Into A Paris Quartier: Reine Margot's Chapel and Other Haunts of St.-Germain [Hardcover]

The Paris Left Bank neighborhood of St.-Germain is most often connected to the era from the 1940s through the '60s, when Sartre, de Beauvoir and others gathered in its cafes to discuss existentialism and listen to jazz; and the district has also long been associated with American expatriates from Thomas Jefferson to Ernest Hemingway. Johnson, who's written about Americans in France in Le Divorce and other novels, continues that tradition, living there six months out of the year, in an apartment that looks out onto a 400-year-old chapel built by Queen Margot, first wife of Henry IV. She offers a fractured yet often fascinating walking tour of sorts, explaining, for example, that Place St.-Germain-des-Prés is "cobbled with largish stones, terrible to walk on in high heels"; and that 5, rue Bonaparte has been home to Napoleon's sister, Pauline Borghese, to painter Edouard Manet and to Pierre Bergé, founder of Yves Saint Laurent. She's enthralled with the story of The Three Musketeers, explaining how Dumas's immortal characters were once living people who may have conducted their sword fights on the very spot where she walks daily. This admittedly subjective guide to Paris is at once a quick lesson in history from the 16th through the late 20th centuries as well as an insightful look at the mind of a novelist and her inspiration. Map. (May)
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Johnson hymns the delights of Paris' Saint-Germain-des-Pres, the capital's historic cradle of intellectual life, home to famous Parisians for centuries. Born in America's heartland, Johnson adores the streets, shops, and people who inhabit her adopted Saint-Germain. Her accounts of her daily walks brim with color, delight, affection, and an intuitive sense of multilayered history. She tells vividly of sixteenth-century religious wars that pitted Catholic against Protestant and of the area's relation to Queen Margot. Connecting all the places of her beloved neighborhood come the characters of The Three Musketeers, whose adventures feature this most lively part of Paris. A valuable guidebook and background for the tourist looking for deeper insight. Mark Knoblauch
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Paris has always held a special appeal for Americans -- its cosmopolitan culture, its great boulevards, the majestic sweep of its history. But what really makes Paris irresistible is a deeply personal connection that's not found in any guidebook but rather in a particular cafe, a chance encounter, a side street whose charm inspires an affection at once instant and indelible.

For acclaimed novelist Diane Johnson, that feeling focuses on ST.-Germain-des-Pres, and in this delightful book she takes us on an affectionate tour of her home neighborhood, where the Three Musketeers swaggered, La Rochefoucault honed his cynically delightful maxims, and Gertrude Stein played den mother to a Lost Generation of American expatriates. Evoking both a rich past that has everywhere left its mark and the vibrant urbanity, Johnson brings a keenly curious eye and an eloquent pen to this fascinating, welcoming portrait of the Paris she knows and loves so well.