What do you think?
Rate this book
Most Beautiful Walk in the World: A Pedestrian in Paris
The most irresistibly witty and revealing tour of Paris in years...In this enchanting memoir, acclaimed author and Paris resident John Baxter recounts his year-long experience of giving "literary walking tours" through the city. Baxter sets off on the trail of Paris's legendary artists and writers. Along the way, he tells the city's history through a brilliant cast of the favourite cafes of Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and James Joyce; Pablo Picasso's underground Montmartre haunts; the bustling boulevards of the late-19th century flaneurs; the secluded "Little Luxembourg" gardens beloved by Gertrude Stein; the alleys where revolutionaries plotted; and finally Baxter's own favourite walk near his home in Saint-Germain-des-Pres. Paris, by custom and design, is a pedestrian's city - each block a revelation, every neighbourhood a new feast for the senses, a place rich with history and romance at every turn. The Most Beautiful Walk in the World is your guide par excellence to the true, off-the-beaten-track heart of the City of Lights.
302 pages, Paperback
First published May 24, 2011
336 people are currently reading
5013 people want to read
About the author
John Baxter
226 books123 followersJohn Baxter (born 1939 in Randwick, New South Wales) is an Australian-born writer, journalist, and film-maker.
Baxter has lived in Britain and the United States as well as in his native Sydney, but has made his home in Paris since 1989, where he is married to the film-maker Marie-Dominique Montel. They have one daughter, Louise.
He began writing science fiction in the early 1960s for New Worlds, Science Fantasy and other British magazines. His first novel, though serialised in New Worlds as THE GOD KILLERS, was published as a book in the US by Ace as The Off-Worlders. He was Visiting Professor at Hollins College in Virginia in 1975-1976. He has written a number of short stories and novels in that genre and a book about SF in the movies, as well as editing collections of Australian science fiction.
Baxter has also written a large number of other works dealing with the movies, including biographies of film personalities, including Federico Fellini, Luis Buñuel, Steven Spielberg, Stanley Kubrick, Woody Allen, George Lucas and Robert De Niro. He has written a number of documentaries, including a survey of the life and work of the painter Fernando Botero. He also co-produced, wrote and presented three television series for the Australian Broadcasting Commission, Filmstruck, First Take and The Cutting Room, and was co-editor of the ABC book programme Books And Writing.
In the 1960s, he was a member of the WEA Film Study Group with such notable people as Ian Klava, Frank Moorhouse, Michael Thornhill, John Flaus and Ken Quinnell. From July 1965 to December 1967 the WEA Film Study Group published the cinema journal FILM DIGEST. This journal was edited by John Baxter.
For a number of years in the sixties, he was active in the Sydney Film Festival, and during the 1980s served in a consulting capacity on a number of film-funding bodies, as well as writing film criticism for The Australian and other periodicals. Some of his books have been translated into various languages, including Japanese and Chinese.
Since moving to Paris, he has written four books of autobiography, A Pound of Paper: Confessions of a Book Addict, We'll Always Have Paris: Sex and Love in the City of Light, Immoveable feast : a Paris Christmas, and The Most Beautiful Walk in the World : a Pedestrian in Paris.
Since 2007 he has been co-director of the annual Paris Writers Workshop.
Baxter has lived in Britain and the United States as well as in his native Sydney, but has made his home in Paris since 1989, where he is married to the film-maker Marie-Dominique Montel. They have one daughter, Louise.
He began writing science fiction in the early 1960s for New Worlds, Science Fantasy and other British magazines. His first novel, though serialised in New Worlds as THE GOD KILLERS, was published as a book in the US by Ace as The Off-Worlders. He was Visiting Professor at Hollins College in Virginia in 1975-1976. He has written a number of short stories and novels in that genre and a book about SF in the movies, as well as editing collections of Australian science fiction.
Baxter has also written a large number of other works dealing with the movies, including biographies of film personalities, including Federico Fellini, Luis Buñuel, Steven Spielberg, Stanley Kubrick, Woody Allen, George Lucas and Robert De Niro. He has written a number of documentaries, including a survey of the life and work of the painter Fernando Botero. He also co-produced, wrote and presented three television series for the Australian Broadcasting Commission, Filmstruck, First Take and The Cutting Room, and was co-editor of the ABC book programme Books And Writing.
In the 1960s, he was a member of the WEA Film Study Group with such notable people as Ian Klava, Frank Moorhouse, Michael Thornhill, John Flaus and Ken Quinnell. From July 1965 to December 1967 the WEA Film Study Group published the cinema journal FILM DIGEST. This journal was edited by John Baxter.
For a number of years in the sixties, he was active in the Sydney Film Festival, and during the 1980s served in a consulting capacity on a number of film-funding bodies, as well as writing film criticism for The Australian and other periodicals. Some of his books have been translated into various languages, including Japanese and Chinese.
Since moving to Paris, he has written four books of autobiography, A Pound of Paper: Confessions of a Book Addict, We'll Always Have Paris: Sex and Love in the City of Light, Immoveable feast : a Paris Christmas, and The Most Beautiful Walk in the World : a Pedestrian in Paris.
Since 2007 he has been co-director of the annual Paris Writers Workshop.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 493 reviews
October 14, 2011
I am having some difficulty reviewing The Most Beautiful Walk in the World; A Pedestrian in Paris. I wanted to like the book, I should have liked the book. I love everything about Paris. I would be in Paris every weekend if I could. And the title is so appropriate; Paris belongs to pedestrians. It is one of the most walkable and pretty cities I have ever visited. I enjoyed the book. However there were some moments of boredom and disillusionment.
This may have been my own doing. I had a pre-conceived idea about the book. I thought that Baxter who is an Aussie married to a French woman was going to take us a a few of his favourite walks around the city. The book was not so much about walking through the city as it was a collection of anecdotes about his life in Paris.
I had started reading this book before my recent trip to Paris. Having finished the book on the plane it did enhance my excitement and anticipation about going to Paris. Baxter's book is more of a guide and tribute to the literary figures and artists who made Paris home than it is about the walks Paris has to offer.
