Flâneuse: Women Walk the City in Paris, New York, Tokyo, Venice and London by Lauren Elkin

I happened upon this book, serendipitously enough, en route returning home after a day spent walking purposefully and aimlessly around Paris. I knew the famed Shakespeare and Company was in Paris, but I did not know it was a 3 minute walk from my flat. On this particular evening, it was hard to ignore because a bright blonde lady was sitting outside the door surrounded by a crowd of people. I heard her American accent from down the rue. As I neared the door, I circumnavigated the crowd and slipped in the EXIT seeing as the ENTRANCE was blocked, with hopes of finding my own little corner that would then belong to me and millions of others.

After perusing the nook, I returned to the counter only to shamelessly flirt with the boy behind it because he was the bookish kind of cute I tend to fall for but never stay with.

Then I noticed this book cover with a dandy-esque man displayed proudly on the counter. He is wearing a hand-drawn skirt. I gotta pick this up. I read the dedication:

To Trivia
goddess of crossroads

I read the epigraph:

‘She is the wanderer, bum, émigré, refugee, deportee, rambler, strolling player. Sometimes she would like to be a settler, but curiosity, grief, and disaffection forbid it.’

-Deborah Levy, Swallowing Geography

I read the back cover:

Flâneuse
[flanne-euhze]

noun, from the French.

Feminine form of flâneur [flanne-euhr], an idler, a dawdling observer, usually found in cities.

This is an imaginary definition.

Hook, line, sinker. In the beginning of the book, Elkin talks about her first time in Shakespeare and Company and how she happened upon the works of Jean Rhys because she was drawn to a cover. She says, “The publishers couldn’t have targeted their copy to their audience more effectively if they had held a focus group made up specifically of oversensitive American co-eds.”

In hindsight, it seems her and my experiences were eerily similar even down to the way in which I examined the book.

In other words, Boy [behind the counter] Bye. This badass bright blonde American lady has birthed a new French word specifically for female wanders, what have you done today?

I don’t fancy myself a book reviewer, but I wanted to share this gem. Below is the dust jacket blurb for interested parties:

If the word flâneur conjures up visions of Baudelaire, boulevards and bohemia – then what exactly is a flâneuse?

In this gloriously provocative and celebratory book, Lauren Elkin defines her as a ‘determined resourceful woman keenly attuned to the creative potential of the city, and the liberating possibilities of a good walk’.

Part cultural meander, part memoir, Flâneuse traces the relationship between the city and creativity through a journey that begins in New York and moves us to Paris, via Venice, Tokyo and London, exploring along the way the paths taken by the flâneuses who have lived and walked in those cities.

From nineteenth-century novelist George Sand to artist Sophie Calle, from war correspondent Martha Gellhorn to film-maker Agnés Varda, Flâneuse considers what is at stake when a certain kind of light-footed women encounters the city and changes her life, one step at a time.