Customer Reviews

Paris, Paris: Journey into the City of Light

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I own a large library of books about France and have probably read almost every major title that features Paris. David Downie's new book Paris, Paris is in a class all its own. It is the most superbly written book on Paris I have read. Downie has a very lively and intelligent style, as well as a deliciously ironic sense of humor. He is also a real journalist in his brave tenacity to "get the story." He takes us to places I would never otherwise have access to because I would be much too timid to make the approach. For instance, to penetrate the inner sancta of fortress-like Ile Saint Louis mansions, he tells how he systematically tested the outer doors and found a few to be always open. He marches right into luxurious courtyards, has a good look around, and describes what he sees in vivid prose. Or when researching the root of the expression "city of light," he heads right to the office of the chief engineer of Paris' municipal lighting department. I found myself very impressed with his approach towards his subject and with his straightforward, unselfconscious way of expressing himself.

Downie is an American who has lived in Paris for over twenty years; however I have to imagine that he has gotten to know the city better than most natives. His curiosity leads him to all Paris' corners, not just the obvious showy places we all know and love. He does take us to some of my favorite neighborhoods and shows us details I've never noticed before, but he also points out the off-beat and even really ugly spots from where we can get a different perspective altogether on this rich, multi-layered city.

The book has three parts: places, people and phenomena. Every chapter is both entertaining and informative. I ate the book up like a plate of many-colored macarons, savoring every flavor. I highly recommend it to arm chair travelers and committed Parisphiles alike. It's full of history, humor and intelligent insight, with never a dull moment.

An evocative black and white image by Alison Harris, Mr. Downie's professional photographer wife and companion in adventure, accompanies each of the 30 chapters to add to the enjoyment.

David Downie is a magnificent writer. His exquisite prose reveals Paris as few other writers have. It is a must! As a native New Yorker and avid reader with eclectic tastes who has greatly enjoyed reading books on Paris and Parisians, for the more than 40 years I have lived here, Paris, Paris, has thoroughly delighted me. Every chapter is unexpected, original and yet finely tuned to reveal the universal truth or should one say truths of the City of Light. Downie writes with such extraordinary sensitivity and respect about this city, its history, its culture and most of all its people that he deserves a special place in the Pantheon of Americans who have found inspiration in their experience of the French capital. Downie demonstrates deep love of his subject matter but far from blind he also writes about the problems of Paris and the shortcomings of its population with compassion. More importantly perhaps he brings to the written page the kind of humanity that leaves his reader a better person for having taken the journey with him.

Wendy Johnson

A "Parisian" New Yorker

Paris, Paris is a refreshing compilation of tales of a city I have visited many times. Each essay is packed with interesting tidbits about Paris neighborhoods and sites. Next to it's well written insight, the thing I would say to recommend this book is that I didn't want to skip through as I do most travel books. I particularly liked the piece on Pere-Lachaise, and the way I got to weave through 350 years of monuments in the time it took me to drink one cup of coffee.

I found this on the web. It's a very helpful review from the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, the city's main newspaper. By John Marshall
Friday, September 16, 2005

There's room for one more delightful tribute to the City of Light

Paris continues to enchant American writers, from Ernest Hemingway through Adam Gopnik. Now add David Downie to the list of ex-pat scribes who have produced memorable work about the lustrous City of Light.

Downie's new "Paris, Paris" (Transatlantic Press, 248 pages, $18.95) has even earned a remarkable accolade from vet travel-writing legend Jan Morris, who describes the book as "the most evocative American book about Paris since (Hemingway's) 'A Moveable Feast.' "

Downie is a 47-year-old native of the Bay Area who was educated at Berkeley and Brown and has lived in Paris since 1986. He had only his high school French to draw upon when he moved there from Italy, drawn by the chance to write a novel in a maid's room.

"I was an usher at the San Francisco Opera and saw 'La Boheme' probably 15 times," Downie related this week, "so I couldn't resist writing in a maid's room."

Downie soon fell in love in Paris and married a Frenchwoman, putting down roots and improving his French by immersion in daily life there. His novel was never published and now resides in a desk drawer, but the writer's reflections on his adopted city have been published in newspapers and magazines around the globe.

The delightful and insightful essays in "Paris, Paris" meld history, atmosphere and observations on Paris places, Paris people and Paris phenomena.

Of the Ile de la Cité, that timeless island in the Seine that includes Notre Dame cathedral, Downie writes, "There are benches shaded by sycamores and weeping willows, lazy anglers of uneatable bottom fish, sunbathers and moon gazers, picnickers and pairs of lovers tangled atop crumbling parapets."

