Untold Paris: The Secrets of the City of Light

by John Baxter

Nobody knows the city of light like Paris resident and travel writer John Baxter – and nobody is able to write about its culture quite so intriguingly. Let him guide you around the Paris you’ve always wanted to know. How was Ernest Hemingway received by the city he wrote so much about, and where did he rub shoulders with other literary greats? Are Parisian waiters really as rude as their reputation, and why do they race each other down the street in the annual Course des Garcons de Café? And where can you find fascinating remnants of the city’s history of violent revolution, jazz music, and bold artistic movements? From the reality of the city’s café culture and its literary luminaries, to some of its more curious landmarks, obscure events and unusual inhabitants, Untold Paris will give the first-time visitor a vivid impression of the city and offer seasoned travellers a new vision of the city they love. The people, the quirks, peculiarities, charms and eccentricities; the history and secrets. Welcome to the untold Paris.

Genres: Nonfiction, Travel, France

208 pages, Hardcover

Published June 25, 2024

About the author

John 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.

Reviews

[Janelle · Rating 3 out of 5]

An entertaining read filled with anecdotes and stories about Paris. Food, art, culture, sport, cemeteries, toilets, brothels, revolutions, murders and more, are all covered with plenty of literary references. Illustrated with drawings.

[Moonkiszt · Rating 4 out of 5]

The author gives tours of Paris for Fun! Who better would know the ins and outs of a place with such an important place in global identity? (Of extraterrestials interviewed, their top five Earth cities, 89% name Paris in that number. . . .jk) The author's text, combined with the illustrations of Jennifer Court have provided curious readers this treat for indulging their day dreams of Paris.

As a firm believer in letting a book speak for itself I give you a sampling of -

TABLE OF CONTENTS (each of these sections are drilled down further to interesting and odd specificities about the land, history, aspects, communities and smidges and dabs known only to insiders of Paris)
-Art and Culture
-Food and Drink
-History
-In The Shadows
-Ways of Life

INDEX (there is so much more, I share only a smidge)
absinthe 77-8; Alexander I, 71
Basquiat, Jean-Michel 189; boules 193, brocante 179-82
Chevalier, Maurice 122; choux pastry, 71, 74
dames pipis 137-9; Dumas, Alexandre, 97-8
Eiffel, Gustave 54, 56, 57; exploring after dark 158-61
French v English 195-8; Fuller, Loie, 24
Godard, Jeau-Luc 19-21, et al; gypsum 51
Heloise, 170-1; hot chocolate 83-4, 85
Ingres, Jean-Auguste-Dominique 7; Iris, Agence 150-1
Jardins d'Acclimatation 68; John, Elton 129
Khruschchev, Nikita 79-80
Lavatory de la Madeleine 139; Liszt, Franz 7
metrication 174-6; Montparnasse 51, 59, 143, 146
Notre-Dame 47-50,56; Nuit Blanche 158-9
Opera de Paris 25-8; opium 8, 134-6
Parker, Charlie 'Bird' 39; pastries 71-4
Queneau, Raymond 43
Ray, Man 45, 46; rum 76-7
snails 64-6; Le Sphinx 153, 157
tennis 182-6; tips 176-8; tunnels 59, 61
Unik, Pierre 43
VanGogh, Vincent 105,143; Verne Jules 174-5, 188
waiters and waiting 89-91; Wren, Christopher 21
Yves San Laurent 181
Zola, Emile 26, 105

An informative and amusing read, one I would take with me on a trip to that legendary city. Truthfully, though, my days are numbered for sure and I doubt I'll be able to make such a trip - and having this book helps me feel ok about that, as it at least suggests to me many aspects to research, read and google about related to this Great Lady of France - Herself, PARIS!

*A sincere thank you to John Baxter, Quarto Publishing Group - White Lion, and NetGalley for an ARC to read and independently review.* Pub date: 06.25.2024

[Héloïse ☾ · Rating 4 out of 5]

A travel book unlike any other you'll find. John Baxter does not give you an itinerary to discover the city. Instead, he provides valuable information on Parisian history, monuments and even gastronomy. I really liked the style of the illustrations that can be found throughout the pages. You can tell that the author is a Paris guide, as the sections are rich and different from what you can read in other books on the subject.

Although interesting because it is full of anecdotes, it is sometimes difficult to follow the author's thoughts, as the paragraphs seem disjointed.

