Paris in Turmoil: A City between Past and Future

by Eric Hazan

Paris n’est plus ce qu’il était : oui, c’est vrai, et heureusement ! Que ne dirait-on pas s’il était resté comme au temps où Diderot allait chaque soir rêver sur son banc au Palais-Royal ? Paris est un organisme vivant qui change sans cesse depuis lors et même avant, en mal ici, en bien ailleurs. Ce livre est une incitation à ouvrir les yeux, à tendre l’oreille pour percevoir le tumulte de cette capitale indomptable, du périphérique à la place Vendôme, du marché d’Aligre au marché de Belleville, du tabac au zinc, de Balzac à Sartre – Paris, tel qu’en lui-même enfin l’éternité le change.

Genres: France, History, Urban Studies, Politics, Nonfiction, Essays

112 pages, Hardcover

Published November 15, 2022

About the author

Eric Hazan is a writer, historian and founder of the independent publishing house La Fabrique. His most recent books in English include The Invention of Paris (2012) and A People's History of the French Revolution (2014).

Reviews

[sologdin · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not a bad text by any measure. It is a pamphlet composed of vignettes, however, so it goes quickly. One review mentioned how it can be read during a commute into Paris. I've not spent a lot of time in the city, so much of the focus is not familiar to me--though I can verify that the items touching upon something I know are cool and thoughtful. Generally a leftwing perspective. Author is a historian of Paris with multiple substantial titles otherwise.

This was a Verso book club selection of the month for November 2022.

[Christine · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a slim volume about Paris. Hazan writes not so much a history but a look at how Paris changes as the world around it and its citizens changed. His chapter about bookstores was lovely.

[anne larouche · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5
Tour de Paris chaleureux pour une nouvelle arrivée, mais certainement que j'y vois moins d'intérêt pour qui n'y a jamais vécu. Il s'agit moins d'un essai sur la nature changeante des villes qu'une collection de clichés sur des aspects spécifiques de Paris. In fine, on comprend que leur somme soutient ce propos, qui se veut un coup de tête aux adeptes du Paris "tout-français" ou traditionnaliste, arguant que la ville n'a jamais été ainsi. Toutefois, on y trouve une certaine nostalgie pour l'époque de la jeunesse de l'auteur, qui tombe donc également par moment dans ce "c'était mieux avant". P.e., il y a bien eu des cafés embourgeoisés par le passé aussi. Enfin, c'est une belle introduction pour une jeune parisienne, j'en tire quelques informations supplémentaires pour mes promenades dans Paris. Mais le livre s'en tient à sa qualité locale plutôt que de participer à un discours sur l'urbanité.

[Malcolm · Rating 4 out of 5]

Eric Hazan in one of those writers who brings a deep, banal knowledge of place to his presentation of Paris. Although centred on change and disruption of Paris, this is not a lamentation of nostalgic view, but a celebration of Paris as what Henri Lefebvre might have called ‘lived space’, and in being that a profoundly urban image.

At 31 chapters in 94 pages, this is not so much a fully developed exposition as a series of anecdotes, mediations, reflections, and musings on the city – the longest 5 pages, the shortest a 9 line paragraph – that present Paris as lived in and living. The opening piece addresses neighbourhood, the closing street sounds. In between there are street signs, kiosks, places and squares, architectural features domes, the ubiquitous zinc, urban eyesores, the brutality of the Boulevard Périphérique, and cultural figures – Sartre, Benjamin and Bobos – as well as the barest palimpsest of the urban foundation.

What strikes me about Hazan’s Paris is that it is lived outdoors – even the piece on bookshops is am much about their window displays and street side tables as it is the interior and content of the shops. This is a city experienced by being out and about in it, and as such this short set of meditations might be seen as a buddy to his 2016 (in English) book, A Walk Through Paris as a slim tome to be carried, the guide a visitor to those things that make the city what it is, many of which we seldom notice because of their ubiquity, or are unaware of what once was because, as visitors, we have a slice in time, not a place through time.

This is my kind of city…..

[Christopher Junker · Rating 4 out of 5]

A quirky collection of pieces about Paris, but a deep Paris, not the 100 most important things to see. To an ordinary tourist, it is the Paris discovered by accident on walks set out on with no specific objective. If you have ever puzzled about what a flaneur is, surely this author fits the bill.

[Anand · Rating 2 out of 5]

This author of book is a good example of what I hope I never become - someone who hates everything new, and rambles on about ‘how things once were’.

[An]

then, now, what does it really mean when blue becomes green

[Virginie Dolléans · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interessante déambulation dans Paris par le génial auteur et éditeur de “L’Invention de Paris”.

[Amanda]

Series of nostalgic musings on Paris. Some are well written, others are questionable.

[Neil · Rating 4 out of 5]

A nice collection of vignettes about Paris, mixing aspects of everyday life in the city with echoes of the past that persist in unexpected places. Hazan's always able to link the past with the present in a way that shows reverence for both. As a left-wing historian, he sees Paris through this lens and he describes the city as a terrain on which familiar battles are ongoing. The city is still a zone of contention and each short text is suggestive of areas that may function as liminal spaces between the past and present, lost opportunities becoming future possibilities or vice versa.

[Nakedfartbarfer · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's usually monotonous for me when cities get the kind of literary treatment where every sort of banal amenity is made to seem an excellent sin (The Colossus of New York 🤢). Though this book leans toward being one of those soapy panegyrics to Paris, the writer deftly reaches into the past (naturally) to make the case for that reputation. It is always fun to read about any art movements being inextricable from political struggles, in this case those of interwar Paris, even as the author agedly laments all that remains of things like Surrealism is an anodyne fondness for Dali.

Like a bunch of his other Verso stuff, our Parisian author briefly touches on the molting changes in Paris proper, as in the other end of gentrification (compelled by imperialism), when brash (read: industrious) non-white foreigners come to manage and work service sector jobs formerly jockeyed by white people.

It's sweet to read the author's eulogies to promenading roads named after some feature or temperament unique to the street, rather than christened to honor royalty, philanthropy, or revolutionary Dantonists (even in neighborhoods that still commemorate the high-water marks of the furthest worker barricades). These accolades are about as French twee as it gets in this book, apart from the dignified raving about Parisian bookstores-- it's implied that the entirety of France's bookstore clientele delects in wedding-quality pastries during amber hours while Zou Bisou Bisou plays a decibel too loudly.

Bummer to hear that Éric Hazan, who founded a publishing house that printed the likes of Norman Finkelstein, died a few months back, but I plan to read a bit more of his ambling encomia.