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Paris, Paris: Journey into the City of Light Review

I own a large library of books about France and have probably read almost every major title that features Paris. David Downie's new book Paris, Paris is in a class all its own. It is the most superbly written book on Paris I have read. Downie has a very lively and intelligent style, as well as a deliciously ironic sense of humor. He is also a real journalist in his brave tenacity to "get the story." He takes us to places I would never otherwise have access to because I would be much too timid to make the approach. For instance, to penetrate the inner sancta of fortress-like Ile Saint Louis mansions, he tells how he systematically tested the outer doors and found a few to be always open. He marches right into luxurious courtyards, has a good look around, and describes what he sees in vivid prose. Or when researching the root of the expression "city of light," he heads right to the office of the chief engineer of Paris' municipal lighting department. I found myself very impressed with his approach towards his subject and with his straightforward, unselfconscious way of expressing himself.
Downie is an American who has lived in Paris for over twenty years; however I have to imagine that he has gotten to know the city better than most natives. His curiosity leads him to all Paris' corners, not just the obvious showy places we all know and love. He does take us to some of my favorite neighborhoods and shows us details I've never noticed before, but he also points out the off-beat and even really ugly spots from where we can get a different perspective altogether on this rich, multi-layered city.
The book has three parts: places, people and phenomena. Every chapter is both entertaining and informative. I ate the book up like a plate of many-colored macarons, savoring every flavor. I highly recommend it to arm chair travelers and committed Parisphiles alike. It's full of history, humor and intelligent insight, with never a dull moment.
An evocative black and white image by Alison Harris, Mr. Downie's professional photographer wife and companion in adventure, accompanies each of the 30 chapters to add to the enjoyment.

Paris, Paris: Journey into the City of Light Overview

"Beautifully written and refreshingly original… makes us see [Paris] in a different light." -- San Francisco Chronicle Book Review Swapping his native San Francisco for the City of Light, travel writer David Downie arrived in Paris in 1986 on a one-way ticket, his head full of romantic notions. Curiosity and the legs of a cross-country runner propelled him daily from an unheated, seventh-floor walk-up garret near the Champs-Elysées to the old Montmartre haunts of the doomed painter Modigliani, the tombs of Père-Lachaise cemetery, the luxuriant alleys of the Luxembourg Gardens and the aristocratic Île Saint-Louis midstream in the Seine.Downie wound up living in the chic Marais district, married to the Paris-born American photographer Alison Harris, an equally incurable walker and chronicler. Ten books and a quarter-century later, he still spends several hours every day rambling through Paris, and writing about the city he loves. An irreverent, witty romp featuring thirty-one short prose sketches of people, places and daily life, Paris, Paris: Journey into the City of Light ranges from the glamorous to the least-known corners and characters of the world's favorite city. Photographs by Alison Harris. "I loved his collection of essays and anyone who's visited Paris in the past, or plans to visit in the future, will be equally charmed as well." —David Lebovitz, author of The Sweet Life in Paris "[A] quirky, personal, independent view of the city, its history and its people"—Mavis Gallant "Gives fresh poetic insight into the city… a voyage into 'the bends and recesses, the jagged edges, the secret interiors' [of Paris]."— Departures

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Best Price A Moveable Feast Review

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A Moveable Feast Review

This book is Ernest Hemingway's reminisce about his life in Paris in the 1920s and the literary figures he knew, such as Gertrude Stein, Ford Maddox Ford, Ezra Pound, and F. Scott Fitzgerald. It was left unfinished at the time of Hemingway's death in 1961 and originally published in 1964, edited by his fourth and last wife, Mary. This new "restored" version presents the same book as re-edited by Hemingway's grandson Sean.
The original book is a highly-regarded literary work of art, leaving open the question of why the world needs a new version. The one and only advantage is the inclusion of new, previously unpublished chapters included after the main text, called "Additional Paris Sketches." Anything new written by Hemingway is always welcome.
The problem is Sean Hemingway's editing and the motivation behind it. In his Introduction, he would have us believe Mary somehow wrecked Hemingway's vision of the book and he has now reshuffled the chapters to reflect what his grandfather would have really wanted. Forty-five years after the original publication, Sean writes with what seems to me unusually strong venom at Mary and what he sees as her agenda in making her edits: "The extensive edits Mary Hemingway made to this text seem to have served her own personal relationship with the writer as his fourth and final wife, rather than the interests of the book, or of the author, who comes across in the posthumous first edition as something of an unknowing victim, which he clearly was not." Sean needed to provide some sort of rationale for the new edition, and this is what he would have us believe: the original book reflected Mary's wishes, not Ernest's.
But since the manuscript was left unfinished when Hemingway died, no one knows what he really would have wanted. There is no "definitive" edition and never can one be. Even worse, Sean can well be accused of the same sin as he asserts for Mary: his edits are designed specifically to paint his grandmother Pauline Pfeiffer, Hemingway's second wife and his own grandmother, in a far more favorable light. Readers and scholars can compare the two editions and judge for themselves: is Sean protecting his grandfather's true wishes--whatever they were--or is he doing a favor for his own grandmother at the expense of Hemingway's conception? Sean dug around in the archives and found some things that look good for his grandmother, included them, and rejiggered the original contents in her favor as well.
The good news surely must be that the various heirs of Hemingway can't destroy his work, no matter what their motivations. The text is still the work of one of the 20th century's greatest and most influential writers. Most readers won't need the new edition, as the original, as literature, hasn't really been improved upon. Scholars and Hemingway fans will want to see the new sketches. Probably 45 years into the future, a "scholar's" edition will be published, sans any input from the various heirs of Hemingway, in an attempt to "set the record straight."

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