Tues Paris Reading Rec: PARIS SEEN IN FOUR DAYS
I have a weakness for used books--what reader doesn't?--and a debilitating weakness for used books about Paris: if I see one, it will not go unbought.
I picked up the Guilmin Guide: PARIS SEEN IN FOUR DAYS a few years ago at a church rummage sale. It cost a quarter, maybe less, and I almost vibrated as I bought it, certain that I was, for all intents and purposes, stealing this (and from a church no less): 25 cents!
It's undated, but its reference to Paris' population as 2,906,472 led me to Google which led me to date the book as having been published in 1921 or thereabouts.
Ninety-six years and it shows its age, but, curiously, not as much age as you'd expect for a document that someone actually did use for four days in Paris, tearing it in and out of a pocket to read about this edifice or that (on the Eiffel Tower: "...its unquestionable use for the transmission of wireless telegrams and the usefulness of this high monument as an observation station during the war have consecrated its glory").
Further evidence of unuse: its delicate, folded, massive four color map (red, yellow, green, black), which, given its lack of tears or holes, could never possibly have been opened on a crowded street corner in Paris, not in 1921 or any decade since (when Paris' population actually shrunk).
One of the things that fascinates me most about Paris is how much it is powered by myth and how much tourists power that myth -- and how few of those tourists ever actually get a chance to visit, except in the pages of books, like the ones I've been tagging in this series, or tinted maps like the ones tucked into this book. John Updike once said of New York something along the lines of, "I'm glad New Yorkers live there, so that I don't have to", suggesting (at least to me) the role some cities have in our minds: a mythic place we need to exist, and whose continued existence we entrust, wistfully or gratefully, to others.
I suppose the sight of an underused Paris guidebook might make someone sad, but I can't see it that way. What I see is a guidebook that once allowed someone to go to Paris without going -- which, after dropping my daughter off at school this morning in Milwaukee, is precisely what I did. $1,300 if I'd made the trip to Paris this morning by plane, Google tells me, and I went for 25 cents. A steal.
(Curious what it looks like? https://twitter.com/liamcallanan/stat...)
I picked up the Guilmin Guide: PARIS SEEN IN FOUR DAYS a few years ago at a church rummage sale. It cost a quarter, maybe less, and I almost vibrated as I bought it, certain that I was, for all intents and purposes, stealing this (and from a church no less): 25 cents!
It's undated, but its reference to Paris' population as 2,906,472 led me to Google which led me to date the book as having been published in 1921 or thereabouts.
Ninety-six years and it shows its age, but, curiously, not as much age as you'd expect for a document that someone actually did use for four days in Paris, tearing it in and out of a pocket to read about this edifice or that (on the Eiffel Tower: "...its unquestionable use for the transmission of wireless telegrams and the usefulness of this high monument as an observation station during the war have consecrated its glory").
Further evidence of unuse: its delicate, folded, massive four color map (red, yellow, green, black), which, given its lack of tears or holes, could never possibly have been opened on a crowded street corner in Paris, not in 1921 or any decade since (when Paris' population actually shrunk).
One of the things that fascinates me most about Paris is how much it is powered by myth and how much tourists power that myth -- and how few of those tourists ever actually get a chance to visit, except in the pages of books, like the ones I've been tagging in this series, or tinted maps like the ones tucked into this book. John Updike once said of New York something along the lines of, "I'm glad New Yorkers live there, so that I don't have to", suggesting (at least to me) the role some cities have in our minds: a mythic place we need to exist, and whose continued existence we entrust, wistfully or gratefully, to others.
I suppose the sight of an underused Paris guidebook might make someone sad, but I can't see it that way. What I see is a guidebook that once allowed someone to go to Paris without going -- which, after dropping my daughter off at school this morning in Milwaukee, is precisely what I did. $1,300 if I'd made the trip to Paris this morning by plane, Google tells me, and I went for 25 cents. A steal.
(Curious what it looks like? https://twitter.com/liamcallanan/stat...)
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