The Flaneur: A Stroll through the Paradoxes of Paris in Queereaders

Sep 01, 2011 Chaundra rated it liked it

Shelves: travel, paris

I chose this book from the title alone, and it lived up to the expectations. Like the flaneur himself, this book ambles gently and easily through Paris in all it's modes - historical, "current" (at least based on the author's term there in the 80s), philosophical, and cultural. He treats the less attractive sides of living in Paris with the same matter-of-fact curiosity as it's more delightful. A great book for those who know and love Paris, or those who want to visit vicariously and see a side ...more

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Feb 14, 2009 Cameron rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: queer, traversing-the-globe

Flânerie as explicated by Edmund White is less about actual locomotion than the exploratory urge, the quest to investigate the cracks within the city, specifically Paris. He details the flâneur as a distinctly Parisian creation, drawing upon the city's nuances and dichotomies, its ethnic character, literary and artistic traditions, and the nature of the Parisians themselves.

This is not a book about walking in Paris, and yet, that is all it concerns. The stroll White takes us on touches upon a g Flânerie as explicated by Edmund White is less about actual locomotion than the exploratory urge, the quest to investigate the cracks within the city, specifically Paris. He details the flâneur as a distinctly Parisian creation, drawing upon the city's nuances and dichotomies, its ethnic character, literary and artistic traditions, and the nature of the Parisians themselves.

This is not a book about walking in Paris, and yet, that is all it concerns. The stroll White takes us on touches upon a great deal of history, not to build the city as a whole, but rather to linger on places and people that contribute in some way to the spirit of Paris, not the clean and shiny version of which White is frequently trenchant, but rather the outskirts and substrata and fringes. He relates tales of home-grown literary figures such as Colette and Proust and Baudelaire, the expatriate black Americans like Baldwin and Bechet who found a wholly different attitude toward skin color than they were accustomed to in America, prominent Jewish families who built banking empires or museums and then suffered under the puppet Vichy government during WWII, and the remnants of royalist feeling for the overthrown monarchy and the escapades of the descendant heirs.

Perhaps the most fascinating diversion White took for me concerns gay Parisians. Comically comparing cruising to flânerie - with the important difference the flâneur has no objective and the cruising gay male is the object to be had - he progresses through the rather lax attitude the French have had in general toward homosexuality. Though it was never an acknowledged behavior and arrests for sodomy are on record, punishments were light compared to the much more vilifying English response. After WWII there was a slight regression left from the remnants of Nazi influence on the government, replaced when the socialist government took control in 1981, but the gay population did not experience the same kind of persecution that their American counterparts were facing during the 60's and 70's, and by the 80's gays were accepted in many circles.

What struck me as strange was that during this time, the AIDS epidemic was entering the world consciousness, and yet France resisted. For being open to the nature of homosexuality, they were extremely resilient to dealing with the crisis, and thus education and health services were slow to develop or non-existant. White explains this in context of the French character versus the American character: minority politics were increasingly gaining weight and status in America, but in France, perhaps due to the more accepting nature, such a build up of networks and support and community mind was not necessary and did not occur. In fact, such segregation of minority politics seemed laughable and destructive to the French. This left no cohesive response until 1989 when Act Up first formed. White explains further that much of this hesitation stems from the French attitude that sexuality is a private affair and not to be politicized, whereas political is what grew the gay American response.

White does not emphasize the hows of the flâneur, but instead his whole travelogue with its divergent tangents is an example of what the flâneur does - in a very literary and engaging tone that traipses about the streets and parks and isles of Paris in a perambulatory journey to see what is to see and to experience without the impetus of formulating knowledge. ...more

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Sep 10, 2007 Tosh rated it it was amazing

Shelves: books-bought

This is a great Edmund White book. I haven't read his fiction, but his essays are right on the dot. His take on his favorite city Paris is a wonderful trip in itself. ...more

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