• The Flaneur: A Stroll Through Paris

    The publisher says: Bloomsbury is proud to announce the first title in an occasional series in which some of the world's finest novelists reveal the secrets of the city they know best. These beautifully produced, pocket-sized books will provide exactly what is missing in ordinary travel guides: insights and imagination that lead the reader into those parts of a city no other guide can reach. A flaneur is a stroller, a loiterer, someone who ambles through a city without apparent purpose but is secretly attuned to the history of the place and in covert search of adventure, esthetic or erotic. Edmund White, who lived in Paris for 16 years, takes us into parts of the city virtually unknown to visitors and indeed to many Parisians. Entering the Marais evokes the history of Jews in France, just as a visit to the Haynes Grill recalls the presence -- festive, troubled -- of black Americans in Paris for a century and a half. Gays, Decadents, even Royalists past and present are all subjected to the flaneur's scrutiny. The Flaneur is opinionated, personal, subjective. As White conducts us through the bookshops and boutiques, past the monuments and palaces, filling us in on the gossip and background of each site, he allows us to see through the blank walls and past the proud edifices and to glimpse the inner, human drama. Along the way he recounts everything from the latest debates among French law-makers to the juicy details of Colette's life in the Palais Royal, even summoning up the hothouse atmosphere of Gustave Moreau's atelier.

    Details:
    Title: The Flaneur: A Stroll Through the Paradoxes of Paris
    Publisher: Bloomsbury USA
    Pub. date: April 29, 2008
    Author: Edmund White
    Paperback; 224 pages
    List price: $12.95
    ISBN-10: 1582342121
    ISBN-13: 978-1582342122


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