Paris Vagabond - Jean-Paul Clébert

Another book similar to "The Other Paris"  but told from the point of view of someone who lived deliberately as a clochard for a couple of years in Paris.  It gives an intimate picture of the life, but it is definitely not a romantic picture.  I am still left wondering how people choose this life (some do, though many don't; they just end up there) as it is a very hard life.  Yes, you have a certain freedom, but on the other hand you are under the full weight of demands for minimal survival, which rear up again and again on a daily basis.  It turns such everyday needs as eating, sleeping and cleaning into demanding problems.
This book was written post-war, and you can already sense the author's awareness of living in a disappearing world.  Both this and the other book are so reminiscent of Henry Miller's books on his life in Paris - already by the 40s, this life had become a stereotype of itself, and image to be aspired after.
Most of the people in this life are troubled souls - the artists that emerged out of this milieu were lucky in that they were very good at something, which in the end allows them to escape the poverty and grind.

The Other Paris - Luc Sante

A history of Paris over the past few hundred years, though mostly focused on the 19th and early 20th centuries, because this period has much richer information sources.  The book looks at various aspects of the city (Ghosts, Zone, Canaille, Le Business) in each chapter, with an historical view of that aspect.  Very much a history of the people - which for most of this period implies poor people.  What I see underlined in this book is the fact that so much of what we consider picturesque or essential to our view of "Paris" is based on poverty and misery.  The idealized street life is in part a life of poor people with no other place to be, except a miserable hole to sleep in.   Or trying to cobble together some kind of sustenance scrambling after opportunities in the street.  There is some kind of dissonance between this idealized view of free, wide open Paris (or New York) and the poverty and misery that underlies it.  Free and wide open because so many of the inhabitants have nothing to lose and nothing to look forward to?  No future?
On the other hand, you can see how buckled down, narrow and safe life has become as western societies have become wealthier across the board, and have accumulated more things that can be lost. There has been some kind of taming of humanity, a hollowing out in some way, a domestication.  In a sense we have become farm animals - safe, secure but oh so dull.  Trade it for uncertainty, instability but ever so much excitement and stimulation?  Hmmm.  No society has made this reverse choice yet. This is what is happening in Istanbul right now actually.  As the middle class grows, the society becomes more enclosed and more homogeneous.
Hard choices.

This book also underlines how Vanishing New York by J. Moss is a bit naive in its complaint.  There is still a whiff of the white middle class tourist on a slumming run (though a small whiff, as the author has his reasons for searching out the freedom and openness of New York City).

I suppose, in a sense, there  are two types of people in this swirling mass of humanity that gave New York and Paris their character and flavour.  One, the people who are genuinely different somehow, who don't fit in - for them, the jumble and mishmash of the city represents some kind of freedom to be.  The other type are the poor and miserable for whatever reason - drugs, lack of education, generational poverty, psychological problems.  They live on the margins, not by choice, but by necessity, or through inevitability.  These are the people who are ignored when you romanticize this older time period.

The one thing that is radically different though, is the way rich and poor mixed in Paris - at the theatre, in the street, in cafes and bals.  This does not happen in Toronto (or New York any more) by the sound of things.  Probably not in Paris either, as lower income people are pushed further and further out from the centre.

This book also touches on art and its role in gentrification.  This may have actually started in Paris at the beginning of the 20th century.  Before then, artists were in the orbit of the rich and the wealthy (theory) but when art moved away from representation and tradition, (and buyers) artists ended up in the poorer areas like Montmartre.  As the artists get discovered (and also establish centres in cafes and restaurants), their milieu gets discovered, and seems so much more exciting than the run-of-the-mill.  This draws money, draws moneyed people, and we go on from there.

Brassai: Paris Nocturne

Beautiful reproductions.  Some nice night work, especially the cityscapes.  There are also some good ones of people, but many of them lack something - turns out many of his night shots with people portraying aspects of Paris "nightlife" were actually posed and paid for.  Ara Güler's Istanbul street work is grittier and more authentic.

Le Flâneur des deux rives - Guillaume Apollinaire

Jai trouvé ce livre disponible sur internet.  Une collection d'essais d'avant la guerre qui raconte quelques coins, quelques rues, quelques locales du Paris de cette époque.  Apollinaire peint une image du Paris des banlieues artistiques avant que cette reconstruction commencée par Hausmann n'y ait arrivée pour tout refaire.  C'est une image bien différente des façades restreintes et uniformes de nos jours; plus humble, plus humaine, plus désordonnée, mais avec charme.  Impossible à voir cela maintenant.
Apollinaire aussi évoque toute une vie, tout un monde artiste et poète de l'époque - il cite des noms de poètes de nos jours oubliés, mais qui à cette période étaient connus, même bien connus, et qui faisaient partie de tout un cercle de poètes et artistes qui travaillaient et partageaient la vie et les idées.  Cela m'a donné une nouvelle impression de ce monde du début de siècle.  On imagine toujours cette époque avec les géants comme Picasso et Apollinaire qui trônent sur tous les autres artistes, mais en vérité, à l'époque ils étaient des gens parmi d'autres; ils travaillaient comme les autres à poursuivre leurs idées et leurs inspirations.  C'est nous, bien après, qui en avons fait des figures démesurées, des géants des arts.  Un peu au hasard peut-être.  Qui sait?