I did enjoy his descriptions of the city, however I wished this book was more about walking through the city and less about Baxter and who used to live in his apartment building before. There is probably something for everyone who loves the city of lights in this book, I just do not think the entire book is for everyone.
This may have been my own doing. I had a pre-conceived idea about the book. I thought that Baxter who is an Aussie married to a French woman was going to take us a a few of his favourite walks around the city. The book was not so much about walking through the city as it was a collection of anecdotes about his life in Paris.
I had started reading this book before my recent trip to Paris. Having finished the book on the plane it did enhance my excitement and anticipation about going to Paris. Baxter's book is more of a guide and tribute to the literary figures and artists who made Paris home than it is about the walks Paris has to offer.
I did enjoy his descriptions of the city, however I wished this book was more about walking through the city and less about Baxter and who used to live in his apartment building before. There is probably something for everyone who loves the city of lights in this book, I just do not think the entire book is for everyone.
May 22, 2013
A quick glance at the blurb for this book suggests the kind of travelogue Bill Bryson has made his raison d'etre. Unfortunately, this is misleading. The title suggests a sort of pedestrian's view of Paris, which is equally misleading. Instead, what we have here is a rather unstructured, random series of thoughts from a man with literary pretensions who happens to live in Paris. The book is disjointed - one chapter about a friend trying to buy a house is followed by another about the French Revolution - and many of the chapters seem like half-finished thoughts, stopping abruptly after having said not very much. Occasionally it strays off to talk about Australia or America for a chapter. Frequently it seems little more than a vehicle for the author to do a spot of name-dropping, to brandish his obsession with Hemingway or to show off his middle class credentials talking about things like the right way to eat foie gras or not drinking brandy before a meal.
The overall impression is of a book designed not to share the delights of Paris, but to polish the ego of its author. If I didn't already know Paris this is not a book which would persuade me to visit. It certainly wouldn't persuade me to take one of the author's walking tours, which sound as random and unstructured as the book itself.
The overall impression is of a book designed not to share the delights of Paris, but to polish the ego of its author. If I didn't already know Paris this is not a book which would persuade me to visit. It certainly wouldn't persuade me to take one of the author's walking tours, which sound as random and unstructured as the book itself.
September 18, 2011
This is what a book about Paris should be like. John Baxter is an expat who gets it. He doesn't over generalize the city or the people. He understands that everyone's experience in Paris is different even in the ways that it's the same. The book is a series of amusing, thought-provoking, beautiful vignettes about Paris life: the good, the bad, and the bizarre (the chapter about real estate made me laugh out loud with sympathy!) Having spent a lot of time in Paris myself, I still learned a lot about the city from Baxter's stories. He knows a lot about the hidden gems, parts of the city the average tourist doesn't see much, and he's a history buff, so he sprinkles the chapters with facts and figures that really bring the past back into the present. For me, one of the hallmarks of a great book of this kind is when I finish the book and end up with a stack of other books I want to read. He starts every chapter with an intriguing and relevant quote from other authors dealing in similar subjects. In addition to Baxter's other books about France, now I want to read Hemingway and Fitzgerald and all the great writers that never interested me in high school. This book makes their lives and their work sound irresistable. If you love Paris as much as I do, don't miss this book.
February 25, 2023
Didn't learn much about Paris; did learn that John Baxter is an asshole. He starts by complaining that his French in-laws are terrible cooks (he, an Australian, has to show them how to do it) and posits that no one who uses a recipe is a decent chef. Um...fuck you! Also, you will note that, despite lasting several chapters, none of this riveting material has anything to do with walking in Paris.
The rest of the book is then Baxter's complaints about American tourists (original), uncomfy comments about Jews, gay people, and young girls, and unceasing veneration of Ernest Hemingway. It's notable to me that Baxter questions the veracity of memoirs by Sylvia Beach, Bruce Chatwin, and T.E. Lawrence, but accepts everything Hemingway says in A Moveable Feast and other works 100% at face value. If I'd wanted to read Hemingway be an asshole about his friends, women, Jews, and gay people, I could have just reread A Moveable Feast, and despite its significant flaws, enjoyed it a great deal more than this, as it's much better written.
In the end I may have squeezed two-stars-worth of decent info out of this, but I shan't be giving them, as I simply loathed every second spent in Baxter's presence.
The rest of the book is then Baxter's complaints about American tourists (original), uncomfy comments about Jews, gay people, and young girls, and unceasing veneration of Ernest Hemingway. It's notable to me that Baxter questions the veracity of memoirs by Sylvia Beach, Bruce Chatwin, and T.E. Lawrence, but accepts everything Hemingway says in A Moveable Feast and other works 100% at face value. If I'd wanted to read Hemingway be an asshole about his friends, women, Jews, and gay people, I could have just reread A Moveable Feast, and despite its significant flaws, enjoyed it a great deal more than this, as it's much better written.
In the end I may have squeezed two-stars-worth of decent info out of this, but I shan't be giving them, as I simply loathed every second spent in Baxter's presence.
October 15, 2017
I accuse this book of false advertising.
An hour or so into this audiobook I went back to re-read the promotional blurb, thinking that I must have misread it. I was expecting a book that would combine a treatise on the benefits of walking, along with notes & history of Paris and its architecture. This book has little to nothing to do with walking, and is more about the author than about the City of Love.
An hour or so into this audiobook I went back to re-read the promotional blurb, thinking that I must have misread it. I was expecting a book that would combine a treatise on the benefits of walking, along with notes & history of Paris and its architecture. This book has little to nothing to do with walking, and is more about the author than about the City of Love.
April 27, 2015
I could not simply finish this book, the furthest I could go, was chapter 26. Did not like it all, would not suggest it to anybody.