Mr. Downie has masterfully crafted his essays into a collection which is a very bright star in the constellation
of books written about the world's favorite city. A daunting task, but he has risen to the top. With the mastery of language and observation of John McPhee, he has given us a page turner just in time for Christmas. A perfect gift.

The photographs within,taken by Alison Harris, despite their size in the book, are magnificent. I want to see them bigger!

La présentation par David Downie de son livre à l'Alliance Française de Berkeley a été un grand succès. Tous les livres qu'il avait apportés (trente) se sont vendus. Nous en aurions vendus plus.

C'est un des rares auteurs américains (le seul ?) que je connaisse qui a bien compris Paris et qui l'exprime fort bien. Son livre est très bien documenté et en plus (ce qui est rare) exact. Et n'oublions pas les belles photos de Paris prises par sa femme à qui, malheureusement, notre vidéo projecteur n'a pas rendu justice.

En tant que parisien de naissance, de coeur et historien amateur de Paris, je ne peux que vivement recommander son livre et sa présentation, pleine d'humour, Son Français est excellent.
Bernard Metais Ph.D.
Ingénieur Ecole Centrale de Paris
Président Emérite de l'AF de Berkeley

I found this wonderful review of "Paris, Paris: Journey into the City of Light" on the web. It is by noted author John Baxter.

What creaks and smells? Rattles and groans? Is misty, wind-swept and blisteringly hot, sometimes all in the same day? Can murmur seductively, but from time to time shriek, or moan in ecstasy? Is exasperatingly disinclined to admit one to intimacy, yet, just as it does, can transform itself with a swirl and a flash into a new creature, utterly unrecognisable?
Give up?

The answer is Paris - or at least the Paris on which David Downie lifts the curtain in his book PARIS, PARIS. JOURNEY INTO THE CITY OF LIGHT.

Lifting the curtain (in some cases before the people inside expect it) is very much what this book is about. While Downie tips a respectful nod to the city of cordon bleu cuisine, the Louvre and Orsay museums, the shops of the grands boulevards and the boutiques of his own quartier, the old Jewish ghetto of the Marais, he's more interested in what's happening behind those façades.

The chic Place de Vosges, for instance. What's it really like to live in those 17th century hotels particuliares and to look down on the cafes under the colonnade where movie stars take coffee and fashion models prowl? Well, for some, not much fun, since many tenants inherited their homes generations back, and can't or won't renovate. Persuading one to invite him in, Downie describes being "led from floor to sagging floor by the pavilion's unwashed, unshaved, ornery owner, who scowled out of the broken windowpanes and cursed his inheritance. `You think it's beautiful', he shouted over and over, `you like the view? I hate it here. I hate it!"

Downie's Paris differs fundamentally from the Paris glimpsed by the tourist. He watches with a mixture of astonishment, amusement and dismay as the city, responding to the seasons, to political fashion, and to waves of prosperity and recession, shifts and changes like the living creature it is. A café can close at the beginning of August as Parisians flee to the country, to re-open on their return with its old varnished wood and velour interior replaced, not by steel and glass, but by another kind of varnished wood, a differently coloured velour, and nothing to suggest both haven't been there for a century. There are even paints that recreate exactly the yellow-brown of a ceiling stained by decades of smoke from unfiltered Gauloises Bleus. Names too can change with the fortunes of a district. One café in our arrondissement closed as "Le Mandarin" , to reopen as the more subtly snob "Le Mondrian" . Downie quotes a Parisian telling a friend, "If you come back to Paris in two years, you won't recognise it" ; something we've all said - except that he was talking in 1608.

One could not hope for a more authoritative introduction to the city on the Seine. Helped immeasurably by the atmospheric photographs of Alison Harris, Downie guides us through a Paris where, as in the real world, art shares a bed with money, and history and politics co-mingle with myth and romance. He demonstrates that plus ca change... The more this city changes, the more it stays the same - which is what makes Paris, and this book, so exhilirating. Don't leave home without it.
PARIS, PARIS. JOURNEY INTO THE CITY OF LIGHT

David Downie's recent memoire on Paris is a diminutive delight, a series of "thought prose" on different and unusual aspects of La Ville Lumière. There are countless books following a similar approach, but Downie's stands out due to the unusual information and presentation of somewhat obscure and arcane information that he has collected over the decades in which he has lived near the Place des Vosges in the Marais district of Paris. The result is an insider's point of view of the city that is quite unlike other tourist books, and perhaps implies that those who might most greatly enjoy the book are those who have actually visited and explored the city to some extent. Without having experienced the city itself first hand, the information presented here is a bit decontextualized and a little abstract.

