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David Burke

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Writers In Paris: Literary Lives in the City of Light Kindle Edition

by David Burke (Author) Format: Kindle Edition

4.7 29 ratings

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No city has attracted so much literary talent, launched so many illustrious careers, or produced such a wealth of enduring literature as Paris. From the 15th century through the 20th, poets, novelists, and playwrights, famed for both their work and their lives, were shaped by this enchanting locale. From natives such as Molière, Genet, and Anaïs Nin, to expats like Henry Miller, Samuel Beckett, and Gertrude Stein, author David Burke follows hundreds of writers through Paris's labyrinthine streets, inviting readers on his grand tour. Unique in scope and approach, Writers in Paris crosses from Right Bank to Left and on to the Ile de la Cité as it explores the alleyways and haunts frequented by the world's most storied writers. Burke focuses not only on their writing but on their passions, ecstasies, obsessions, and betrayals. Equally appealing to Francophiles and serious readers, this engaging book includes maps and more than 100 evocative photographs.

Editorial Reviews

Review

Praise for Writers in Paris:

"Burke's dynamic mapping of this special city illustrates how countless inspired and disillusioned writers from all over the world write Paris in life and in art. Sly, eclectic, yet packed with an utmost humor . . . An enthralling read." —Cerise Press

"Exhilarating." —Head Butler

"With maps, descriptions, and more than one hundred photographs, Writers in Paris gives a fresh, fascinating way of looking at the city and its unparalleled role in literature." —ParisVoice.com

"Staggering." —The Boston Globe

About the Author

David Burke is a writer and documentary filmmaker, who went to Paris in 1986 for what he thought would be a stay for one year, but it turned into more than twenty. He now divides his time between Paris and New York.

Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B003XNTTJE
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Counterpoint (March 1, 2009)
Publication date ‏ : ‎ March 1, 2009
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 12261 KB
Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
Print length ‏ : ‎ 257 pages
Page numbers source ISBN ‏ : ‎ 1582435855

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4.7 29 ratings

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David Burke

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David Burke is a documentary film maker and former 60 MINUTES writer/producer who came to Paris in 1986 for what he thought would be a year, but turned into more than twenty. Besides Writers in Paris, he has written two editions of HarperCollins's Access Paris, a travel guide to Mediterranean France, and numerous articles for magazines and web sites. He and his wife, producer/director Joanne Burke, have also made seven documentaries over these years and are working on a eighth.

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Barbara

Writers in Paris: Literary Lives in the City of Light

Reviewed in the United States on June 17, 2012

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Great articles about Paris; there's something for everyone: neighborhoods, food, monuments, quiet walks, oodles of historical and literary references. It's arranged by neighborhood and there are maps and photos. I'll read it again in a few months. I've read a lot about Paris and this book is one of the best ones.

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Esther Schindler

An odd book that grew on me. Not exactly a guidebook.

Reviewed in the United States on July 21, 2012

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This book would seem to be Just My Ticket. I'm a writer and editor who went to Paris on vacation. Surely the best guidebook for me would be one that highlights all the famous authors and their haunts?

Well, maybe. I bought this book a couple of months before the trip, and found that I would pick it up, and set it down again. It slowly grew on me... but I had to recalibrate my expectations before I could really enjoy it.

What this book is NOT: A Rick Steves Guide To Paris for Writers and Book Lovers. Although Writers in Paris is organized by neighborhood, down to the street and house number, it isn't exactly a guidebook. At least, it's way too heavy to cart around the hardback, and there's no "walking tour for Hemenway lovers." It's also not the sort of book to pick up and read straight through; everything is in short vignettes, best appreciated (I've learned) in short bursts, 10 pages at a time.

Among the thing I liked: Introductions to authors I hadn't known of before, or only in an "I heard of him" way, with interesting details about their lives beyond their street address.

It has plenty of reader-geek details about authors who are household names -- especially those whom we associate with Paris: Hemenway, Fitzgerald, Richard Wright, Victor Hugo -- in the context of time and place. For example, "The six story house at No. 28 [Rue Jacob] is where twenty-year-old Sidonie-Gabrielle Collette lived when she first arrived in 1893, shortly after her marriage to Henry Gauthier-Villars, an industrious jack-of-all-literary-trades who wrote under the name of Willy. He was 13 years older than Colette. 'It was marry Willy or become an old maid or teacher,' she said." That's followed with a page of history about how Willy encouraged her to write her first novel while they lived on Rue Jacob, and took it around to publishers. Three years later, when it was eventually published, Willy took sole credit as the author.

Because it connects writers with places, it does have some unique appeal for the tourist. Of Brasserie Lipp on the west bank, for example, it explains that the restaurant, first opened in 1880, has long attracted France's political elite. "Presidents De Gaulle, Pompidou, Mitterand, and Chirac lunched within its Art Nouveau tiled and mirrored walls," the book explains, and "Camus and Sartre lunched regularly during the early days of their friendship." In 1949, Lipp was the scene of a showdown between Richard Wright and James Baldwin, about which we read in detail for a page or so. (Most of the essays are one or two pages.)

But it's clearly not exhaustive; the American sitting next to me at lunch at Brasserie Lipp (the charcoutte garnie was wonderful... the book, alas, gives no food advice even when it describes famous restaurants) said he went there because it was a Hemenway haunt, a fact that isn't mentioned in Writers in Paris.

Which points to some of the book's... well, not weaknesses, exactly, but its unsuitability for what initially I imagined was its purpose. There's no Hemenway Walking Tour, or The Beat Walk, or Victor Hugo for His Fans path, though goodness knows there's enough information here to support such things. It's organized by neighborhood, down to streets and numbers, instead.