Firstly: it is not a book about Paris, is a book about the author. He starts his auto-biography (can't call it a novel, sorry) telling us how good he is as a chef, just to keep going to describe all his good qualities: nobody knows Paris better than him, everybody loves or admires the way he talks and so on. At some point he writes "I shared with Hemingway an acute embarassment at having people say nice things to me, particulary when I am present" not only showing a fake modesty (fake because he simply tells us his nice qualities all the time), but also faking a kind of comparison between him and Hemingway.
I have never ever read anything more arrogant, self-admiring and useless as this book.
Baxter describes himself like the most popoular writer, sorrounder by famous and rich friends. I did not know this writer before, and I will not try to know him any better, especially after having read this book.
Firstly: it is not a book about Paris, is a book about the author. He starts his auto-biography (can't call it a novel, sorry) telling us how good he is as a chef, just to keep going to describe all his good qualities: nobody knows Paris better than him, everybody loves or admires the way he talks and so on. At some point he writes "I shared with Hemingway an acute embarassment at having people say nice things to me, particulary when I am present" not only showing a fake modesty (fake because he simply tells us his nice qualities all the time), but also faking a kind of comparison between him and Hemingway.
I have never ever read anything more arrogant, self-admiring and useless as this book.
Baxter describes himself like the most popoular writer, sorrounder by famous and rich friends. I did not know this writer before, and I will not try to know him any better, especially after having read this book.
February 20, 2020
This the second of Baxter's books on Paris that I have read, and I enjoyed this one much more than the first. It's a breezy travelogue on Paris and its streets, about the very culture of walking neighborhood by neighborhood. Baxter has lived there for decades and brings a long-time resident's insights, while still adding contrasts from his experiences during his Australian childhood and other stops abroad. This book will particularly delight literature fans, as Baxter can't help but emphasize that aspect of the city--with a heavy dose of Hemingway. The appendix with travel tips would be helpful for anyone who plans to travel to Paris, too.
June 9, 2013
A nice little book. Inoffensive and lighthearted. Lots of anecdotes about Hemingway and Fitzgerald's time there. This is an easy, fast read particularly if you've been to Paris before. The next we go, we'll definitely try one of the walking tours.
October 20, 2014
If you can get past the author's arrogance, you find that about half of the book isn't about Paris or people in Paris at all. The first bit was devoted to deriding those poor souls who, wearing their beige raincoat and comfortable shoes, consult a map during their walk in Paris. What the hell does Baxter want them to wear? A Chanel suit and four-inch spiked heels? And what better way to figure out which direction to walk in than to consult a map? He seems to simply look down his nose at anyone who doesn't know his way around the city. And he seems to think this is something unique to Paris, as if no one wears comfortable shoes or carries a map when they first visit New York, London, or Barcelona.
Before you read about Paris, you learn that Baxter lives in the building where some famous person (I forget who, Sylvia Beach, maybe?) lived. And so-and-so lived down the street, another lived across the road, etc. Baxter doesn't need a map because he lives in Paris. I wonder if he needed a map when he first arrived. Probably not. He is married to a French woman and his mother-in-law lives in a Chateau somewhere out of town. Is this giving you an interesting impression of Paris?
Baxter does finally get around to including the city and tells some stories and anecdotes of interest. I finished the book while in Avignon for a few days and left the book in my hotel room for someone else to slog through. Maybe that person will like the book better than I did.
Before you read about Paris, you learn that Baxter lives in the building where some famous person (I forget who, Sylvia Beach, maybe?) lived. And so-and-so lived down the street, another lived across the road, etc. Baxter doesn't need a map because he lives in Paris. I wonder if he needed a map when he first arrived. Probably not. He is married to a French woman and his mother-in-law lives in a Chateau somewhere out of town. Is this giving you an interesting impression of Paris?
Baxter does finally get around to including the city and tells some stories and anecdotes of interest. I finished the book while in Avignon for a few days and left the book in my hotel room for someone else to slog through. Maybe that person will like the book better than I did.
October 11, 2022
When we travel, we love to do small group walking tours - we’ve found that the mix of history, sightseeing, and personal anecdotes of the guide can make an area come alive in a way you don’t get from reading a guide book or website. The Most Beautiful Walk in the World felt like a blend between the author’s personal memoir and the kind of anecdotes he might share if he was taking you on one of his walking tours of the city (which I would have loved to join). If you are looking for something that is more of a guide to beautiful walks , this is probably not the read for you. If you want to get a sense of what it is like to visit a place with someone who walks the streets every day, who shares different tidbits with you, then you will probably enjoy this read. Some of the reviews I read criticize the name dropping that goes on in here, and that might be valid, but if you live on the streets where so many artists have spent time, it feels like to would be impossible to not talk about the ways that creative lives have intersected in these neighborhoods.
September 8, 2023
Did not finish. Billed as a travel memoir, this book is little more than a collection of pretentious forays into the author's ego, pausing only to detour to Los Angeles and Australia for ... reasons? The book has little to do about Paris and seemingly even less about walking. 1 bonus star for at least keeping the chapters short. The brevity was appreciated.
September 26, 2011
This book is an example of one of my pet peeves about some books - they are not as advertised. You reads the blurbs on the covers and think "this looks like a good book", then the book barely relates to the cover info. This book would have been better titled "Some Interesting Things To See In Paris" - it has little to do with actual walks. Like the author, the book likes to wander. Sometimes it is about art, or food, or movies and sometimes about other towns. Change the title and it is an interesting and informative book
July 14, 2013
Reading this delightful book is just torture. It should really come with 'only read if you're already in Paris' warning because the longing to go there and stroll amongst the many cafes, alleyways, markets, historic sights and walkways he mentions is physically painful.
I've read a lot of books about Paris and this is one of the better ones. A lovely read. Will lead to serious wanting-to-be-in-Paris syndrome though. You have been warned.
I've read a lot of books about Paris and this is one of the better ones. A lovely read. Will lead to serious wanting-to-be-in-Paris syndrome though. You have been warned.
September 8, 2025
This started off fun and made me want to go back to Paris and then it just got boring and weird. Claims to be about walking and literature and it’s kind of about neither.