For those who have visited the city and even perhaps stayed or lived there for any length of time, Downie's book opens up a world of insights that is often hidden from common view. This makes it now possible to explain why Downie has selected the name, "Paris, Paris" for the text, where the second "Paris" is written in italics. Downie explains that the meaning of this structure indicates that there are two simultaneous, yet nevertheless distinct, "Parises," the first being the "Paris" that the typical English-speaking, non-French national sees and experiences, and the second (the "Paris" in italics) is the one that native Parisians and Frenchmen know, a reality removed from the more cursory visitors of the city.

Downie chooses an interesting example drawn from the Paris metro system to illustrate the title's metaphor. For anyone who has used metro line 14, the fully automated and state-of-the-art Parisian metro line, the sound of the automatic station announcement will come to mind. As we approach Chatelet Station, for example, the system announces "Chatelet" in a springy, almost stylish manner. As the train begins braking and stops at the station, the automatic system again states "Chatelet," but in a much more terse, low-key manner. This interesting announcement technique that all riders of metro line 14 have doubtless noticed (whether consciously or unconsciously), serves as a gentle reminder that there are two Parises, and few people ever get to know them both.

The book is composed of a series of short, targeted essays on a wide variety of locations, personages, and historical events related to the city. Each section runs only six to eight pages, which is a perfect length not only to convey the topic, but also for targeted reading day after day. The writing style is clear and engaging, and as mentioned before, filled with tidbits of information about the city that anyone interested in Paris would enjoy learning. We get to read about such famous "Parisians" as Coco Chanel, the engineer who is in charge of nighttime lighting for all of Paris, and a host of others in addition to interesting historical aspects of the city itself.

An enjoyable book with a memorable set of stories, anecdotes, and "mysteries" of the city, "Paris, Paris" is a welcome addition to any Parisphile's library.

Here are several views of this book. The first comes from Elliott Bay Books in Seattle. They publish a newsletter. The author appeared there in September.

1) "Drawn from nearly twenty years' residence there, David Downie's Paris, Paris: Journey into the City of Light (Transatlantic), is a collection of essays that has drawn ardent praise. Cited as "perhaps the most evocative American book about Paris since A Moveable Feast" by Jan Morris, this is a revealing book of places, people, and pathways into those elements that make Paris Paris. "David Downie has a delightful sensibility and the most delighted eye, the most perseverance, and the perfect French, bien s&ucric;r, and these allow him to uncover secrets. Uncover them he has, the secrets of this fascinating city, and not the ones you'll read anywhere else." - Diane Johnson."

2) This next comment is from Mr. Bernard Metais, former president of the Alliance Francaise in Berkeley, CA
La présentation par David Downie de son livre à l'AF de Berkeley a été un grand succès. Tous les livres qu'il avait apportés (trente) se sont vendus. Nous en aurions vendus plus.

C'est un des rares auteurs américains (le seul ?) que je connaisse qui a bien compris Paris et qui l'exprime fort bien. Son livre est très bien documenté et en plus (ce qui est rare) exact. Et n'oublions pas les belles photos de Paris prises par sa femme à qui, malheureusement, notre vidéo projecteur n'a pas rendu justice.

En tant que parisien de naissance, de cour et historien amateur de Paris, je ne peux que vivement recommander son livre et sa présentation, pleine d'humour, Son Français est excellent.
Bernard Metais
Président Emérite de l'AF de Berkeley

3)Joe Rivlin, president of Alliance Francaise in Portland, Oregon, writes:

Last week the Alliance sponsored a talk by David Downie, author of Paris, Paris, Journey into the City of Light at the First Congregational Church in the Park Blocks. It was well attended and almost everyone there was interested in buying the book. It's a collection of thirty essays written by Mr.Downie, an American living in Paris for the past 20 years, with an excellent set of photographs by his wife Alison Harris. I'm about half way through it and I love it.

It's a real treat for anyone who has ever been to Paris, anyone going to Paris or anyone planning on going back to Paris - does that include almost everyone?

Thank you, David and Alison, for sharing your Paris with me. Soon I will have the pleasure of spending a month in Paris, and the joy of being able to introduce my 16-year-old grandson to the greatest-of-all-cities. Your book deepened my knowledge of Paris, and will allow me to share more of its history with my grandson. I will be taking your book along, reading it in Paris, and looking for all those pieces of the city that you so beautifully described. Again, merci!