Paris_ The Collected Traveler - Barrie Kerper [3]
ABOUT THIS BOOK
A traveler without knowledge is a bird without wings.
—Sa’adi, Persian poet, Gulistan
The Collected Traveler editions are meant to be companion volumes to guidebooks that go beyond the practical information that traditional guidebooks supply. Each individual volume is perfect to bring along, but each is also a sort of planning package—the books guide readers to many other sources, and they are sources of inspiration. James Pope-Hennessy, in his wonderful book Aspects of Provence, notes that “if one is to get best value out of places visited, some skeletal knowledge of their history is necessary.… Sight-seeing is by no means the only object of a journey, but it is as unintelligent as it is lazy not to equip ourselves to understand the sights we see.” Immerse yourself in a destination and you’ll acquire a deeper understanding and appreciation of the place and the people who live there, and, not surprisingly, you’ll have more fun.
This series promotes the strategy of staying longer within a smaller area so as to experience it more fully. Susan Allen Toth refers to this in one of her many wonderful books, England as You Like It, in which she subscribes to the “thumbprint theory of travel”: spending at least a week in one spot no larger than her thumbprint covers on a large-scale map of England. Excursions are encouraged, as long as they’re about an hour’s drive away.
I have discovered in my own travels that a week in one place, even a spot no bigger than my thumbprint, is rarely long enough to see and enjoy it all. For this reason, most of the books in The Collected Traveler series focus on either cities or regions, as opposed to entire countries. There will not be a book on all of France, for example. I am mindful that France is a member of two communities, European and Mediterranean, and that an understanding of both is essential to understanding Paris, and I have tried to reflect this wider-world sense of community throughout the book. But even though some visitors to Paris may travel on to points farther afield in France, each of its regions deserves to be covered in a separate book and is too far outside this particular thumbprint.
The major portion of this book features a selection of articles and essays from various periodicals and recommended reading relevant to the theme of each section. The articles and books were chosen from my own files and home library, which I’ve maintained for more than two decades. (I often feel I am the living embodiment of a comment that Samuel Johnson made in 1775, that “a man will turn over half a library to make one book.”) The selected writings reflect the culture, politics, history, current social issues, religion, cuisine, and arts of the people you’ll be visiting. They represent the observations and opinions of a wide variety of novelists, travel writers, journalists, and others whom I refer to as “observant enthusiasts.” These writers are typically authorities on Paris, or France, or both; they either live there (as permanent or part-time residents) or visit there often for business or pleasure. I’m very discriminating in seeking opinions and recommendations, and I am not interested in the remarks of unobservant wanderers. I am not implying that first-time visitors to France have nothing noteworthy or interesting to share—they very often do, and are often keen observers. Conversely, frequent travelers can be jaded and apt to miss the finer details that make Paris the exceptional place it is. Above all, I am interested in the opinions of people who want to know France, not just see it.
I’ve included numerous older articles because they were particularly well-written,