“Away from America, when I think about my own country, I do wonder if some of our problems are simply those of newness. It almost seems that America today is something like the France of the sixteenth century, torn with religious suspicions, cultural divisions, a huge gulf between rich and poor, dangerous streets, and so on.” - Into a Paris Quartier.
Johnson is perhaps best known among many readers for her “Paris Trilogy”, Le Divorce (1997), Le Mariage (2000), L'Affaire ( 2003). I first discovered her through Persian Nights (1987), which then led me to some of her key earlier novels: Burning (1971), The Shadow Knows (1974), and Lying Low (1978).
A noted essayist and critic, she has written numerous introductions to reissued fiction as well as a collection of essays Terrorists and Novelists: Essays (1982) and charming and self-effacing memoir, Flyover Lives: A Memoir (2014). For me, her 1990 novel, Health and Happiness is her finest work (though I admit to not yet having read Lulu in Marrakech (2008).
Which brings us to Into a Paris Quartier. Though a native of “flyover land” as she describes in her memoir, she divides her time between San Francisco and Paris, specifically the neighborhood of Saint-Germain-des-Prés, the topic of this brief account, published as part of the National Geographic Traveler series. As Johnson notes in Flyover Lives:
“The one thing you, we, Americans, are not allowed to say is that there is somewhere better than America to live. This is an unspeakable apostasy, even though anyone who has lived in one of the better places knows it’s true.” - Flyover Lives
This is not a grand thought piece on Paris or the French, it’s not a travel guide. It is, like the best of travel writing, a reflection of the writer in the mirror of the place visited. In musings about St.-Germain-des-Prés, the reader feels they are sitting in one of those cafes she describes with Johnson as she rapturously talks of the Grande Épicerie, the bookstores, or the Bibliothèque Mazarine where
"the student can write or read in undisturbed splendor, and here I work, though this magnificent library is almost too grand, with its sixty-five-foot ceilings, great gilt chandeliers, leather-topped tables (nicely wired for the computer), and welcoming but always impassive librarians" - Into a Paris Quartier.
With that, let’s leave Johnson to work and look forward to the fruits of those labors, an American in Paris, but not, perhaps, foreign:
“So, finally, I cannot escape the idea that St.-Germain-des-Prés, French as it is, is also ourselves, the foreigners who have always been here. And, if you have always been here, can you be foreign?” - Into a Paris Quartier.
Aside: I had the pleasure of meeting Johnson at a reading/signing at the lamentably lost Chapters Bookstore at the launch of Le Divorce in January 1997. I also worked with Johnson’s daughter for a number of years without realizing the relationship (ah, that anonymity that comes with a name like Johnson!).
February 7, 2020 | Buy on Kindle
See my complete 2020 Reading list on Goodreads.
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