Thank you to John Baxter, Quarto Publishing Group – White Lion and NetGalley for giving me an advance copy in exchange for my honest review.

[Literary Redhead · Rating 5 out of 5]

Everything you really want to know about Paris can be found in this compelling resource by travel writer and resident John Baxter. The illustrations perfectly capture the city, as does the lively witty prose.

In his intro, Baxter explains: "Many people who visit Paris will return home with nothing but sore feet and an Eiffel Tower paperweight. The lucky ones will have experienced at least a glimpse and a taste of this most fascinating and intricate of cities. Enough, at least, to be able to say, in that most evocatively nostalgic of phrases 'I remember ... once ... in Paris.' I hope this book helps!"

For this reader and many others who long to visit or return, it truly does. Highly recommended!

[Tina Culbertson · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a well written book about the delights of Paris including art and culture, food, the German occupation, Raymond and Isabella Duncan, Brits and Royals and Hemingway. I am going to update about other chapters of this book which was very illuminating but wanted to get the Hemingway chapter in as I just read A Moveable Feast.

Now, a juxtaposition of Hemingway's time in Paris may be read in the book Untold Paris: the Secrets of the City of Light by John Baxter.

The recollections about Hemingway were quite different from his view of that time in Paris.  He was regarded by many as a bully and a cad. Here are some quotes: 

" leaving aside his meagre war record (he handed out chocolate and cigarettes, but never fired a shot ) and the shabby treatment of his first wife, married on the rebound from an unhappy love affair and dumped, along with his baby son, in favor of someone younger and richer...."

"Hemingway had little good to say about Paris when he lived there...scathing about fellow members of the 'lost generation' he sniped in words at his sometime mentor Gertrude Stein, and used his fists in an attempt to dominate such early supporters of Ezra Pound and Morley Callaghan.  I thought he was a bully, recalled theatrical caricturist Al Hirshfield. "Ther was a little gym where artist and writers used to come and Hem was always there, boxing all the time..  I never saw him try and fight anyone his own size."

Without quoting anymore of this chapter it was said he was banned from the Montmarte by the owner as he was always trying to bring people down and was liable to punch you.  

With multiple viewpoints I think the truth is usually somewhere in between. With a famous person there are always many more opinions, more people who have had experiences, good or bad.

[Helynne · Rating 4 out of 5]

Australian ex-pat and longtime Paris resident John Baxter has again mined the crevices of Parisian culture to bring us some colorful facts and anecdotes about the culture, past and present.

One of his most expedient updates is the current (2024-25) reopening of the Cathedral of Notre Dame after the catastrophic 2019 fire. Baxter reminds us that over the centuries, “Notre Dame was no stranger to disaster.” Heads of statues of biblical elders who had been there since the 13th century, were lopped off in the Revolution by simple people “who a assumed that men and women with such expressions of lofty superiority must be kings and queens.” During the 19th-century, Victor Hugo’s novel The Hunchback of Notre Dame “saved the cathedral from crumbling by alerting the public and the church to its run-down state.” Today, the rebuilding, renovation, and cleanup inside and outside of the cathedral has proved phenomenal. “Even before the smoke cleared [in 2019], plans were being made to restore to life the building, which, to most of the world represents the spirit of France . . . . Future generations would never have forgiven those who let it crumble into ash.”

Other chapters treat several interesting facts I did not know including comments on the rat population in Paris (third largest in the world after Deshnoke in India and New York City), Parisians’ lack of affinity for public swimming pools (they do like the summer event called Paris plage during which sand is trucked in to create a beach along the Seine), and Johnny Halladay, a singer who is a phenomenon in France—but no place else. “Ah, Johnny, if is wasn’t for the cocaine, the tax evasions and the girls, you could almost quality for saint.” There is also a chapter on Gaston Leroux and the facts behind his book Phantom of the Opera, which first ran as a serial in 1909-10.

In typical Baxter fashion (because he has written many, many books about Paris), he revisits some of his favorite topics regarding historical Paris—the legend of Saint-Denis, the 1871 Commune, Hemingway, the Marais, surrealism, bread, chocolate, brothels and all sorts of naughty behavior therein—and ongoing modern-day Parisians problems like rude waiters, outdoor restrooms, and dog doo-doo on the streets.

