Paris perdu is a coffee-table book written by a collective and featuring hundreds of interesting photographs; as befits the funereal tone, all of the latter are in black and white.

The book’s title means “lost Paris”, although the title also is a pun on “losing bets” or “a lost wager”.

The book’s subject is the loss suffered by various Paris neighborhoods through urban renewal, renovation, and development.

This reader found the text militant and ultimately superfluous: Paris perdu makes a strong case through its use of photographs. All of the photographs were chosen carefully, and many of them are intriguing. They make Paris perdu a great book for leisurely, repeated viewing, for any lover of Paris. I was particularly captivated, and dismayed, by a treasure of photographs of the Halles before their demolition and replacement by a commuter train hub and shopping mall (whose renovation is pending).

Paris perdu has two weaknesses, both rhetorical. First, it overstates its case at times. From a safe remove (of fifty or a hundred years), poverty or squalor can seem charming, or at least photogenic. Subdivision, cramped living quarters, and tuberculosis are ills on which this book does not long dwell. Second, instead of resting its case by presenting what is no longer, the book too often makes a point by contrasting the past (authentic, rich) with the present (standardized, enriching only for developers).

Paris perdu was published in 1991 by Editions Carré. It is no longer in print, but can be found in used bookshops or in libraries.

Factory

This is a short detective story.

The city of Paris awarded architect Paul Friesé for the 1903 facade of the Métropolitain (subway) factory at 179 rue de Bercy. For the award jury, “This factory entrance is almost monumental.”

Viewed from the street, the factory brings to my mind the Museum of Natural History, in New York, or turn-of-the-century university buildings.

The facade was part of a large factory complex. To my eyes, what it most brings to mind is a mosque, complete with minarets. The entrance is a giant arch.

Factory

The Métropolitain factory has been demolished. The Paris transit authority has offices on the site, in part of a nondescript line of postwar office buildings that would be equally in place in Birmingham or Tulsa as in Paris.

Paris is receptive to industrial techniques –the Eiffel Tower, the Grand Palais, even the Grande Arche de La Défense– but not to actual industry. I’m left with the impression that Paris –city leaders, planners and architects, ordinary citizens– think factories and industry are embarrassments, better forgotten. What else could explain the oblivion into which the Métropolitain factory has fallen?

In addition to the factory on the rue de Bercy, the Métropolitain commissioned numerous electrical plants or sub-stations that are scattered throughout Paris. Some of these were also designed by Paul Friesé and are still standing. They bring to my mind armories, tiny forts.

Architect Paul Friesé was a remarkable figure. I’d recommend Hugues Fiblec’s Paris Friesé 1851-1917: Architectures de l’âge industriel, published by Norma; and the French architecture institute’s biography, from which I’ve borrowed the uncredited photo and illustration to show the Métropolitain facory.

Friesé was born in 1851 in Alsace. When he was 19, war broke out between France and Germany. Friesé enlisted, but France soon lost the war, and Alsace. Friesé moved to Paris and studied architecture. His architectural practice featured superb industrial buildings, few of which survive today. In keeping with his time, Friesé brought artistry to industry. He traveled extensively, and seems to have participated actively in architectural exchanges on design and materials.

France’s loss of Alsace to the Prussians nourished many hopes for revenge or re-taking. When war broke out in 1914, Friesé enlisted. He was 63 years old. From frequent visits to Alsace, Friesé had many contacts. He also had a command of German and equestrian skills. With this background, Friesé served as an interpreter. Paul Friesé died in 1917, while visiting his son, Jean-Paul, on the front. (I’m sure that there’s a superb story behind this fact, befitting of a W.G. Sebald tale, and I hope some day to look into it further.)

This was a brilliant contest. By celebrating the facade –what a passerby sees, from the street– the city celebrated citizens as much as architects. By critiquing the facade, the city also addressed, indirectly, ongoing social patterns: urbanization; democratization; social classes and disparities of wealth; tradition versus novelty. Since the time of Baron Haussmann, Paris building facades were regulated strictly; architects in 1900 used a limited vocabulary in surprisingly innovative and challenging ways. By choosing six winners, the city allowed for diverse schools and interpretations to shine.

The spirit of these years and of this contest is captured by an observation from the city of Paris:

No one disputes that Paris is the most beautiful capital in the world. It owes this supreme glory not only to the magnificence of the Seine, its avenues, its parks, its gardens, its squares –whose aspects are in all points admirable– not only to the varity and number of its sumptuous monuments; but also to the felicitous line of its broad streets, which offer profound perspectives that give it the cachet of opulent originality, for which there is no equivalent, anywhere abroad.