April 9, 2015
"If as the flaneurs claimed, walking around Paris is an art, then the city itself is the surface on which they create. And since Paris is ancient, that surface is not blank... (W)e who walk in Paris write a new history with each step. The city we leave behind will never be quite the same again." p.132
Almost a year ago, I read Rebecca Sonit's Wanderlust: A History of Walking. If I had ever heard the term flaneur before that book, I had not remembered doing so. It did not occur to me when I downloaded Baxter's The Most Beautiful Walk in the World: A Pedestrian in Paris that I was entering the territory of the flaneurs again. However, it is a French word so I should not have been surprised. With these two books, I have learned so much about walking and why being a flaneur might be something to aspire to.
Baxter is interested in all things Paris. Although this book purports to be about walking around the world's most beautiful city, Baxter also writes about his life there, literary history, food, drinking and any other subject he can tie into his love for Paris. His enthusiasm for his adopted city should be bottled and handed out to visitors and residents alike. I have never been to Paris, but I am ready to hop on the next plane.
Unknowingly, Baxter also prepared me for my spring vacation. I went to Key West and visited Ernest Hemingway's house that he lived in with his second wife. Baxter gave me some background on Hemingway's Paris days, which fit in well with my tour. Serendipity is a wonderful thing.
I recommend this stroll down Paris' boulevards to armchair travelers and those who may be visiting Paris sometime soon. Baxter's walks can't necessarily be replicated, but his take on Paris can help you see the city in new ways.
Almost a year ago, I read Rebecca Sonit's Wanderlust: A History of Walking. If I had ever heard the term flaneur before that book, I had not remembered doing so. It did not occur to me when I downloaded Baxter's The Most Beautiful Walk in the World: A Pedestrian in Paris that I was entering the territory of the flaneurs again. However, it is a French word so I should not have been surprised. With these two books, I have learned so much about walking and why being a flaneur might be something to aspire to.
Baxter is interested in all things Paris. Although this book purports to be about walking around the world's most beautiful city, Baxter also writes about his life there, literary history, food, drinking and any other subject he can tie into his love for Paris. His enthusiasm for his adopted city should be bottled and handed out to visitors and residents alike. I have never been to Paris, but I am ready to hop on the next plane.
Unknowingly, Baxter also prepared me for my spring vacation. I went to Key West and visited Ernest Hemingway's house that he lived in with his second wife. Baxter gave me some background on Hemingway's Paris days, which fit in well with my tour. Serendipity is a wonderful thing.
I recommend this stroll down Paris' boulevards to armchair travelers and those who may be visiting Paris sometime soon. Baxter's walks can't necessarily be replicated, but his take on Paris can help you see the city in new ways.
October 31, 2011
I zeroed in on this book because it made me think of my brown eyed boy, Benjamin. I sent him to Paris in 2002 with a high school group, and again in 2004 with his brother. I wanted to impress on my sons their ability to end up anywhere in the world they desired to go, even the most beautiful city in the world. Despite never having been to Paris myself, I enjoyed the book as a fellow walker, and was pleased to see the author point out the benefits of eschewing motorized transport. Although food and restaurants are a focus, the author refreshingly didn't make those topics the sole focus. I loved his re-telling of accidentally falling into the job of walking tour guide. The hilarious portrayal of the American tourists from Texas only smarted a little. All in all, a very entertaining armchair travel experience.
July 20, 2015
My disengagement with this book did not come from the tone or writing style of the narrator -- both were fine -- but rather because I simply fail to share the author's awe that *this is the very street* and *the very restaurant* where Ernest Hemingway once worked and lived. This point seems to be the linchpin of Baxter's worldview, and if you happen not to share this interest, you'll find the entire premise weakened. This is not a slam on Paris or even Mr. Baxter, but simply a prediction of who might and might not enjoy reading this.
March 15, 2015
I enjoyed John Baxter's tour of Paris - his choice of walks throughout the city, many bringing back my own memories of places visited, always on foot, the best way to explore any city. Wherever you are in Paris, there is something interesting to see, architecture to enjoy, history and stories to absorb - they can only be found and truly appreciated while walking. About his own neighborhood: "To find your place, to share it with those you love, and to be happy - who could want more than that?"
February 15, 2016
It's funny, in reading other reviews of this book on here, I realize the world does move differently for everyone.
Though I thought I was going to read more about actual walks in Paris, Baxter took me down a back alley and like when traveling the best stories come from getting lost.
Baxter has stolen the life I would love to live (only I'd choose London)! This book was a fantastic, charming & inspiring read. It has made me even that much more excited for my July trip.
Though I thought I was going to read more about actual walks in Paris, Baxter took me down a back alley and like when traveling the best stories come from getting lost.
Baxter has stolen the life I would love to live (only I'd choose London)! This book was a fantastic, charming & inspiring read. It has made me even that much more excited for my July trip.
April 10, 2017
I just loved this light, fun, informative book about Paris. I think it was a case of the right book at the right time. I read most of it aloud to my parents on a road trip, and it lent itself well to that mode of enjoyment.
This was my pick for the Travel Memoir category of the 2017 Read Harder Challenge.
This was my pick for the Travel Memoir category of the 2017 Read Harder Challenge.
August 23, 2018
This book was both more and less than I expected. I enjoyed it immensely!
Because of the title, I expected a description of 'a' beautiful walk down one single street in Paris. One would, right?
It was instead a description that took on so much more of Paris — Literary, Art, History, Characters — that it was a genuine treat!
Fun book!
Because of the title, I expected a description of 'a' beautiful walk down one single street in Paris. One would, right?
It was instead a description that took on so much more of Paris — Literary, Art, History, Characters — that it was a genuine treat!
Fun book!
June 13, 2018
Want to visit Paris without leaving home? This armchair tour offers an enjoyable introduction to Paris and the Parisian art of walking in the city, along with many literary and historical anecdotes and some illustrations. The author also provides useful tips for enjoying an in-person visit.
