I picked up this book
with a lot of hope and excitement. I have been fascinated with
France, and particularly Paris, ever since I started learning French
from the 8th grade. But the book disappointed me. It is,
not as I expected, about the many walks through Paris and the
author's personal favourite. It is rather a collection of
observations the author has about Paris, only some of which are
related to him being a flaneur.
But, that is not to say I
did not enjoy the book. It does mention tidbits about Paris and its
literary inheritance which a lot of visitors may not know about. The
author, who lives on rue de l'Odeon boasts of the famous bookstore Shakespeare and Company run by Slyvia
Beach; Slyvia lived in the author's building where James Joyce often
visited as did Scott Fitzgerald, Gertrude Stein and Ernest Hemingway.
So, one may say, John Baxter is quite qualified to write about Paris
and its walks from a literary angle.
The author mentions that
Paris belongs to its pedestrians. He quotes the writer Edmund White
who wrote, “Paris is a world meant to be seen by the walker alone,
for only the pace of strolling can take in all the rich (if muted)
detail.” If the Paris of pedestrians has heroes, notes Baxter, they
are Georges Eugene Haussmann (who got people back on the streets in
the late 1800s) and Andre Malraux (the minister of culture).
Before the author came to
Paris, he lived in Los Angeles which had “persuaded him that going
anywhere on foot wasn't just unusual but downright unnatural, even
illegal.” He mentions Ray Bradbury's 1951 short story “The Pedestrian” set in a future Los Angeles where nobody walks.
The only man who defies this custom is hauled off by the Psychiatric
Center because “Who but a madman would walk for pleasure” I would
tend to agree. On my travels to the United States, I have observed
that nobody walks, not even in the suburbs. People drive down to the
nearest park and then take a walk there. The US is certainly not a
country for flaneurs in my opinion!
The author also mentions
that since nobody walks like the French, they are the people who have
raised the political walk to near perfection. Parisians grow up with
the promenade, or stroll, as a natural part of their lives.
Baxter gives some
interesting tidbits about the various metro stations in Paris, at
least I found them wonderfully fascinating. Pont Neuf, nearest to Le
Monnaie, displays old coinage and an ancient hand press. At Concorde,
each tile bears a single letter, as if for a giant game of Scrabble.
At Varenne, nearest to the Musee Rodin, full-size replicas of his
Thinker and statue of Honore de Balzac rule the platform.
Louvre-Rivoli station is elaborately decorated with facsimile
Egyptian status and other antiquities.
During the course of the
book, the author takes us through some amazing anecdotes about
Hemingway's life; he takes us underground Paris's streets where the
catacombs lie;
he talks about the fascination painters have with the city; and how
the French really love their food.
At the end of the book,
he also gives some tips to visitors. I found the following ones
interesting:
- A true French cafe breakfast remains one of the great pleasures of life in Paris.
- Paris's twenty arrondissements spiral out from Notre Dame, with something interesting in each of them.
- Paris's rare-book market takes place every weekend on rue Brancion in the fifteenth, in what used to be an old slaughterhouse.
- Afternoon hot chocolate at Proust's favourite cafe, Angelina.
- Climb the famous stone staircases of Montmartre around 5.00 a.m. or take the little cable car, buy coffee and rolls, and eat breakfast on the terrace below the Cathedral of Sacre-Coeur.
Though the book did not
live up to its title, I did enjoy reading it and the various little
pieces of information it offered me in terms of its past inhabitants
and how they came about to shape and build the city as we know it
today. Rest assured, when I do visit Paris, I will be taking this
book along with me if only as a kind of a tour guide.
