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Title: The Flaneur: A Stroll Through the Paradoxes of Paris
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Manufacturer: Bloomsbury USA
List Price: $12.99
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| The Flaneur: A Stroll Through the Paradoxes of Paris by Bloomsbury USA A Different Look at Paris | White, Edmund. "The Flaneur: A Stroll through the Paradoxes of Paris", Bloomsbury, 2007.
A Different Look of Paris
Amos Lassen
Edmund White is a wonderful writer as he has proven many times and he gives us a great travel book in "The Flaneur". White gives us a look at Paris that is both personal and historical and is really more of a memoir than anything else. I felt as if White was my friend and taking me on a stroll around the city and showing me his favorite places and telling me stories of his own life there. He is erudite and conversational and never did I feel I was being given a tour of Paris. The fact that the book meanders without any direction is a plus as this makes it comfortable.
The book is only 211 pages long and there is a great deal of information in it. White writes of the avant garde of the Left Bank which is just a fading memory and what a pity! White concentrates on the minorities of the city--the Arabs, the Jews, and the Blacks. It is an insider's guide and we learn of the idiosyncrasies, the flavor, the history and the charm of the City of Light. A flaneur is a rambler who wanders aimlessly through the back ways of the city just to observe and reflect and this is what we do with White. A flaneur comments on all that he sees and hears and knows about the areas of Paris that he chooses to comment on. White lived in Paris for 16 years so there is no doubt that he knows the city. White's distillation of his own years In Paris is what makes this book so interesting and fun.
| | The Flaneur: A Stroll Through the Paradoxes of Paris by Bloomsbury USA Step back in time | I bought this book while holidaying in the Marais in the summer of 2005. I read it on my return to Sydney as a means of returning to the backstreets of Paris as I also remember it.
If you've been to Paris much of this book will seem familiar. If you haven't, It's the closest you'll come to enjoying the pleasures of this most magnificent city.
Much like Paris itself, this book is brilliant. | | The Flaneur: A Stroll Through the Paradoxes of Paris by Bloomsbury USA Cruising Paris | | Of course this isn't really about cruising. If it were it would be awfully boring, and this book is anything but boring. Even so, there is nothing quite so pleasurable as a stroll down almost any street in the French capital. Edmund white, who lived there for a long time, offers a distillation of his experience in this delightful little book. Reading it is almost as good as being there. Second best. Whie writes elegantly and intelligently. The part I most enjoyed, and from which I learned most, is about the Camondo Museum and the tragedy of the family that built and owned it. After reading this book I went to visit it and it turned out to be all White says it is. Delightful. But the book contains other wonderful descriptions of people and places as well. Highly recommended. | | The Flaneur: A Stroll Through the Paradoxes of Paris by Bloomsbury USA Annoyed By Most Travel Books? | | Edmund White gives a very different "travel book" in FLANEUR: A STROLL THROUGH THE PARADOXES OF PARIS. If you don't delight in books that compare prices of hotels and restaurants or books in which the author traces the difficulty of restoring and furbishing a fabulous villa all while beguiling and amusing the locals then White's book will offer you a refreshing alternative. Sixteen-year resident, White, offers a view of Paris that is at once personal and historical. It is more accurately described as a memoir of Paris rather than a standard travel book. One feels as though a friend is offering a leisurely tour of the city showing you his favorite places and telling stories offering insight and historical tidbits not dragging you through a checklist as an impersonal tourist. The changes in neighborhoods and the histories he describes particularly those of expatriate Americans in Paris are all insightful. White's tone is erudite and conversational without being tedious or condescending. The term flaneur is key in the title. The pace of the book is strolling but always interesting. It seems to have no direction but the end result is both illuminating and satisfying. Most remarkably it offers an enjoyable read whether one is immediately traveling to Paris or armchair traveling or whether one is living in a villa in Europe or a small apartment in