![]() To order The Flâneur for £7.19 (RRP £8.99) go to or call 03. He discusses his favourite museums, too, but for White, “Paris lives in the details” – the kind of things you only discover through the random wandering this city invented, “that aimless Parisian compromise between laziness and activity known as flânerie”. White explores Paris as a haven for African Americans such as Josephine Baker, who in her first two years in the city received 46,000 fan letters and 2,000 marriage proposals, as well as the dangers and delights of cruising in the Tuileries. Edmund White, who lived in Paris for sixteen years, wanders through the streets and avenues and along the quays, taking us into parts of Paris virtually unknown. The only thing Parisians will not tolerate, he notes, is publishing a mediocre novel. ![]() In Paris, he writes poignantly, “you can encounter genuine tolerance of other races and religions – and of atheism”. ![]() It is a succinct cultural biography of the home of Baudelaire (“the consummate Parisian flâneur”), Colette (“the most talented French novelist of her epoch”) and of the existentialists, as well as a celebration of the diversity and freedom of big-city life. ![]() One has the impression, reading The Fl neur, of having fallen into the hands. The Flaneur A flaneur is a stroller, a loiterer, someone who ambles through a city without apparent purpose but is secretly attuned to the history of the place and in covert search of adventure, aesthetic or erotic. F irst published in 2001, Edmund White’s evocative paean to the city he lived in from 1983 to 1998 remains a delight. Buy a cheap copy of The Flaneur: A Stroll through the. ![]()
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