Barrie Kerper - Paris: The Collected Traveler

Barrie Kerper is an avid traveler and reader who has lived abroad. She has over a thousand books in her home libraryand an even greater number of file clippingsand has filled up four passports.

A VINTAGE DEPARTURES ORIGINAL, JULY 2011

Copyright 2000, 2011 by Barrie Kerper

All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Vintage Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.

Some of the material originally published in the United States as part of Paris by Three Rivers Press, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, in 2000.

Vintage is a registered trademark and Vintage Departures and colophon are trademarks of Random House, Inc.

All photos by the author with the exception of those that appear in locations (courtesy of Arlene Lasagna).

Letter from Paris, located , originally appeared in the Winter 1995 issue of the Hollins alumnae magazine and is reprinted with kind permission.

Owing to limitations of space, all acknowledgments to reprint previously published material can be found .

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Paris : the collected traveler / edited by Barrie Kerper.
p. cm.(Vintage departures)
An inspired companion guide.
Includes bibliographical references.
eISBN: 978-0-307-73932-2
1. Paris (France)Description and travelSources. 2. Travelers writings. 3. Paris (France)Social life and customsSources. 4. Paris (France)Guidebooks. 5. Paris (France)Biography. 6. InterviewsFranceParis. I. Kerper, Barrie.
DC707.P2546 2011
914.43610484dc22
2011013200

www.vintagebooks.com

Cover design by Abby Weintraub
Cover photograph Silvia Otte/Getty Images

v3.1

Once again, to my mother, Phyllis,
who always believed my boxes of files
held something of value,
and, in memorium, to my father, Peter.
The memory of their first visit to Paris in 1979,
when I lived there as a student,
remains one of the fondest of my life.

P aris is a city that might well be spoken of in the plural, as the Greeks used to speak of Athens, for there are many Parises, and the tourists Paris is only superficially related to the Paris of the Parisians. The foreigner driving through Paris from one museum to another is quite oblivious to the presence of a world he brushes past without seeing. Until you have wasted time in a city, you cannot pretend to know it well. The soul of a big city is not to be grasped so easily; in order to make contact with it, you have to have been bored, you have to have suffered a bit in those places that contain it. Anyone can get hold of a guide and tick off all the monuments, but within the very confines of Paris there is another city as difficult of access as Timbuktu once was.

J ULIAN G REEN , Paris

A breath of Paris preserves the soul.

Victor Hugo, Les Misrables

Those who have experienced Paris have the advantage over those who havent. We are the ones who have glimpsed a little bit of heaven, down here on earth.

Deirdre Kelly, Paris Times Eight

Paris is truly an ocean. Plumb its depths, knowing you will never touch bottom. Run its length, describe it. Whatever care you take in exploring or detailing, however many and determined the navigators of this sea, there always will be virgin territory, unknown grottoes, flowers, pearls, monsters, something amazing, overlooked by literary divers.

Honor de Balzac, Le Pre Goriot

P ARIS HAS LONG been a beaconof light, beauty, culture, and civilizationto people and nations around the world. The city has been called the undisputed capital of the nineteenth century, though Gertrude Stein, writing in the early half of the 1900s, could also make the claim that Paris was where the twentieth century was. Though the city unquestionably lost some of its luster in the mid to late twentieth century, there is also no doubt that Paris is reemerging as a city of grace, significance, and prominence in the twenty-first. As anywhere, it is currently faced with some formidable urban challenges, yet as it works toward solutions to its ills, Paris retains its allure, and its image as a beacon will survive. Paris is still remarkably beautiful; it still has cachet and prestige, grandeur and distinction. Oh, Paris! writes Joyce Slayton Mitchell. Even with modern and economic changes, the value of the beautiful is conserved. The city still brings a sparkle to many an eye, and makes grown adults sigh at the mention of its name.

One of those adults is me. Though I will always have a soft spot in my heart for Spainthats where I took my very first overseas trip, with my tenth-grade Spanish class in 1975it was Paris that changed my life, made me realize who I wanted to be, made me who I am today. It was in Paris that I lived as a student and learned to think in another language and grasped what was really important in life. Though I have only recently become familiar with the late historian Richard Cobb, a passage from his book Paris and Elsewhere perfectly sums up how I felt then: To live in France is to live double, every moment counts, the light of the sky of the le-de-France is unique and a source of joy, there is joy too in a small rectangle of sunshine at the top of a tall, greying, leprous building, the colour of Utrillo, and in the smell of chestnuts that brings the promise of autumn, la rentre, and the beloved repetition of the Paris year. I sometimes wonder if I would feel the same way if Id gone as a student to live in London, or another European country, or somewhere in Asia, Africa, or South Americaafter all, every experience abroad is enriching and worthwhile. But I honestly dont believe I would have. Paris was and remains a city that so very many other places emulate and aspire to.