Finally, I enjoyed an anecdote about the Eiffel Tower in 1940. As a last futile gesture before German forces entered Paris, tower staff cut the cables of the elevator. Hitler, who had wanted to view the conquered city from atop its tower, changed his mind. The cables were not restored until 1946. In the meantime, with nobody ready to climb the 1,701 steps to the summit, the Resistance was free to broadcast clandestine messages from [the tower’s] radio antenna.

[Talia · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is not quite a travel guide in that it won't tell you what's best to see or where to find a nice boutique hotel, but it gives you a deeper understanding of Paris as a whole with some modern historical background.
In the introduction the author mentions that he fell into being a tour guide in Paris and that's certainly how this book feels - that I'm being led through the city with little anecdotes and interesting facts about the places we pass. If you're a fan of walking tours, this book will appeal.
The sections are a good length that you can dip in and out of this book, reading one or two sections at a time. Some sections were of less interest to me, or went too deep into a topic I didn't have the background knowledge to truly appreciate, but as it's a collection of snippets that wasn't an issue - I'd just move onto the next one as if we'd walked around the corner and spotted another famous building.
My favourite sections were the arts and culture and "In the Shadows", the latter of which gave you some darker history that you might not get on a family friendly tour.
I'd recommend this for ex-pats living in Paris or anyone who wants to know a bit more about this beautiful city, particularly if they've recently been or are planning to go.
Thank you to NetGalley for providing me with a review copy of this book.

[Steve Boyko · Rating 5 out of 5]

The title of this book hints at the content - untold stories about Paris. This is not your typical Paris travel book. Each chapter starts with a familiar or less known feature of Paris, then weaves in histories of people and events in a very engaging way. I learned a lot about Paris, more of the subtle nuances of Parisian life and customs and less of the typical facts and landmarks.

Highly recommended for people interested in Paris and France who have already read about the “usual” attractions like the Eiffel Tower and the Louvre.

I started reading this book while I was still in Paris. I wish I had read it all before going there!

Thanks to NetGalley and Simon & Schuster for the advance reader copy.

[Biblio Files (takingadayoff) · Rating 4 out of 5]

A colorful assortment of topics about Paris, each a few pages long. You won't read about the museums here, but you will learn about cocktails, jazz, Paris waiters, the Paris Commune of 1871, Hemingway, Roland Garros, Josephine Baker, cobblestones, and snails. Subjects range from British Royalty in Paris to pissoirs and dog poop. You can read this a few minutes at a time or all in one go, or dip into it randomly. Perfect airplane book. (Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for a digital review copy.)

[Tristan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Don’t be fooled by the alluring title as I was. There’s nothing “untold” here and there’s certainly no “secret history” of Paris in these pages. This book is just a random collection of factoids about Paris, some historical, some cultural, that can be found in just about any guide book. Nevertheless, it’s pleasantly and wittily written and makes for a good read, but not one I’d go back to, hence three stars. I’ve lived in Paris too, which makes for another level of enjoyment, looking for the familiar, and for the mistakes.

[Liz · Rating 3 out of 5]

I liked this overall. I am going to Paris for the second time in a little over a month and so I was eager to read about the city. Some sections really didn’t hit for me, I just didn’t care, while others were really interesting. My favorite section was definitely the food and drink section, which had info on escargots, little songbirds that are now illegal to eat, cocktails, and bread. I also really appreciated the explanation of tipping culture!

[Susan · Rating 3 out of 5]

I've read other books by John Baxter and have really enjoyed them. This one just didn't do it for me. For one thing, early on in the book when he was writing about Johnny Hallyday, the singer, he said that Nathalie Baye was his lover at the time of his death in 2017. Totally wrong. He was with Nathalie in the mid-80s and they had a daughter Laura. He married Laeticia in 1996 and they remained married until his death in 2017. So then I started to wonder what else was incorrect.

[Carol Standish-Leigh · Rating 5 out of 5]

I enjoyed reading the stories and the anecdotes about Paris. So much more interesting than a travel guide. This captures the romance and spirit of Paris. A lovely book to either read straight through or snack on as the mood takes you. A definite must for all those who love Paris. Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC.

[Melanie · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an interesting collection of stories and anecdotes about places in Paris. Creative and unique, it acts as a different type of tour guide for the city.

[Beth · Rating 4 out of 5]

A historical, whimsical, fascinating walk through the many arrondissements of Paris, unraveling the many layers of lore and history that make up the city of light. I'm visiting this summer and will think back on these tales during my trip as they have lent such color and character to the districts of the city!