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Into a Paris Quartier
Price: $16.00
Description
As a child, Diane Johnson was in love with the books of Alexander Dumas, especially The Three Musketeers, 17th-century residents of St. Germain-des-Pres, an area of Paris that sprang up in the 9th century around a famous Benedictine abbey. Today Johnson herself lives in the richly historic quartier and has discovered the musketeers' haunts and those of its many other famous denizens. "Thomas Jefferson lived on rue Bonaparte, just a few doors away on the street where I am now living more than two hundred years later," Johnson writes, "and Franklin was just around the corner on the rue Jacob. The novelist Henry Miller stayed up the street at the Hotel St. Germain, where Janet Flanner, the venerable New Yorker correspondent also lived." Though modern St. Germain is lively and prosperous, and the recent past-the heyday from the 40s through the 60s, famous for jazz and existentialism-best known, "the seventeenth century is still strangely present, and I find that to understand the now, it is necessary to see it back then." From her kitchen window, Johnson looks out on the slate-covered dome of a chapel begun by the fascinating and licentious Reine Margot, wife of Henri IV. "Since I have come to live on the rue Bonaparte," Johnson writes, "I find that beside the shades of Jean-Paul Sartre and Edith Piaf, there is another crowd of resident ghosts that urge themselves forward for recognition-ghosts of four centuries ago, of the three Musketeers D'Artagnan, Athos, and Porthos; of four queens-Catherine de Medicis, Marguerite de Valois, Anne of Austria, and Marie Antoinette; of the sinister Cardinals Mazarin and Richelieu; Kings Louis XIII to XVI and Henrys; and numberless other misty figuresin plumed hats whose fortunes and passions were enacted among the beautiful, imposing buildings still making up this neighborhood." More recent centuries are also represented within a few minutes walk of Johnson's apartment. Empress Josephine resided on her street and Napoleon's mother nearby. The painters Delacroix, Corot, Ingres, David, and Manet lived in the neighborhood. Composer Richard Wagner spent a year here and Oscar Wilde died here. The list goes on and on. With her delicious imagination and wry and opinionated voice, Diane Johnson's stories and ruminations about her fascinating neighborhood will be a true feast for anyone enticed by the City of Light.
Liked the photo on page 74, but not much else
Date: 2008-07-12 Rating: 2 out of 10
I wish I had read these reviews before purchasing this book (these reviews do not appear for the paperback version). I was so disappointed by this book. The storyline is disjointed and the writing style (those long, rambling sentences) is downright annoying. I liked the photo on page 74 and not much else. I wanted to sell my copy of this book, but used paperback copies are going for 49 cents. I guess that tells you something.
BewertungenA Matter of ExpectationsDatum 2008-05-16 Rang: 8 von 10I read the reviews of this book after reading the book. I read the book while planning for and staying in an apartment in the St. Germain des Pres neighborhood. I have read Ms. Johnson's fictional series as well. Like those books, I found this to be a pleasant conversational recounting of her relationship with her neighborhood.
What I have enjoyed about Ms. Johnson's albeit modest fictional works is her feel for the shared spaces of the American living in Paris, as an ex-patriot or accidental player in the space, with the French and with Parisian life. They seem to be stories of what happens the space of the intersection and the effect on both the American players and the French. I found the same quality in this book.
Into a Paris Quartier isn't a guidebook or a profound memoir. It's a conversational piece written in the greatest part from the subjective point of view of the author's influences and experience. Take it for that, and I think it meets expectations. Ask for something more or different and you probably really want to read a different book.This book is marvelous--a must for visiters to St. Germain des PresDatum 2007-05-16 Rang: 10 von 10This book is absolutely marvelous! Especially for those who travel to Paris and like to stay in the St. Germain des Pres district, as I do. Ms. Johnson gives many informative bits of info on this area in Paris. It's an absolute delight to read!Into a Paris QuartierDatum 2007-03-09 Rang: 6 von 10Nice book. The writing isn't very clever, nor humorous. Pretty straight forward. However, if one knows the 6th as I do, I found the book very informative and I felt like I learned a lot about this wonderful arrondisement! If you don't know the 6th district, I'd pass on reading the book. If you do, I think it's a must read.Quick, lightweight, and very personal tourDatum 2006-11-21 Rang: 6 von 10Like Jan Morris' "A Writer's House in Wales" which is part of the same National Geographic Directions travel series, this is a quick-reading, relaxed, and very personal look at a part of the world with special significance to the writer. And personal this is -- Diane Johnson practically gives the reader directions to her own front door. I hope this hasn't created any security problems for her.
Johnson walks her reader through a history of her neighborhood, St.-Germain, Paris' sixth arrondissement, and its mix of history, literary associations, and notable architecture. It's all interesting enough, but I felt somewhat disconnected from it all, and am not convinced I came away from the book with a really good sense of what the neighborhood is all about today -- as opposed to in D'Artagnan's day, which she spends almost as much time discussing.
Maybe the problem is that this view is *so* personal, we have to care about or be interested in the author to really get the most out of seeing her home and her neighborhood through her own eyes. Because I've never read any of Diane Johnson's novels or other books -- and in fact had never heard of her before I picked up this title -- I didn't really have much invested in her as a guide. After finishing the book, I still don't.
I have a number of books about various Parisian neighborhoods stacked up in my to-read pile, and I will be interested to see how this one ends up comparing to others in the genre. On its own merits, though, it is a fast and ultimately lightweight read: a nice breeze through the town, but not, perhaps, a tour I'd immediately recommend to other reader-visitors.
Produkt InformationAutor:
Diane Johnson
Recording label: National Geographic Hersteller: National GeographicEAN: 9780792272663Format: HardcoverDewey decimal number: 944.361ISBN: 0792272668Artikelzahl: 1Seitenzahl: 204Erscheinungsdatum: 2005-05-01Erscheinungdatum: 2005-05-01Sprache: English (Original Language)
Sprache: English (Unknown)
Sprache: English (Published)
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