The flâneur

From Barnes & Noble

The Barnes & Noble Review
The Paris of The Flâneur -- loosely translated as one who strolls, seemingly without purpose or set destination -- is a return to the familiar in more ways than one for Edmund White. After having spent the better part of two decades living and writing in la ville de la lumière before coming back to the U.S. in 1998, White knows his subject with an intimacy that is enviable and effortless. His first nonfiction work about the city, Our Paris: Sketches from Memory, was published in 1995; and in his latest and finest novel, The Married Man, the city assumes its own weight of character. Indeed, The Flâneur can -- and perhaps should -- be read as a companion piece to the novel, or vice versa; the wonderful synergy of story and place between the works greatly enhances two already thought-provoking reads.

The Flâneur deserves its own applause. White's celebration of loitering as the best and truest form of travel discovery will resonate with anyone who has ever dared to toss away a tourist office map or "wasted" an afternoon people-watching. Under his tutelage, we encounter the relatively undiscovered haunts and untold stories of the artists and writers, tycoons and spendthrifts, immigrants and royals who have shaped modern Parisian -- and European -- culture.

White uses his skills as a polished writer, erudite gossip, and intellectual magpie (indeed, the impressive and useful informal bibliography "Further Reading" section of the book validates the quicksilver breadth of White's research) to bring us along with him arm-in-arm on his rambles. A walk around the jazz-drenched fringes of Montmartre finds White sharing energetic cameos of African-American expatriates such as Josephine Baker (the recipient of 2,000 marriage proposals within two years of hitting the town) and musician Sidney Bechet (unknown at home but an icon of success in France, complete with wife, mistress, and two mansions.) A stop at an unremarkable rue de Rivoli café leads White into a hotbed of antirepublican/proroyalist political sentiment, complete with modern-day dissolute, bankrupt dukes and wild allegations of ski slope beheadings.

White does presume a certain sophistication among his audience while disclosing these city secrets. From winking at his readers' familiarity with the effects of hashish while recounting the fascinating past lives of the Hôtel de Lauzun, (onetime residence of Cardinal Mazarin's grand-niece -- whose father, incidentally, had her front teeth pulled in an unsuccessful attempt to stave off marriage proposals -- and later, the affected and afflicted poet Baudelaire) to candid discussions of his own experiences cruising the city's lesser-known gay meeting spots, there is a level of intimacy here that is not typically found in other travelogues.

The Flâneur is the opening work in a new Bloomsbury Publishing series called The Writer and the City. If the irresistible combination of White's dapper prose and his utterly engaging revelations of a Paris where tour buses fear to tread are anything to go by, readers can certainly look forward to more delights from this imprint. (Janet Dudley)

Janet Dudley is a freelance travel writer and travel agent based in upstate New York.

Angeline Goreau

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. From the first few pages, I was ready to give myself over to his wanderings, just to find out where he would go next. But that doesn't mean I'm a person likely to suffer flâneurs gladly. It's just that Edmund White tells such a good story that I'm ready to listen to anything he wants to talk about. He does baggy monsterism proud.
— New York Times Book Review

Publishers Weekly

The first in Bloomsbury's new, "occasional series" The Writer and the City, White's (The Married Man) collection of impressions stands in marked contrast to many travel books published today. The organizing principle is the combined force of White's perception, imagination, frame of reference and voice. He moves seamlessly from an eyeglasses museum to the Hotel de Lauzun--home to Baudelaire as a young man--and a discussion of the poet's dandyism and struggle with syphilis. White includes personal memories and anecdotes of gay Paris--in both senses of the phrase--past and present. "To be gay and cruise is perhaps an extension of the fl neur's very essence, or at least its most successful application," even as the fl neur's wandering is "meant to be useless." White describes his own favorite cruising spots as well as those of Louis XIV's homosexual brother, and notes that Napoleon officially decriminalized homosexuality. Other gems include a visit to the street where Colette lay bedridden with arthritis and spied on Cocteau across the way, and a discussion of the expatriation of African-Americans like Josephine Baker (Cocteau said of her, "Eroticism has found a style") and Richard Wright (who wrote of Paris, "There is such an absence of race hate that it seems a little unreal"). White's charming book is for literati, voyeurs and aesthetes, and for travelers who love familiar terrain from a different viewpoint. (Mar.) Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

Library Journal

This is the first volume of a new series by Bloomsbury in which the world's novelists reveal the secrets of the city they know best. White (A Boy's Own Story), a gay writer who has lived in Paris for 16 years, has named this collection of essays after the aimless stroller celebrated by the poet Baudelaire, and Paris is certainly ideal for such explorations. White reflects on African Americans who took Paris by storm between the wars, French Jews, small and bizarre museums such as the Gustave Moreau Museum, relics from a royalist France, the gay scene, and more. A gifted writer who notices the little details missed by other guidebooks like the ivy-covered wall above the Seine that resembles the side of a galleon White is richly informed, and his evocative writing should appeal to both armchair travelers and visitors to Paris. [The series' future titles include Peter Carey's guide to Sydney and Ahdaf Soueif's guide to Cairo. Ed.] Ravi Shenoy, Naperville P.L., IL Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

The renowned novelist (The Married Man, 2000, etc.) offers an intensely personal portrait of one of the world's great metropolises. A big city, White quotes"a reckless friend" as saying, is"a place where there are blacks, tall buildings and you can stay up all night." Paris fills the bill—and besides, the author adds on his own account, there you can buy heroin,"hear preposterous theories that are closely held and furiously argued," and see some of the world's most satisfying architecture. Above all else, White observes, Paris is a walker's city—not a"village" like Rome or a"backwater" like Zürich, but a city whose bounds can comfortably be traversed in a long evening's stroll. Himself an accomplished flâneur (stroller) in a city full of them, White offers notes on the grammar of the Parisian street, which is markedly unlike that of a street in, say, New York:"Americans," he writes,"consider the sidewalk an anonymous backstage space, whereas for the French it is the stage itself." Passing along arrondissements and îles and boulevards, White takes a sidelong view at French culture, with its marked tolerance for African-Americans but disdain for Africans, especially Arabs, and its astounding history of anti-Semitism; its pretensions to greatness and its frequent attainment of the same; and its seeming invulnerability to shock at any of the flesh's various gratifications. White, a pioneer of gay literature, spends portions of his book strolling through the homosexual demimonde of Paris, which is at once less self-conscious and more embattled than homosexual communities elsewhere. His book, however, should by no means be confined to the gay-lit shelves,foritprovides sophisticated reflections on a city dear to so many travelers that has seen its day but retains its allure. Even the most sophisticated readers will learn much from these erudite perambulations.