November 24, 2021
Not what I expected coming in - stays restricted to more or less one or two parts of Paris - but the details are great. Functions as a history as much as a memoir as much as a tour guide. Makes me want to go back to Paris, which isn't something I've felt in a long time.
October 24, 2019
A series of descriptions of walks taken by John Baxter all around Paris with a lot of anecdotes and autobiographical side stories. Simply a delight.
September 6, 2024
One of my favorite books so far this year.
October 20, 2024
A very enjoyable read! I was transported and it gave me some suggestions for an upcoming trip to Paris.
May 3, 2020
NOTES FROM
B004MMEIOG EBOK
Baxter, John
May 1, 2020
Chapter 19 - The Ground Beneath Our Feet
When I walk in New York, I look up.
April 19, 2020
Chapter 2 - ‘Walking Backwards for Christmas’
The hostility to being on foot on December 24 is reflected in the national rejection of Father Christmas
April 23, 2020
Chapter 3 - What a Man’s Got to Do
Steven Spielberg, refining his concept of the extraterrestrial E.T., clipped the forehead and nose from Karsh’s image, added the eyes of poet Carl Sandburg and the mouth of Albert Einstein
April 23, 2020
Chapter 4 - Heat
After a heavy night at the Dingo Bar, he lurched to his toilet, which was equipped with an elevated cistern, and yanked the wrong chain, bringing down a skylight on his head. Archibald
April 23, 2020
Chapter 4 - Heat
In France, and probably in the rest of the world, to employ these sharks was to mark yourself forever as a dumbbell—in Parisian slang, a plouc.
April 23, 2020
Chapter 5 - Two Geese A-Roasting
sleet sloshed across the windshield to drool like freezing spit in a gelid slush down the glass.
April 23, 2020
Chapter 5 - Two Geese A-Roasting
Didn’t need stuffing,” says Freddy. “It wasn’t empty.”)
April 23, 2020
Chapter 5 - Two Geese A-Roasting
But a cookbook is like a sex manual: if you need to consult it, you aren’t doing it right.
April 24, 2020
Chapter 6 - The Hollywood Moment
Crabgrass insinuated itself through gaps between concrete slabs,
April 24, 2020
Chapter 6 - The Hollywood Moment
As one particular billboard advertised along Sunset, with their card you could SEE A MOVIE—OR MAKE ONE
April 25, 2020
Chapter 8 - The Importance of Being Ernest
The sixth, or sixième, is Paris’s Greenwich Village or Soho. Historical and literary associations
April 25, 2020
Chapter 9 - The Boulevardier
disturbances of 1968, still referred to with some embarrassment as les événements—the events.
April 25, 2020
Chapter 9 - The Boulevardier
Napoleon ordered Paris rebuilt. The job went to Georges Eugene Haussmann—“Baron” Haussmann,
April 25, 2020
Chapter 9 - The Boulevardier
no building could be taller than the width of the boulevard on which it stood. With this commandment alone, he gave the emperor his military thoroughfares but guaranteed they would be sunlit from midmorning to late afternoon,
April 25, 2020
Chapter 9 - The Boulevardier
He lined plenty of pockets, including his own, with the municipal contracts he negotiated
April 25, 2020
Chapter 9 - The Boulevardier
Napoleon fired Haussmann in 1870 when the Revolution never eventuated and landowners whined about the new cost of doing business.
April 25, 2020
Chapter 9 - The Boulevardier
Tour Montparnasse, Paris’s lone, embarrassing skyscraper
April 25, 2020
Chapter 9 - The Boulevardier
building to be cleaned at least once each decade.
April 25, 2020
Chapter 9 - The Boulevardier
flânerie, and someone who does it is a flâneur.
April 25, 2020
Chapter 9 - The Boulevardier
It made the difference between simply being present and being there.
April 25, 2020
Chapter 10 - The Murderer’s Garden
It’s the park of Marie de Medici!
April 25, 2020
Chapter 10 - The Murderer’s Garden
This was her palace. It’s an exact copy of the Palazzo Pitti in Florence.”
April 25, 2020
Chapter 10 - The Murderer’s Garden
original model for the Statue of Liberty.
April 25, 2020
Chapter 10 - The Murderer’s Garden
This was Luftwaffe headquarters, I think
April 25, 2020
Chapter 10 - The Murderer’s Garden
Gestapo occupied the Lutetia, the best hotel on the Left Bank, while the army grabbed the Crillon, overlooking the Place de la Concorde. Not
April 25, 2020
Chapter 10 - The Murderer’s Garden
Hugo Sperrle of the Luftwaffe snagged the Luxembourg Palace,
April 25, 2020
Chapter 10 - The Murderer’s Garden
guard in a Perspex sentry box, pistol holstered at her belt. Why had I never noticed her before
April 25, 2020
Chapter 10 - The Murderer’s Garden
About Henri Désiré Landru, I knew. Between 1914 and 1918 he murdered ten women for their money.
April 25, 2020
Chapter 10 - The Murderer’s Garden
In 1922, at Versailles, the guillotine clipped his ticket.
April 25, 2020
Chapter 11 - Going Walkabout
Australia is an outdoor country. People only go inside to use the toilet. And that’s only a recent development.
April 25, 2020
Chapter 13 - Power Walks
Vanity made the Revolution. Liberty was just a pretext.
April 29, 2020
Chapter 14 - A Proposition at Les Editeurs
sell the sizzle, not the steak
April 29, 2020
Chapter 15 - The Freedom of the City
There are three, actually,” I said. “The best one is near the bandstand.
April 29, 2020
Chapter 16 - The Man Who Knew Too Much
Deux
April 29, 2020
Chapter 16 - The Man Who Knew Too Much
Magots
April 29, 2020
Chapter 16 - The Man Who Knew Too Much
I’d built up a partial immunity to boredom, in the way that repeated snakebites make you resistant to venom.
April 29, 2020
Chapter 16 - The Man Who Knew Too Much
it was a lighted place where the imagination was free.
