of music, art and literature. The author is not just well-researched, he also has the qualification of being in love with Paris. So read it, I say and fall in love with Paris.
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