"Paris, Paris: Journey into the City of Light," by David Downie (Transatlantic Press, 248 pages, $18.95), is a beautifully written and refreshingly original book by an American expatriate (and frequent Chronicle Travel writer) who has lived in Paris these past 20 years. Curious and attentive to detail, Downie is appreciative yet unflinching in describing his adopted home. Even when he's writing with a critical eye, his work is never a simple rant about things that tick him off.
Blogosphere, please copy.

Downie is a walker. He rambles through the old Montmartre haunts of the sensual, doomed painter Modigliani, into the Paris catacombs and sewers, the famed Phre-Lachaise cemetery, the Luxembourg Gardens and on through the quietly aristocratic redoubt of the Nle-Saint-Louis. Most of these places are familiar to visitors, of course, but Downie makes us see them in a different light.

Downie likes to walk at night, which gives his book an appealing sense of shared intimacy -- and skirts, as he acknowledges, the edges of voyeurism. In "Night Walking," one of 30 short prose sketches of life in Paris, he writes:
  "Beyond the Nle-Saint-Louis and its mansions, the most exquisite doll's houses I know for nighttime viewing are found on and near the Place des Vosges, centerpiece of the Right Bank's Marais neighborhood. The square's 36 identical pavilions ... offer remarkable architectural detailing, and a chance to indulge your curiosity. There are bull's eye windows in the slanting slate roofs, plus arcades and painted timber ceilings. At times, the magic-lantern effect reveals the fabulous art collections of several famous auctioneers and the rich families who lived there for decades or
centuries."

There's much more, including a deft portrait of the driven, self-created designer Coco Chanel, an acid portrait of the Brutalist modernizer Georges Pompidou, an evocation of the hard-working boat people of the Seine and historical passages that effortlessly recall lost worlds in vieux Paris.

David Armstrong is a Chronicle staff writer. E-mail him at davidarmstrong@sfchronicle.com
Copyright 2005 SF Chronicle

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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 Citi, 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."

-- John Marshall

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The hook was a blurb from the travel writer Jan Morris: "The most evocative American book about Paris since 'A Moveable Feast.' " Attention must be paid - Hemingway's slim volume remains an evergreen companion for traveling to Paris, and Morris, well Morris is special - read her book on Venice sometime.

An ex-pat of 20 years, Downie is a saunterer, wandering down the narrow ancient streets of the Ile de la Cite, picnicking in storied graveyards like pere-Lachaise, observing a seduction at Jardin du Luxembourg with a birder's patience. His book reminds me of Christopher Morley's Philadelphia.

Originally from the Bay area, Downie packed for Paris in 1986, equipped with some high school French and dreams of writing a novel in an unheated garret. (Yes, he'd seen La Boheme a few times.) He wrote - badly, he says - for a year and just as he was about to move on he met a French-born American woman. They've been married 18 years now. They make a living freelancing; his specialty is travel and food.

His book captures the sort of people and places missed by those jetting from starred bistros to hotels with showers. By phone this morning he talked of the sort of Paris he prefers:

"My favorite restaurant is called Les Fontaines. That's over by the Pantheon and the Luxembourg Gardens. What I love about it is it looks like a cruddy corner cafe. No special décor. And it's full of French provincials and hardly ever a tourist. It's real authentic French traditional classic bourgeois cooking. The real thing. It will never have a Michelin star because the bathrooms are not up to standard. The fixtures are not gold-plated."

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For anybody who comes to Paris be it for a day or a lifetime this should be considered pre-requisite reading. Part guidebook, part history book and part memoir - this cocktail of admiration propels the City of Light into another dimension, awakening the reader to a brighter appreciation of Paris. From places like the Ile Saint Louis to the Père-Lachaise cemetry, from famous figures including Coco Chanel to local phenomena such as the Seine's houseboat population and café culture, writer David Downie describes the Paris lifestyle in 30 essays, with a subtle mix of humor and unbridled curiosity for touching trivia. Downie […] has called the city home since the mid-'80s... JS

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.

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Co-presented avec ALLIANCE FRANÇAISE DE SEATTLE. 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. Speaking of 'perfect French,' this evening will be at least partially presented bilingually in English and French. A reception will follow.

Travel writer David Downie is touring the U.S. in support of his new book, Paris, Paris: Journey into the City of Light. The book features a collection of Downie’s stories about the city. He couldn’t have asked for a better review: Jan Morris called it, “Perhaps the most evocative American book about Paris since ‘A Movable Feast.’” Downie will appear in Portland, Oregon on Tuesday and in Seattle on Friday and Saturday. Information about other dates is available here.

A MAGIC TOMB IN LA PERE LACHAISE

It can, in fact, be all things to all people. The adoring fans of Alain Kardec, a 19th century spiritualist, find their inspiration by reverently placing their hands on the monument erected to him in spite of a plaque stating in no uncertain terms that this is exactly what Alain Kardec would NOT have wanted. Oscar Wilde's tomb is planted with big red kisses; and the tomb of a 19th century journalist, Victor Noir, had to be fenced in so women would cease stroking his private parts in hopes of fecundity!

If you don't go for such rituals, you can visit La Père Lachaise just to stroll which is what I regularly do with my friend David Downie whose recent book, "Paris, Paris: Journey into the City of Light" includes an edifying essay on what he and I affectionately call "Le Père" (as in "meet you in Le Père").

The last time I met David at "Le Père", a black cat ominously jumped out in front of him. How's that for a symbol? Especially when a little boy visiting the cemetery with his parents asked David if he (the cat) lived there. Thinking the child was referring to his person, even David, a Père Lachaise habitué, was spooked: "Not yet!" he replied.

It was on the Black Cat Day that I took a wrong turn and suddenly couldn't get my bearings.

I switched on my cell phone to call for a quick rescue.

"David," I whispered into it, with a nervous giggle, checking to see how many (live) people were around me, "you won't believe it but I'm LOST!"

After finding each other (not all that hard, I must admit), we quickly headed for the nether depths of the cemetery, where David pointed out a few tombs to me that I hadn't yet discovered. Nothing unusual about that - you can live next to the Père or go there daily and still discover new monuments and names.

One of the discoveries is what David calls the "magician tomb", the burial place of Etienne Gaspard Robertson (1763-1837) which he recommends to those "looking for an X Files-style frisson".

"Winged skulls, like demonic cherubs, perch at each corner of the massive tomb. Adepts of black masses swear the skulls swirl into the air ...on moonless nights," he writes in "Paris, Paris!" Magicians, yes. And how about elephantine trees that literally uproot tombs such as the gigantic purple beech whose roots, as David writes, "have been delving for decades" into the Duhoulley family plot. I see the roots as octopus tentacles. He sees them as elephant feet. We agree they are huge.

There's this and more - and more. I could go on and on about the Père and my curious meetings there with David (who actually eats lunch among the dead, something I have as yet to do). But to get a real feel for this Parisian must, as well as other places and people in Paris, the best thing (shameless plug) is to read "Paris, Paris!"

Meanwhile, I'm looking forward to my next promenade in the Père. For as strange as it may seem, both David and I subscribe to Honoré de Balzac's famous quote: "I never go out, but when I do wander, I go to cheer myself up in Père-Lachaise."

Listen to David Downie discussing French food, cafés, the Michelin Guide and Paris restaurants on NPR’s Good Food, with Even Kleiman, KCRW FM, Santa Monica, CA

http://www.kcrw.com/cgi-bin/db/kcrw.pl?show_code=gf&air_date=10/15/05&tmplt_type=show

Listen to David Downie talking about Paris on Concourse A, the Travel Radio Show, from Chicago…

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