David Downie - Paris, Paris: Journey into the City of Light

P RAISE FOR P ARIS , P ARIS

The delightful and insightful essays in PARIS, PARIS meld history, atmosphere, and observations on Paris places, Paris people, and Paris phenomena.

Chicago Tribune

Downie is a saunterer, wandering down the narrow ancient streets of the le de la Cit, picnicking in storied graveyards like Pre-Lachaise, observing a seduction at Jardin du Luxembourg with a birders patience captures the sort of people and places missed by those jetting from starred bistros to hotels with showers.

Philadelphia Inquirer

David Downies prose illuminates Paris with an unequaled poignancy and passion. He understands and evokes the soul and the substance of the city with a critics intelligence and a lovers heart. He makes me want to live in Paris again.

D ONALD G EORGE , contributing editor, National Geographic Traveler

Downie brilliantly upholds the American expat tradition of portraying the City of Light with an original and endearing touch.

J OHN F LINN , former travel editor, San Francisco Sunday Chronicle

If there is one book Id read before heading to the City of Light, P ARIS , P ARIS is it. Downie, a longtime Paris resident and roamer, writes with knowledge and verve, pinning down the funny and the sublime as he captures on his canvas the quirks, foibles, and follies, and the peculiar mystery of the people and places, that make up this wonderful city.

H ARRIET W ELTY -R OCHEFORT , author of French Toast and French Fried

All visitors to Paris who want their eyes opened and their knowledge widened should buy David Downies irresistible collection of Paris essays. Take the book with you on walks and be astonished at his sense of detail and place; read it in bed or over a glass of wine in a caf, and be introduced to a Paris few know. The text is immaculately complemented by Alison Harriss beautiful and evocative photographs.

A NTON G ILL , author of Il Gigante and Peggy Guggenheim

Beautifully written and refreshingly original Curious and attentive to detail, Downie is appreciative yet unflinching in describing his adopted home makes us see [Paris] in a different light. Theres a deft portrait of the driven, self-created designer Coco Chanel, an acid portrait of the Brutalist modernizer Georges Pompidou, an evocation of the hardworking boat people of the Seine, and historical passages that effortlessly recall lost worlds in vieux Paris.

San Francisco Chronicle

Gives fresh poetic insight into the city a voyage into the bends and recesses, the jagged edges, the secret interiors [of Paris].

Departures

A quirky, personal, independent view of the city, its history, and its people. Residents will recognize a place they can vouch for and not the clichs so frequently conjured up to match the legends. Visitors and newcomers are bound to find P ARIS , P ARIS reliable company as they discover the citys beauties and pleasures and its problems too.

M AVIS G ALLANT

When good Americans die, Oscar Wilde wrote, they go to Paris. Dont wait that long. David Downies new book reflects the city and its light with such power that its title says it twice. PARIS, PARIS shimmers with wit and mesmerizes with wisdom. With splendid photographs by Alison Harris, it is, as the French would say, un must.

M ORT R OSENBLUM

Like the guide who leads us through The Hermitage and its history in Sokurovs Russian Ark, David Downie is the master of educated curiosity. With him we discover Paris, a seemingly public city that is, in fact, full of secretsgreat lives, lives wasted on the bizarre; forgotten artisans; lost graves (lost till now); the papillons nocturnes; and the poinonneur des Lilas. I have walked some of the citys streets with him, and reading this book is just as tactile an experience.

M ICHAEL O NDAATJE

ALSO BY DAVID DOWNIE

Paris to the Pyrenees: A Skeptic Pilgrim Walks the Way of Saint James

Quiet Corners of Rome

Paris City of Night

Food Wine Burgundy

Food Wine Rome

Food Wine Italian Riviera & Genoa

Cooking the Roman Way: Authentic Recipes from the
Home Cooks and Trattorias of Rome

Enchanted Liguria: A Celebration of the Culture, Lifestyle and Food of the Italian Riviera

La Tour de lImmonde

The Irreverent Guide to Amsterdam

Unaltra Parigi (co-author with Ulderico Munzi)

Copyright 2005, 2011 by David Downie
Photographs copyright 2005, 2011 by Alison Harris

All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Broadway Paperbacks, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
www.crownpublishing.com

Broadway Paperbacks and its logo, a letter B bisected on the diagonal, are trademarks of Random House, Inc.

Originally published in slightly different form in the United States by Transatlantic Press, Fort Bragg, California, in 2005.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Downie, David.
Paris, Paris: Journey into the City of Light / David Downie;
photographs by Alison Harris.
1. Paris (France)Description and travel. 2. Paris (France)Social life and customs. 3. Paris (France)Guidebooks. I. Title.
DC707.D69 2011
914.43610484dc22 2010040397

eISBN: 978-0-307-88609-5

Cover design by Whitney Cookman
Cover photograph by Trevillion

v3.1_r2

This book is dedicated to
the memory of our dear friend Barbara Bray,
who shared her wit and humor with countless friends and strangers,
filling Paris with life-enhancing light

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Of all the books about Paris published each year, not one that I can remember tells you where to find the famous Art Nouveau public toilets in Place de la Madeleine, let alone telling you what to look for in the cemetery of Pre-Lachaise. David Downie has a delightful sensibility and the most delighted eye, the most perseverance, and the perfect French, bien sr, and these allow him to uncover secrets. Uncover them he has, the secrets of this fascinating city, and not the ones youll read about anywhere else. Did you know those ugly brown posts that keep Parisians from parking on the sidewalks are bittes, which is slang for what I guess we would call pricks? To take this book as a guidebook, walk out with it as he did and follow his path, is to have adventures, and to see a side of Paris anyone could see, but hardly anyone does.