The quotation is from a publication by the city of Paris, Les concours de façades de la ville de Paris, 1898-1905, published in Paris by the Librairie de la construction moderne (the quoted passage is on p. 23; the translation is mine). The passage struck me, partly because it’s so triumphantly chauvinist, but especially because it places the heart of what makes a city great and beautiful at and in the street.

Les concours de façades de la ville de Paris was published in two volumes, one for the years 1898-1905, the other for the years 1906-1912. I located and read a copy at the historical library of the City of Paris. The contest offered a public reward and recognition for architects, and I regret that the slender volumes have gone out of print. The contest reports, and the drawings or photographs of award-winning facades, are priceless. In the coming days, I’ll comment on some of the winners that especially marked me.

This pair of slender works –each best read at one sitting, in a train or on a plane or over a tranquil weekend afternoon– lets the reader spend some time with a writer who is intelligent and insightful, even if not always easy to follow.

Marc Augé is an anthropologist and very much a French intellectual. He has a lot to say, about many things, including about the Paris metro, which he defines (my translation) as “togetherness without festival, and solitude without isolation”. Augé explains, lucidly, what he means by each of these words. But Augé does not write only, or even mostly, about the metro. He instead uses the metro “as a metaphor of individual and social life, with its directions, its life lines, its changes and connections.”

Augé’s writing turns, suddenly and unexpectedly, from fascinating musing on religious faith to analysis of how Paris has changed. Augé develops, then expands on, a typology of beggars. Other parentheticals seem never to close: Augé’s discussion of the work of anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss leads to a gloss on the latter’s examination of the work of another anthropologist, Marcel Mauss.

If you’re a French-reading English-speaker who liked the film “My Dinner With André”, then I expect that you’d enjoy reading Augé. Lots of big ideas and smart insights.

Mademoiselle George was born on 23 February 1787, in the  French city of Bayeux. Her father was German; her mother was French. Drawn to (or into) the theater as a child, Mademoiselle George made her début at the prestigious Comédie Française while she was a teenager. Her career as an actress spanned a remarkable length, from the revolution (1790s) to the Second Empire (1850s). Hers was a household name, known to all literate society.

Mademoiselle George’s exceptional good looks overshadowed her acting abilities. Comparing her to another actress, a contemporary wrote, “Mademoisele Duchensois is so good that she seems pretty; Mademoiselle George is so pretty that she seems good…” (quotation in Roselyne Laplace’s biography, Mademoiselle George, published by Fayard in 1987).

Her beauty won Mademoiselle George a lot of attention from men. In a manner reminiscent of French first lady Carla Bruni today, she had many boyfriends. The men in her life tended to be wealthy and powerful, such as Napoleon Bonaparte, whom she described as the “master of the world”.

Mademoiselle George fascinates me particularly because, towards the end of her life, she wrote her memoirs, which are today in the public domain and easy to consult (in French) on the web. I’m struck by her theatrical tone. Mademoiselle George’s recollections always mention clothing and jewelry (costumes), settings and furniture (sets). She writes stunning set pieces about intimate meetings with her lovers –often described as playful (in other words, as I read her, they were equally actors in their public lives)– but manages to preserve some privacy while exciting or toying with her reader’s imagination (one lover kisses her hand, she spends a night with another “talking”).

Mademoiselle George also intrigues me because she sought out independence, and wrote insightfully about this quest. She was attached to her family but remained unattached (and childless). Her career as an actress gave her the freedom to travel throughout Europe and brought her into proximity of people –artists and political leaders– who interested her, but kept her at the margins of society. She sought out and enjoyed the company of master-of-the-world class men, but fretted about becoming a “toy” or “plaything” (which leads me to ask who was playing with whom). Huge sums of money travel across her orbit, and sometimes passed through her hands, but always had a casino-chip unreality, here today and vanished tomorrow.

The Comédie Française, Paris

On 17 February 1673, Jean-Baptiste Poquelin died. He was better known under his stage name, Molière, and he was 51.

It doesn’t have a happy ending, but this is one of my favorite Molière stories.

Molière was a playwright and an actor: he starred in the plays he wrote.