April 29, 2020
Chapter 16 - The Man Who Knew Too Much
know the price of everything but the value of nothing.
April 29, 2020
Chapter 17 - The Opium Trail
Montparnasse
April 29, 2020
Chapter 17 - The Opium Trail
To a culture that created the vine-like curlicues of art nouveau, Monet’s water lilies, and Debussy’s evocation
April 29, 2020
Chapter 17 - The Opium Trail
Lord Byron drank it as laudanum, dissolved in spiced alcohol.
April 29, 2020
Chapter 17 - The Opium Trail
in music of fountains, clouds, and the sea, it was the ideal narcotic—organic, transcendent, and ostensibly benign.
April 29, 2020
Chapter 17 - The Opium Trail
Picasso smoked. He said the scent of opium was the least stupid smell in the world, except for that of the sea.
April 29, 2020
Chapter 17 - The Opium Trail
It wasn’t how loudly you spoke but what you had to say.
April 29, 2020
Chapter 18 - Postcards from Paris
In each case, everyone has a wonderful time, which is surely what we hope for from a trip abroad
April 29, 2020
Chapter 19 - The Ground Beneath Our Feet
Chai
April 29, 2020
Chapter 19 - The Ground Beneath Our Feet
in rue Buci. It gave me a chance to think.
April 29, 2020
Chapter 19 - The Ground Beneath Our Feet
Why give swimming lessons to fish?
April 29, 2020
Chapter 19 - The Ground Beneath Our Feet
use of the lawns is strictly alternated.
May 1, 2020
Chapter 19 - The Ground Beneath Our Feet
wondering whether Paris would be better once the street was crossed.
May 1, 2020
Chapter 19 - The Ground Beneath Our Feet
In London, on the other hand, I look around.
May 1, 2020
Chapter 19 - The Ground Beneath Our Feet
But in Paris, I look down.
May 1, 2020
Chapter 19 - The Ground Beneath Our Feet
the amount of discarded doo-doo has definitely diminished
May 1, 2020
Chapter 21 - Fish Story
For lunch, we went to Brasserie Lipp
May 1, 2020
Chapter 21 - Fish Story
Hemingway was a regular. He particularly enjoyed its boiled cervelas sausage, served on cold sliced potatoes, dressed with oil.
May 1, 2020
Chapter 21 - Fish Story
cervelas with potato salad, washed down with a demi—a “half”—of the house beer, served in a large-stemmed goblet holding about half a liter.
May 1, 2020
Chapter 21 - Fish Story
certain canned sardines are of such quality that they achieve vintage status.
May 1, 2020
Chapter 21 - Fish Story
Walt laughed as much as everyone else—then fired them all. Word soon got round: Rule number 1 at Disney was “Don’t fuck with the mouse
May 1, 2020
Chapter 22 - The Great La Coupole Roundup
20 rue Jacob where Nathalie Clifford Barney, doyenne of Paris les
May 1, 2020
Chapter 22 - The Great La Coupole Roundup
La Coupole
May 1, 2020
Chapter 22 - The Great La Coupole Roundup
Chocolate with chili?”
May 1, 2020
Chapter 23 - Liver Lover
the house specialties—a slice of foie gras and a glass of cold, sweet white wine. “Of course, the wine should be a Sauternes,”
May 1, 2020
Chapter 23 - Liver Lover
going to war without France was like going deer hunting without your accordion
May 1, 2020
Chapter 23 - Liver Lover
Holland, at certain times of year, the new herring
May 1, 2020
Chapter 23 - Liver Lover
The thin slices of liver, gleaming gold and beige with the slickness of fat, arrived, garnished with the gelée that gathers when it’s cooke
May 1, 2020
Chapter 23 - Liver Lover
Can you believe, this plouc of a tourist wanted butter with foie gras!
May 1, 2020
Chapter 23 - Liver Lover
subdued by the toast, then chased by the sharpness of the wine, the fruitiness of which prepared the palate for the next bite.
May 2, 2020
Chapter 24 - Paris When It Sizzled
existence precedes essence
May 2, 2020
Chapter 24 - Paris When It Sizzled
act first, then find a philosophy to explain our actions. There are no “natural laws”—only those we make for ourselves.
May 2, 2020
Chapter 25 - A Walk in the Earth
the hollow booming of Notre Dame’s bells, so unlike the clanging cheerfulness of English churches.
May 2, 2020
Chapter 25 - A Walk in the Earth
A wind drove the tourists in their beige Burberries through the square like dead leaves
May 2, 2020
Chapter 25 - A Walk in the Earth
the bronze Lion de Belfort, a lion couchant, celebrating the inadequate defense of Paris against the Prussians in 1870.
May 2, 2020
Chapter 25 - A Walk in the Earth
modest stone plinth topped by the languid semireclining figure of a naked woman, holding her head, apparently in mild distress, as from a hangover.
May 2, 2020
Chapter 25 - A Walk in the Earth
macabre
May 2, 2020
Chapter 26 - Heaven and Hell
Jean Valjean’s flight from Javert in Les Misérables.
May 2, 2020
Chapter 26 - Heaven and Hell
the Quai d’Orsay became the Paris Sewer Museum
May 2, 2020
Chapter 27 - Blue Hour Blues
Verlaine’s most famous poems, “Chanson d’Automne”: The long sighs Of the violins Of autumn Wound my heart With monotonous languor.
May 2, 2020
Chapter 27 - Blue Hour Blues
A current of nostalgia more powerful than the brisk ra
May 2, 2020
Chapter 27 - Blue Hour Blues
secluded Closerie des Lilas.
May 2, 2020
Chapter 27 - Blue Hour Blues
golden days of the 1920s, could be found at this table
May 2, 2020
Chapter 27 - Blue Hour Blues
or, occasionally, under it.
