Mon Cahier De Paris by James A. Clapp

Mon Cahier de Paris is perhaps best described as a chronicle of the author's experiences with this great city. It is not a guidebook, not a history, and not fully a memoir, although it is informed by and contains some features of all. It grew primarily from notebooks he kept over several trips to Paris as a professor-escort on university educational travel programs in the 1970s and 80s, and two periods during which I was fortunate to live and work (as a visiting Professor Associé at the University of Paris, teaching courses on American Urbanism and American film) in the city. During these times he shared Paris with some very special women in his life, formed friendships, had fascinating personal encounters, and made self-discoveries, all while, and in consequence of, coming in thrall of Paris “herself.” Everyone’s Paris memory is sui generis, a product of a unique nexus of personal time in “Paris time.” So this is his Paris, or at least what was his Paris at not only mostly during the occasion of the city’s 200-year anniversary of its Revolution, but also experienced through a time of momentous personal change in his life. He writes, "I could no more return to find Paris as it was in the Bicentennaire as I would be able to spy that forty-nine year-old version of myself waiting for the train on the opposite platform at Metro Gobelins. Only in my notes, souvenirs and the reverie they evoke, and in these pages, do they exist, their pleasures, the tristesse, too, their time and place." Drawing upon the urban history, literature, film and painting about Paris from its founding to then present day, as well as several personal experiences that readers will find both similar and contrasting with their own encounters with the city, Mon Cahier de Paris will inspire one to book a flight, grab a pen and notebook, and head for their favorite Parisian cafe.