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• A flaneur is a loiterer, one who wanders a city with no specific goal in mind. Most toursits are not flaneurs. Tourist tend to have very specific attractions the want to see. The flaneur wants to take it all in, to observe everything. His subject of study is not the attraction but the crowd. Mr. White uses this idea to structure his book about Paris, The Flaneur. In The Flaneur you won't find a specific walk designed to be followed map in hand. Instead, you'll find a collection of meditations, reflections, a few history lessons, places Mr. White recommends. It's not a book for someone planning a short trip to Paris. He does not visit the Louvre or the Eiffel Tower or Notre Dame Cathedral. The Flaneur is a book for someone who wants to spend some time without a specific destination in mind. My kind of travelogue. Mr. White spent 16 years in Paris, wandering all over town, into quarters tourists never visit, often parts of town Parisians avoid. As a result, he has all sorts of insider knowledge, some of it knowledge he maybe shouldn't have. This is not an organized trip to Paris, it does not hit the top ten sites one must see. Instead he moves from one topic to another, lighting for a time on whatever interests him. There is a fascinating section on African Americans in Paris, another on the wonders that can be found in the Arab Quarter. Insider gossip on Baudelaire's decadents and on the Musee Moreau.Never heard of the Musee Moreau? This is one of Mr. White's favorite Paris museums and one of mine. Gustav Moreau was a very successful late 19th century artist Moreau favored by the aesthetes of Oscar Wilde's circle and later by the early surrealist movement, but I seriously doubt that anyone could look at his work today as anything other than high camp. Before he died, Moreau made sure that his home and the studio he kept above it would be preserved as museums just like Delcroix's had been. The result is a strangely wonderful place. The residence is really nothing to speak of--several very small rooms on the building's first two floors filled with average furnishing, a typical 19th century apartment. But the top two floors, his gallery/studio are wonderful. One entire wall is made of glass panes opened to the Paris sky. The walls are crammed with Moreau's unfinished work. He left more drawings than could ever be displayed at once so he himself designed a way to hang them all in large panels that the viewer can thumb through like a giant book. At one end of the third floor is a large spiral staircase that takes the very few museum goers to the top gallery. There were a handful of other patrons at the Musee Moreau the day C.J. and I went there, but not many. in fact so few people ever go to the Musee Moreau that it has become a good place to meet in secret. According to Mr. White more than a few people have used it as a trysting site. Perhaps the best thing about the Musee Moreau is that it is only a few blocks away from the Musee la Vie Romantique which I've discussed at length before. The Musee la Vie Romantique is several buildings in a quiet courtyard off of the main street. One building was once the home of Georges Sand and is now devoted to her and Frederic Chopin. The garden has a charming garden cafe that always has a table available. These are not places the typical tourist sees. But that's the whole point of The Flaneur, to experience all of a city, one must be open to go wherever the city takes you. Though this violates the key principal of The Flaneur, reading the book has given me a small list of things I must see the next time I get to Paris.

  5.00 out of 5

  CBJames

• The structure of Edmund White's paean to Paris mimics the meandering path of the flâneur: its half dozen chapters shine a revealing light on the city's social history as they wander through its side streets and alleyways. The book highlights aspects of Paris that depart from the city's mainstream white, Roman Catholic, republican traditions. After an introductory chapter which establishes the capital as an ideal city for flânerie, White devotes the rest of the book to discovering the neighborhoods, streets, and buildings that tell the stories of the city's racial and ethnic minorities, its Jews, its offbeat artists, its gays, and its royalists. All of these stories are delivered in an engaging conversational tone, as though the author is strolling by the reader's side, and presented in a small guidebook-sized volume, perfect for slipping into a pocket or a purse. Once the traveler has visited the Eiffel Tower, Notre-Dame, and the Louvre, <i>The Flâneur</i> reveals the secrets of Paris that lie beneath its famous monuments and its grand boulevards. Whether as a guide for an actual or an imagined visit to the City of Light, White is an ideal traveling companion. This was a book that tempted me to slow down my reading as I approached its end; it whetted my appetite both to read more Edmund White and to sample other volumes in Bloomsbury's <i>The Writer and the City</i> series.

  5.00 out of 5

  thom001

• Towards the end of this book I was making mental plans to spend 3 months in Paris to do my own flaneuring. White ruminates on history, writers, artists, musicians, monarchy, architecture, culture in such an interesting and meandering revealing a fascinating city and history.

  4.00 out of 5

  tandah

• White ia a facile writer. I have enjoyed many of his books. He lived in Paris for many years. If you want to take a stroll through Paris with him I recommend this book.

  4.00 out of 5

  SigmundFraud

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