May 2, 2020
Chapter 27 - Blue Hour Blues
five and seven exist in a separate zone where time appears no longer to move, but hangs suspended, as the French say, entre chien
May 2, 2020
Chapter 27 - Blue Hour Blues
For lovers, le cinq à sept is shorthand for that time they steal to be together—the hiatus between when one leaves work and th
May 2, 2020
Chapter 27 - Blue Hour Blues
moment, two hours later, that one arrives home—if married, to eat with the family; if single, to feed the cat, mix a drink, take a bath, and remember.
May 2, 2020
Chapter 27 - Blue Hour Blues
failure is the only thing for which he’s shown an aptitude.
May 2, 2020
Chapter 27 - Blue Hour Blues
For some writers, drink is not an escape but a career.
May 2, 2020
Chapter 27 - Blue Hour Blues
Even
May 2, 2020
Chapter 27 - Blue Hour Blues
the most staid American visitor thought it a duty, on arriving in Paris, to get good and plastered (or squiffy, ginned, edged, jingled, potted, hooted, tanked, crocked, embalmed, lit like Macy’s window, fried to the hat, or any one of sixty other synonyms helpfully listed by a 1927 guidebook). Young
May 2, 2020
Chapter 27 - Blue Hour Blues
A barman makes his real profit from the tips. . .
May 2, 2020
Chapter 27 - Blue Hour Blues
Card for Harry’s Bar,
May 2, 2020
Chapter 27 - Blue Hour Blues
The Montgomery martini was a Hemingway invention: fifteen parts of gin to one of vermouth
May 2, 2020
Chapter 27 - Blue Hour Blues
before World War II, Hemingway almost never visited the Ritz.
May 2, 2020
Chapter 27 - Blue Hour Blues
paparazzi by using the side entrance, hurried past this former shrine of misogyny en route to her death.
May 2, 2020
Chapter 27 - Blue Hour Blues
He used it for scenes in Tender Is the Night and a number of short stories,
May 2, 2020
Chapter 28 - The Last of Montparnasse
eyes darting among the passing women, body poised and ready, given the slightest encou
May 2, 2020
Chapter 28 - The Last of Montparnasse
all puffing self-importantly on pipes, that those at the back complained they couldn’t see the model for smoke
May 2, 2020
Chapter 28 - The Last of Montparnasse
The students are the pets of Paris
May 2, 2020
Chapter 28 - The Last of Montparnasse
Cézanne handed him a watercolor, which Renoir had already crumpled to wipe himself before he thought to take a look. Once he did, he decided it was too good to waste.
May 2, 2020
Chapter 28 - The Last of Montparnasse
Salvador Dalí was shameless. He’d arrive at the crowded La Coupole with a canvas under his arm and prowl the tables for a buyer.
May 2, 2020
Chapter 28 - The Last of Montparnasse
Fellini knew his audience. After a show like that, they wouldn’t dare refuse him anything
May 2, 2020
Chapter 29 - The Fuzz on the Peach
reat idea—except that the surrealists met in Montmartre
May 2, 2020
Chapter 29 - The Fuzz on the Peach
Pierre Molinier, who enjoyed being photographed in black lingerie and high heels, with a long-stemmed rose up his rectum.
May 2, 2020
Chapter 29 - The Fuzz on the Peach
Her husband Einar, who modeled for both her male and female figures, became one of the first men to undergo a successful surgical sex change.
May 2, 2020
Chapter 30 - To Market
Many of the clients are Muslims, since
May 2, 2020
Chapter 30 - To Market
halal meat
May 2, 2020
Chapter 30 - To Market
Pile it high and sell it cheap
May 2, 2020
Chapter 30 - To Market
Jean-Claude Bruneteau ran his little restaurant the Bennelong just around the corner.
May 2, 2020
Chapter 31 - The Boulevard of Crime
Cabarets adapted the knife fights into a tango called the “Apache.”
May 2, 2020
Chapter 32 - The Gates of Night
Les Enfants du Parad
May 2, 2020
Chapter 32 - The Gates of Night
Feuilles Mortes”—“Autumn Leaves”—one of those hymns
May 2, 2020
Chapter 32 - The Gates of Night
brothels were made illegal in 1946
May 2, 2020
Chapter 32 - The Gates of Night
Paris’s most popular bistros, the Balzar, just off boulevard Saint-Michel
May 2, 2020
Chapter 32 - The Gates of Night
Jacques Becker’s romantic film Casque d’Or
May 2, 2020
Chapter 32 - The Gates of Night
The French stopped using the guillotine in 1977,
May 2, 2020
Chapter 33 - A Little Place in the Nineteenth
At the end, I gave Serge five thousand in cash and he handed us the keys. In two days, the stuff in the Portakabin disappeared. Then the Portakabin
May 2, 2020
Chapter 33 - A Little Place in the Nineteenth
spread my dreams under your feet,” wrote W. B. Yeats. “Tread softly because you tread on my dreams
May 2, 2020
Chapter 34 - A Walk in Time
Jean-Paul Belmondo is shot down an
November 8, 2024
No really what I thought it was going to be!! Clearly the author is obsessed with Hemingway. Some interesting things about Paris but the first 2/3 of the book weren’t actually about Paris!
January 3, 2015
I picked up this book with a lot of hope and excitement. I have been fascinated with France, and particularly Paris, ever since I started learning French from the 8th grade. But the book disappointed me. It is, not as I expected, about the many walks through Paris and the author's personal favourite. It is rather a collection of observations the author has about Paris, only some of which are related to him being a flaneur.
But, that is not to say I did not enjoy the book. It does mention tidbits about Paris and its literary inheritance which a lot of visitors may not know about. The author, who lives on rue de l'Odeon boasts of the famous bookstore Shakespeare and Company run by Slyvia Beach; Slyvia lived in the author's building where James Joyce often visited as did Scott Fitzgerald, Gertrude Stein and Ernest Hemingway. So, one may say, John Baxter is quite qualified to write about Paris and its walks from a literary angle.
The author mentions that Paris belongs to its pedestrians. He quotes the writer Edmund White who wrote, “Paris is a world meant to be seen by the walker alone, for only the pace of strolling can take in all the rich (if muted) detail.” If the Paris of pedestrians has heroes, notes Baxter, they are Georges Eugene Haussmann (who got people back on the streets in the late 1800s) and Andre Malraux (the minister of culture).
