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was in a depression, there was much strife between political parties, and in Paris there was a general air of pessimism. When Marcel Duchamp was asked to sum up the glories of Montparnasse, he replied that, though Montparnasse was the first international colony of artists, superior to Montmartre, Greenwich Village, or Chelsea, “Montparnasse is dead, of course, and it may take twenty, fifty, or a hundred years to develop a new Montparnasse, and even then it is bound to take an entirely different form.” Later, as Lottman notes, when the Nazis occupied Paris in 1940 and Man Ray left Montparnasse, he could not have known that “the Quarter as he had come to know it would cease to exist.” Man Ray documented an extraordinary time and extraordinary people; this book includes fifty-three of his unforgettable black-and-white photographs.

Paris has been so beautiful for so long that, with few exceptions, every neighborhood has some treasure or other to show. It might be a well-designed antique water pump in a forbidding alley in the Glacière section of the thirteenth, a handsome fountain and a street of curiously designed apartment houses not far from the nondescript rue Monge, an old court, wrinkled and molten and still a grande dame, in the fur district—and everywhere, the rhythms of old streets meeting, proliferating, branching like the veins of a leaf.

—Kate Simon, Paris: Places and Pleasures

LA CUISINE FRANÇAISE

Everyone who has visited France knows that it is a nation of hardy, persistent individualists. The French simply refuse to conform to type, whether it be a question of dress, of manners, or of politics, particularly the last. This quality of independence manifests itself with unusual emphasis in the matter of food and wine. This may seem surprising to those who have formed a conception of typical French fare. The genuine French cuisine, however, is an absolute tapestry of individualism, varying abruptly from one province to another, to the fascination of food-minded travelers. There is nothing “typical” about it.

—SAMUEL CHAMBERLAIN,

FROM THE INTRODUCTION TO

The Food of France BY WAVERLEY ROOT

Over centuries, the dinner table has remained an anchor for families and friendships, the heart of what is finest about France. Each course requires separate effort, part of a whole. Children learn their values and their manners at mealtime. Nothing important gets signed, sealed, or delivered without the clinking of glasses and the rattling of cutlery.

—MORT ROSENBLUM,

A Goose in Toulouse

A Saga of Bread

NAOMI BARRY

WHEN I INCLUDED this piece in my first Paris edition, Barry told me the only baguette in all of France that she liked was la flûte Gana from Ganachaud, a legendary boulangerie in the twentieth arrondissement. After she first tried it, she immediately thought of a French advertising slogan of the time, Voilà un préjugé qui m’a coûté cher, which translates as “And that’s a prejudice that cost me dearly.” If she once thought all baguettes were alike—dull and tasteless—she didn’t anymore. I happen to be fond of the crispy, airy baguette in general, but I grant that the flûte Gana is one of the most perfect baguettes on earth. The original Ganachaud (rue de Ménilmontant) was presided over by master baker Bernard Ganachaud, who has since retired. That original shop is now closed, but Ganachaud’s daughters, Valérie, Isabelle, and Marianne, have opened their own boulangerie nearby (226 rue des Pyrénées), which appears to be thriving. The family also now oversees a network of boulangeries with the Gana brand throughout France.

My husband and I once had the supreme great fortune to meet Bernard before he retired, although it happened quite by accident. I mentioned to the cashier at Ganachaud that I was visiting from the States and had learned of the bakery in Patricia Wells’s b—But before I could say the word book, she excitedly summoned Bernard, who led us upstairs to his office, where we were served coffee and bostock, slices of slightly stale and toasted brioche flavored with kirsch