A flaneur 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 Flaneur leads us to bookshops and boutiques, monuments and palaces, giving us a glimpse 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.
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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
Edmund White is the author of three memoirs, My Lives, City Boy, and Inside a Pearl, about Paris. His many novels include the autobiographical A Boy's Own Story and, most recently, Jack Holmes & His Friend. He is also known as a literary biographer and essayist. White lives in New York and teaches at Princeton University.
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Seller: Optimon Books, Gravesend, KENT, United Kingdom
Paperback. Condition: Good. Hardback in very good condition with no noticeable faults. Published in 2015, 2nd edition. Seller Inventory # 402298
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Seller: ModernRare, CHICAGO, IL, U.S.A.
Hardcover. Condition: As New. 1st Edition. 1st Printing. Signed. 215 pages. Published in 2015. Book-length account on subject. One of Edmund White's masterworks. The first appearance of the title in the United Kingdom. Precedes and should not be confused with all other subsequent editions. Published in a small and limited first print run as a hardcover original only and as part of the now-legendary "The Writer In The City" Series. A bestseller, the book remains available in innumerable subsequent printings. The First Edition is now rare. The production values of the British Edition are superior to the American Edition in every respect. Without DJ, as issued. Re-presents, in a stunningly beautiful "travelogue book" format, Edmund White's "The Flaneur: A Stroll Through The Paradoxes of Paris". The inveterate walker's guide to the one city designed for walkers. This is the author's second book on Paris, preceded by "Our Paris: Sketches From Memory" (1995) and concluded by "Inside A Pearl: My Years In Paris" (2014). It is worthy of comparison with its predecessors in Baudelaire and Walter Benjamin. "A flaneur 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. Gives us a glimpse into the inner human drama" (Publisher's blurb). Among American writers, only Edmund White could have written this book. By his own admission, he has spent a serious and dedicated part of his otherwise sedentary life as a writer cruising. Cruising requires strong feet, insatiable desire, and infinite curiosity, all of which White had, and refined, over a lifetime of cruising. Its natural extension, a more leisurely walk through Paris, is an illuminating pleasure. An absolute "must-have" title for Edmund White collectors. This copy is very prominently, neatly, and beautifully signed in black ink-pen on the author's bookplate (that is pasted on the title page) by Edmund White. The bookplate is very small so it blends in well with the page itself. This title is a contemporary classic. As far as we know, this is the only bookplate-signed copy of the First Hardcover Edition/First Printing (British) available online and is in especially fine condition: Clean, crisp, and bright. Please note: Edmund White signed the bookplate, NOT the book itself. ALL other copies available online have serious flaws or are in innumerable subsequent printings. This is surely an accessible and lovely alternative. A very rare signed copy thus. Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award in 1994 for "Genet: A Biography". Anointed by Vladimir Nabokov as his American successor. One of the finest writers of our time. A fine collectible copy. (SEE ALSO OTHER EDMUND WHITE TITLES IN OUR CATALOG) ISBN 1632863774. Signed by Author. Seller Inventory # 23334
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