Before the author came to Paris, he lived in Los Angeles which had “persuaded him that going anywhere on foot wasn't just unusual but downright unnatural, even illegal.” He mentions Ray Bradbury's 1951 short story “The Pedestrian” set in a future Los Angeles where nobody walks. The only man who defies this custom is hauled off by the Psychiatric Center because “Who but a madman would walk for pleasure” I would tend to agree. On my travels to the United States, I have observed that nobody walks, not even in the suburbs. People drive down to the nearest park and then take a walk there. The US is certainly not a country for flaneurs in my opinion!
The author also mentions that since nobody walks like the French, they are the people who have raised the political walk to near perfection. Parisians grow up with the promenade, or stroll, as a natural part of their lives.
Baxter gives some interesting tidbits about the various metro stations in Paris, at least I found them wonderfully fascinating. Pont Neuf, nearest to Le Monnaie, displays old coinage and an ancient hand press. At Concorde, each tile bears a single letter, as if for a giant game of Scrabble. At Varenne, nearest to the Musee Rodin, full-size replicas of his Thinker and statue of Honore de Balzac rule the platform. Louvre-Rivoli station is elaborately decorated with facsimile Egyptian status and other antiquities.
During the course of the book, the author takes us through some amazing anecdotes about Hemingway's life; he takes us underground Paris's streets where the catacombs lie; he talks about the fascination painters have with the city; and how the French really love their food.
At the end of the book, he also gives some tips to visitors. I found the following ones interesting:
1. A true French cafe breakfast remains one of the great pleasures of life in Paris.
2. Paris's twenty arrondissements spiral out from Notre Dame, with something interesting in each of them.
3. Paris's rare-book market takes place every weekend on rue Brancion in the fifteenth, in what used to be an old slaughterhouse.
4. Afternoon hot chocolate at Proust's favourite cafe, Angelina.
5. Climb the famous stone staircases of Montmartre around 5.00 a.m. or take the little cable car, buy coffee and rolls, and eat breakfast on the terrace below the Cathedral of Sacre-Coeur.
Though the book did not live up to its title, I did enjoy reading it and the various little pieces of information it offered me in terms of its past inhabitants and how they came about to shape and build the city as we know it today. Rest assured, when I do visit Paris, I will be taking this book along with me if only as a kind of a tour guide.
This review first appeared on my blog www.pallosworld.blogspot.com.
But, that is not to say I did not enjoy the book. It does mention tidbits about Paris and its literary inheritance which a lot of visitors may not know about. The author, who lives on rue de l'Odeon boasts of the famous bookstore Shakespeare and Company run by Slyvia Beach; Slyvia lived in the author's building where James Joyce often visited as did Scott Fitzgerald, Gertrude Stein and Ernest Hemingway. So, one may say, John Baxter is quite qualified to write about Paris and its walks from a literary angle.
The author mentions that Paris belongs to its pedestrians. He quotes the writer Edmund White who wrote, “Paris is a world meant to be seen by the walker alone, for only the pace of strolling can take in all the rich (if muted) detail.” If the Paris of pedestrians has heroes, notes Baxter, they are Georges Eugene Haussmann (who got people back on the streets in the late 1800s) and Andre Malraux (the minister of culture).
Before the author came to Paris, he lived in Los Angeles which had “persuaded him that going anywhere on foot wasn't just unusual but downright unnatural, even illegal.” He mentions Ray Bradbury's 1951 short story “The Pedestrian” set in a future Los Angeles where nobody walks. The only man who defies this custom is hauled off by the Psychiatric Center because “Who but a madman would walk for pleasure” I would tend to agree. On my travels to the United States, I have observed that nobody walks, not even in the suburbs. People drive down to the nearest park and then take a walk there. The US is certainly not a country for flaneurs in my opinion!
The author also mentions that since nobody walks like the French, they are the people who have raised the political walk to near perfection. Parisians grow up with the promenade, or stroll, as a natural part of their lives.
Baxter gives some interesting tidbits about the various metro stations in Paris, at least I found them wonderfully fascinating. Pont Neuf, nearest to Le Monnaie, displays old coinage and an ancient hand press. At Concorde, each tile bears a single letter, as if for a giant game of Scrabble. At Varenne, nearest to the Musee Rodin, full-size replicas of his Thinker and statue of Honore de Balzac rule the platform. Louvre-Rivoli station is elaborately decorated with facsimile Egyptian status and other antiquities.
During the course of the book, the author takes us through some amazing anecdotes about Hemingway's life; he takes us underground Paris's streets where the catacombs lie; he talks about the fascination painters have with the city; and how the French really love their food.
At the end of the book, he also gives some tips to visitors. I found the following ones interesting:
1. A true French cafe breakfast remains one of the great pleasures of life in Paris.
2. Paris's twenty arrondissements spiral out from Notre Dame, with something interesting in each of them.
3. Paris's rare-book market takes place every weekend on rue Brancion in the fifteenth, in what used to be an old slaughterhouse.
4. Afternoon hot chocolate at Proust's favourite cafe, Angelina.
5. Climb the famous stone staircases of Montmartre around 5.00 a.m. or take the little cable car, buy coffee and rolls, and eat breakfast on the terrace below the Cathedral of Sacre-Coeur.
Though the book did not live up to its title, I did enjoy reading it and the various little pieces of information it offered me in terms of its past inhabitants and how they came about to shape and build the city as we know it today. Rest assured, when I do visit Paris, I will be taking this book along with me if only as a kind of a tour guide.
This review first appeared on my blog www.pallosworld.blogspot.com.
May 22, 2023
The author of this book gives walks in Paris and here he recounts the most memorable, particularly focused on walks in areas frequented by famous Parisians and well known ex pats like Hemingway and Fitzgerald
Displaying 1 - 30 of 493 reviews