The last play Molière wrote was Le Malade imaginaire (in English: The Imaginary Invalid). It’s a serious play, about love and marriage and choosing a partner wisely. It’s also a funny comedy about a miserly hypochondriac, Argan. Molière interpreted this role.

Molière died on the job. During a performance, the imaginary invalid, Molière, was struck by a very real coughing fit. He collapsed. But then he continued with the performance. Backstage, Molière was again struck by a coughing fit. He was taken home, where he died.

By all accounts, Molière suffered from tuberculosis, for which treatment options in 1673 were limited. I think that Molière’s death was heroic: suffered while acting in a play he wrote, with the irony that the imaginary invalid actually was deathly ill.

One of the legacies of Molière is the Comédie Française, started a few years after Molière’s death, in 1680.

I admire Lévi-Strauss because he led a transatlantic life. He did anthropologic field work and teaching in Brazil, and subsequently taught in the United States.

I also admire Lévi-Strauss because he was a superb writer.

His most well-known and most accessible work is Tristes Tropiques. English translations usually keep the French title, which literally means “sad tropics”; one English edition entitled it “World on the Wane”, which captured the work’s spirit or feeling.

Tristes Tropiques is accessible because it need not be read cover-to-cover. The casual reader will find selected chapters worthwhile, or can put the book down, then resume it later. It’s also accessible because its prose is beautiful to read, although its structure and the ideas Lévi-Strauss expresses are intricate and complex. For those who are short on time or attention span, I’d recommend the first three chapters, which have enough content to inspire a full and stimulating college or executive education class.

I’ve read and recommend another book by Lévi-Strauss, La pensée sauvage. The book’s title is usually translated in English as “The Savage Mind”, but the French is a pun: it also means “The Wild Pansy”. To drive the point home, French editions show the flower on the book cover. It’s a typically French work, heavy on theory, in this case structuralism.

Levi-Strauss’ death has been widely reported in France. He was arguably the last well-known French intellectual. There are others, especially in biology or physics, who are prominent but not familiar to the reading public.

I’m grateful to Hall for The Silent Language, The Hidden Dimension, and The Dance of Life. (Hall wrote other books, but these are the ones I know.) And I’m indebted to Hall for expressing novel ideas clearly, and for using evidence from everyday life.

As a modest gesture in memory of Edward T. Hall, this post aims to spread an observation about time and life in France: what sets the rhythm or beat of French life today is the school calendar.

I think that others have made this observation before me (and I’d be happy to cite them if they’d send me references). Original or not, here are the points that I’d like to make about the pace of French life:

• The year really begins with the rentrée, the “re-entry” period when the school year begins. In terms of how people think and act, this means something. It certainly means more than the start of the calendar year or a religious calendar (with the possible exception of rosh hashanah, the Jewish new year, which falls soon after the French rentrée). It’s also an odd inversion of the agricultural year: the beginning coincides with fall harvests, not plantings.
• The rentrée is meaningful for all families with school-age children. But it’s extended to basically all of society. It’s when publishers release new titles. It’s a time when people make resolutions (to lose weight, to join a gym, to subscribe to a magazine), when business and government make plans. It’s part clean slate, part new beginning, part the building of a new level or the writing of a new chapter.
• The school year lasts about ten months, just a bit longer than a human pregnancy. This makes necessary a summer recess (in July and August) and a tradition of summer vacation: without a recess, there couldn’t be a rentrée and a new beginning.

If I were allowed to choose one book on Paris (for a sojourn on a desert island, for a mission to Mars, or to introduce a Martian to the city), this would be that book. Here’s why:

• Through a series of painstakingly researched essays, dense with footnotes, Evenson paints a portrait of Paris as a living city.
• Each essay deals with an aspect of urban planning: commuting, where people live, building heights, automobile traffic. Each essay is readable alone, in a single sitting.
• Paris is shown as in evolution. The century-long scope is ideal. 1878 is close enough to us to be comprehensible, and the 1978 cut-off date permits Evenson to present major post-war changes, especially the growth of the periphery.
• Evenson’s scholarship is remarkable. For those with time and patience, her notes and bibliographic references help researchers to pick up where she left off.
• The book is fun: Evenson tells stories well.
• The illustrations and photographs have been chosen with care, like courtroom exhibits.
• It’s now 30 years old and has stood the test of time: it’s as informative and enjoyable today as it was when released. It may now be out of print, but I’ve seen it in architectural bookstores and in libraries.