the States. | | The Flaneur: A Stroll Through the Paradoxes of Paris by Bloomsbury USA Fun little frolic | | This book is a meandering discussion of both the ideal of Paris and its geography. White has lived for over 15 years in Paris, and he provides an introduction of sorts to the city for Americans with an intellectual bent. The book can't really serve as a guide book or book with city walks, since there are no directions or street names, and certainly no itineraries. As White explains, a flaneur is someone who just wanders around, allowing himself to be drawn in the direction of anything of interest. Thus, White strolls with us through several Paris districts, commenting at length on artists or authors who lived there. Along the way, we find entire chapters on African Americans in Paris, gays in Paris, and Jews in Paris. The book assumes a certain familiarity with both the city itself and Parisian people. If you're a complete newcomer, you may find parts of the book somewhat confusing. But if you're an American who has spent at least several weeks in the city, you may find this book to be a delightful diversion. | | The Flaneur: A Stroll Through the Paradoxes of Paris by Bloomsbury USA Product Description | “One has the impression, reading The Flâneur, of having fallen into the hands of a highly distractible, somewhat eccentric poet and professor who is determined to show you a Paris you wouldn’t otherwise see…Edmund White tells such a good story that I’m ready to listen to anything he wants to talk about.”—New York Times Book Review
A flâneur is a stroller, a loiterer, someone who ambles through city streets in search of adventure and fulfillment. Edmund White, who lived in Paris for sixteen years, wanders through the streets and avenues and along the quays, into parts of Paris virtually unknown to visitors and indeed to many Parisians. In the hands of the learned White, a walk through Paris is both a tour of its lush, sometimes prurient history and an evocation of the city’s spirit. The Flâneur leads us to bookshops and boutiques, monuments and palaces, giving us a glimpse into the inner human drama. Along the way we learn everything from the latest debates among French lawmakers to the juicy details of Colette’s life. | | The Flaneur: A Stroll Through the Paradoxes of Paris by Bloomsbury USA Amazon.com's Best of 2001 | | If a place is best known by its particulars, then Edmund White is an expert on Paris. Fortunately, he's generous with his secrets: he reveals a Paris not found in any other guide in this first book in the Writer and the City series. White's Paris is seen on foot, as a flâneur, a stroller who aimlessly loses himself in a crowd, going wherever curiosity leads him and collecting impressions along the way. Paris is the perfect city for the flâneur, as every quartier is beautiful and full of rich and surprising delights. But this is no typical tour of monuments and museums; it is much more intimate and surprising. As a flâneur of Paris for 16 years, White knows where to find the very best of everything--silver, sheets, plum slivovitz. He can tell you where to get Tex-Mex surrounded by a dance rehearsal hall, where to rent an entire castle for a party, or even where to get Skippy peanut butter. He eschews the pearl-gray city built by Napoleon and roams the places where the real vitality lives, the teaming quartiers inhabited by Arabs and Asians and Africans, the strange corners, the markets where you can find absolutely anything in this city that accommodates all tastes. White's Paris is a place rich in history with a passion for novelty and distractions. So a walk through the Jewish ghetto leads to the history of the little-known Musée Nissim de Camondo, with its impressive collection of Louis XV and Louis XVI furniture, created by a family of Jewish bankers ultimately killed in the Holocaust. White shares other favorite and obscure museums, such as the Hôtel du Lauzun, where writers like Balzac and Charles Baudelaire and the painter Edouard Manet met for long evenings of music and hashish-induced hallucinations. Reminiscences in Montmartre reach back to the thriving jazz culture created by African Americans in the years between the world wars and include stories about Josephine Baker, Richard Wright, and James Baldwin. While White may ignore Notre Dame, he has fascinating tidbits to share about kings and queens and their heirs who still fight for the throne. The variety of Paris, White remarks, is matched by the voraciousness and passion of its people. With his own remarkable flair, he reveals a thriving and alluring city where tourists rarely tread. --Lesley Reed |
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