"Paris Vagabond" by Jean-Paul Clébert; Introduction by Luc Sante (NYRB)

ISBN: 978-1-59017-957-4 NYRB

"Paris Vagabond" by Jean-Pual Clébert, Foreword by Luc Sante (NYRB)

Luc Sante with his "The Other Paris" wrote one of the two ultimate books on that beloved city.  He also wrote an introduction to the other essential book on the French capital that is by Jean-Paul Clébert called "Paris Vagabond."  Like "The Other Paris" this book reeks of the underclass or the belly of Parisian culture, with its homeless, drunks, criminals, streetwalkers, and everything between.   Encouraged by Blaise Cendrars, Clébert wrote the ultimate book in early 1950s on the culture that was not celebrated by overseas tourists in Paris.  Wandering from one neighborhood to the next, Clébert recorded with a pen or pencil on newsprint, wrote about those who fell or lived in the cracks of Paris.  Impressionistic as well as documentation he covers the waterfront that to some, is pure hell.  Yet, it is virtually a Jean Genet love of the squalor and dirt of the Parisian underworld.   Throughout the book it is illustrated with photographs by Patrice Molinard, who begin his career taking images for Georges Franju's documentary "Le sang des bêtes."   His aesthetic or documentation fits perfectly with Clébert's realistic poetic prose.  A superb translation by Donald Nicholson-Smith, this is the book on Paris.  A total classic. 

"In The Café of Lost Youth" by Patrick Modiano - Translated by Chris Clarke (NYRB)

ISBN 978-1-59017-953-6 NYRB

"In The Café of Lost Youth" by Patrick Modiano / Translated by Chris Clarke (NYRB)

As much as possible, I try to read every book - fiction and non-fiction on the city of Paris, especially if it took place in the 1950s.  Of my interest, the post-war years are the most interesting to me.  Great films, wonderful music and really interesting figures emerge from Paris during that time.  I suspect that Patrick Modiano feels the same way about Paris, because "In The Café of Lost Youth" is very much a love letter (or love novel) to Paris - especially the nighttime of Paris.  Where the characters wander around various neighborhoods and cafés and occasionally listen to lectures.  I do not even know for sure, but I suspect that the novel is based on Ed van der Elsken's book of photos "Love on the Left Bank" that tells a tale of a girl who wanders into the world of the Letterists/Situationists. There is likewise a character that is based on Guy Debord, but not overly him, but an "ideal" version of Debord. 

I like the novel for all the above reasons, but it is not as good as Michèle Bernstein's novel "All The King's Horses" or "The Night."   She was married to Debord, and her fiction can be read as 'maybe' a memoir.  Nevertheless, Modiano is sort of the after-effect of such literature by Bernstein.  His, is a very romantic narrative - and there are at least four running narratives on the same girl, "Lluki" who is both a wanderer as well as a bohemian adventurer in the night life of Paris.  If nothing else, it makes one wish to purchase an one-way ticket to Paris.