We'll Always Have Paris: Sex and Love in the City of Light
For more than a century, pilgrims from all over the world seeking romance and passion have made their way to the City of Light. The seductive lure of Paris has long been irresistible to lovers, artists, epicureans, and connoisseurs of the good life. Globe-trotting film critic and writer John Baxter heard her siren song and was bewitched. Now he offers readers a witty, audacious, scandalous behind-the-scenes excursion into the colorful all-night show that is Paris -- interweaving his own experience of falling in love, with a delightfully salacious tour of the sultry Parisian corners most guidebooks ignore: from the literary cafés of Hemingway, Fitzgerald, and de Beauvoir to the brothels where Dietrich and Duke Ellington held court, where Salvador Dali sated his fantasies, and Edward VII kept a sumptuous champagne bath for his favorite girls.
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Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
Perhaps no city has been more lustfully romanticized than Paris, and this cavorting collection of bons mots will do nothing to quell its erotic reputation. Baxter (A Pound of Paper), a cineast and biographer (of Woody Allen, Steven Spielberg and others), is an Australian in love with a French woman. After moving into her Parisian apartment in 1990, he subsequently becomes her baby's father, her husband and eventually, in his own way, French. He loosely arranges his narrative in themed chapters, lobbing little-known facts, references to favorite films, and gossip about the inglorious past of certain addresses into stories about the affairs of the heart of famous Parisians and expats. He peppers tales of his quotidian life with bemused observations of Gallic quirks and offhanded recommendations of tucked-away shops and obscure cafés, resulting in a book that is part guidebook, part memoir. Some chapters are bawdy and some hilarious, such as "Invaders," about uncouth, ingrate houseguests. Anyone who appreciates Paris and its myths, likes the meandering storytelling of good conversation and enjoys the mildly salacious will relish reading this book, curled up with a glass of full-bodied red and a box of chocolates. Photos. (Mar.)
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From Booklist
Australian-born Baxter moves from Los Angeles to Paris to start a new marriage to a French television newscaster. Searching for a place to live, they find an apartment on the tiny, Seine-bound Ile de la Cite, the veritable heart of Paris, steps from Notre Dame. From there, Baxter leads his readers on a decidedly eccentric tour of Paris. A film critic, Baxter intelligently connects Paris venues to various films, French and American, familiar and obscure. Baxter loves to focus on Paris' erotic history, and he does a particularly stunning job of explicating Josephine Baker's electric effect on the French psyche, attributing to her nude dances a profound restructuring of French attitudes to sexuality. Foodies will revel in Baxter's portrayals of Parisian restaurants' obsession with offal. Baxter's mordant humor is put to good use in his observations on Paris' ubiquitous dogs and their ton-a-day droppings on the capital's chic byways. Baxter also provides lively perspectives on Andre Malraux and on the city's ancient marketplace, Les Halles. Mark Knoblauch
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
About the Author
John Baxter's books include biographies of Federico Fellini, Luis BuÑuel, Woody Allen, Stanley Kubrick, and Robert De Niro, and the memoir We'll Always Have Paris: Sex and Love in the City of Light. Born in Australia, he now lives in Paris.
Customer Reviews
The sound and sense of a great city
When it comes to the subject of Paris there are some travel writers (myself included) who play in the shallow end while a talented, rare few take us into better depth. Baxter is one of those rare few. This isn't a travel book as much as it is a wonderful, highly enjoyable book that offers some sound and sense to a city that tugs at our imaginations. After reading it I added it to my reference bookshelf...okay, okay...maybe to steal some of his style too.
Buy the book and buy one for anyone you know who's going to Paris.
pretty light
The chapters on sex are much more interesting than the chapters on love. Even so, Baxtrer only traipses into the history of sex by dint of a buddy who keeps the topic alive between them. It's kind of a glancing blow off the topic. The only sex discussed are the eddies related to, and trailing off of specific conversations.
I don't understand why every guy who writes, who has working sex organs, and knocks someone up in Paris, writes about the event as if it were an event I need to know about. I really don't need to know where his daughter was conceived; and functioning sex organs are not as exceptional as they seem to the owner. Look around.
This is, apparently, another hazard of living in France; writing about your succesful reproduction as it it were of interest to others. He might have saved said daughter the humiliation of the event's inscription.
See also Adam Gopnik "Paris to the Moon" which is overall a more successful book.
Good blend of historical and personal accounts
This was a fun read. There are parts that were a bit dry and boring but overall I enjoyed it. I thought it was really interesting how the author weaved in historical events with his actual experiences in the City of Lights.
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