The book is clearly meant for someone who knows (or at least is familiar with) the city, who is well read, and wants to breathe in the air -- and history -- of those who were inspired by Paris. Now that I'm back from the trip, I've decided this is a good book for someone who has been to France a few times, and is now ready to explore its neighborhoods in depth -- at least from an armchair at home. If you're reasonably well read (by which I mean "You have read literature beyond what was assigned to you in a high school English class") you'll enjoy yourself.

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Don

Superb

Reviewed in the United States on February 10, 2013

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This is the book about the Paris literary scene that I wish I had written! Congratulations to Mr. Burke for the definitive Paris literary guide. I've been collecting books on the subject for years, and have never seen one as good.

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Sue

Write on

Reviewed in the United States on September 1, 2016

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A good overall look at some of the greatest writers.

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vilma Jonston

A great accompaniment

Reviewed in the United States on May 10, 2013

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Found the book enriched my exploration of Paris. Well written and well organised. Loved the information on the writers and artists. Great.

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Jesse Kornbluth

A star-studded walk --- serves up everything but cafe

Reviewed in the United States on July 11, 2008

How many streets in the city you live are named after writers?

In Paris: more than 400.

David Burke seems to have walked them all.

And that's just for starters. He also seems to have read all the books by those writers, cross-referenced their friendships, and then figured out a clever way to summarize his knowledge in a modest 240 pages, with 125 photos along the way.

But then, David Burke --- a "60 Minutes" producer who moved to Paris for a year and simply forgot to leave --- is a lifelong reader and Francophile. As a kid in the `50s, he went to Pamplona not just for the running of the bulls, but "because that was where the climax of `The Sun Also Rises' takes place." Later, he tried to find Jean-Paul Sartre in Saint Germain-des-Prés.

Now he's divided the city he loves into three sensible zones --- the Left Bank, the Islands, and the Right Bank --- and slotted in the writers who lived and work there, working mostly chronologically, delivering the most salient stories about each. Like...

The Church of Saint-Julien-le Pauvre
It's the oldest church in town. When we're in Paris, we like to go to concerts there. I had forgotten that Ford Madox Ford took his mistress Jean Rhys there - or, in one of her novels, his alter-ego did.

39 rue Descartes
Verlaine died there. Hemingway rented the garret he'd occupied.

Rue Mouffetard
What's in a name? Mouffle means "stink", and "skinners, tanners and tripe butchers" set up shop along the river here. No surprise that young, unknown George Orwell lived here.

Deux Magots
James Baldwin was taken here directly on his arrival in Paris to meet Richard Wright.

Colette
I don't know that she got her break with her "Claudine" book three years after it was universally rejected. Then another book about schoolgirls was a hit, her husband showed her manuscript around again, et voila --- Colette had a best seller.

Hotel du Vieux Paris
They called it "the Beat hotel". Allen Ginsberg lived here. He produced 56 lines of "Kaddish", "weeping as the wrote them in Café Sélect."

Gertrude Stein's Picassos
I never knew that the Gestapo searched her apartment and decided the Picassos were "Jewish trash, good for burning." But they left them hanging.

Hours Press
And I didn't know about Nancy Cunard's poetry contest. A young writer heard about it on the last day, wrote 98 lines and stuffed them in an envelope. He won ten pounds. Samuel Beckett, aged 24. Of course.

Luxembourg Gardens
"Balzac circled the garden at night in his monk's cowl, candelabra in hand" --- another tidbit I didn't know.

Le Dome
The first big café. One night when Sinclair Lewis was boasting about one of his books on the terrase, someone shouted, "Sit down, you're just a best seller."

Rue de la Gaité
Henry Miller was "drawn to the erotic as a bear to honey." He loved the sex shops and vaudeville theatres here.

Georges Simenon
Colette advised him, "No literature. Suppress all the literature and it will go fine."

Jim Morrison
And I didn't know this: No one recognized his corpse, including "the man who came every day to keep the body packed in dry ice because of the city's heat wave."

Emile Zola
I had no idea he died of carbon monoxide poisoning. The police said it was an accident. Some evidence suggests he was murdered. A tantalizing incident, briefly told, that leaves you wanting more.

Proust
And I certainly didn't know he inherited the equivalent of $6 million, giving him $180,000 or so in today's money to live on each year.

And there's so much more, much of it exhilarating. But watch out --- you'll read with a pencil, you'll mark titles and writers, and before you know it, you'll have a stack so tall you might as well have bought a plane ticket.

9 people found this helpful

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Sarah Bates

For writers and readers who love Paris.

Reviewed in the United States on September 1, 2017

I participated in one of the David Burke's literary walking tours in June 2017. I bought his book and just finished reading it. What a treasure it is! Not only did I learn a lot about "who" lived "where", but also about the writing of authors I either never heard of or had forgotten. I truly enjoyed reading about the lives of these writers, some of whom had been lost to history. Burke's book revives interest in their writing. I am an author, so from an author's point of view, I also liked the device the Burke used; breaking Paris into streets, and what happened to the writers who lived there and alas, some of their homes. I also liked the clips of original writing included. By doing this, the author added a fresh perspective on the writing of long-dead literary heroes. Moreover, his writing voice is contemporary so instead of sounding dull and academic, the text is exciting and much like fiction. I now have good reason to return to Paris to seek out the multitude of plaques mounted on walls commemorating the writers he profiles.

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Paris Reader

A Literary Page Turner.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on November 30, 2018

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Concise, well-written guide to writers who have lived in Paris. From the Marquis de Sade to Beauvoir, Hemingway,
Baldwin, Henry Miller, Anais Nin and Nabokov, WRITERS IN PARIS should be next to your favorite books and is
a perfect gift for anyone learning about French, American, Irish and British writers. Even Casanova is there representing
the Italians. Well documented and written at a lively pace. Excellent photographs and maps.