Along the Seine in the shadow of Notre-Dame you will find one of the most charming Parisian institutions. Bouquinistes – at the core, second hand book stalls, but infinitely more. Colorful characters selling ancient articles and tourist trash (sorry, I meant mementoes). It is the vendors who are most interesting – a hardy and eclectic lot. There may be around 250 of them, each claiming a 27 foot domain – they spread for two or three miles on both sides of the river, though they seem to concentrate on the Left Bank a tad more. Try the Quai Voltaire or the Quai St-Michel but most any quay will quack. Don’t look for bargains, but do enjoy – and an occasional item is exactly what you have been looking for, lo these many years.

Original appearance May 10, 2005, © 2005 / CIP 079, OO 14, RD 07, YP 30/7-7

Let me see how I can put this gently. Dogs do it, we do it, and it all stinks. The difficulty is that the dogs do it on the Parisian sidewalks. There are over 200,000 dogs in Paris and they all do it every day. Some of them are Great Danes. The Grand Boulevards are usually no problem – the mayor works hard at keeping them clean and everyone is supposed to clean up after their own dog. That is a lot of supposition. It is when you venture beyond the major avenues that the problem becomes obvious. The smaller the street the deeper the doo-doo. Walk carefully. Very carefully.

Original appearance May 10, 2005, © 2005 / CIP 052, OO 14, RD 07, YP 30/7-7

The Hôtel de Lamoignon is the library of the city of Paris. Here you will find 80,000 prints encompassing the history of Paris in manuscript, document, and photographic form. If you read French this may be where you want to be for history, but if you don’t the Hôtel de Carnavalet may be more to your taste. There is more than one history of Paris. The estate was built in 1584 for the daughter of Henri II. The architect was Jean-Baptiste Androuet Ducerceau … (the name goes on and on from there). It’s six two story high Corinthian semi-columns are prominent (officially they are called pilasters), and the whole presentation is representative of the baroque architecture of the Marais. At one point (1658-1677) it was the intellectual salon of the President of the first Parliament of Paris, Guillaume de Lamoignon. As such it attracted such celebrities as Racine and Mme de Sévigné. The Lamoignon family had an interesting but sad fate during the Revolution.

Original appearance Feb 5, 2006, © 2006 / LAMOIGNON / HÔTEL DE LAMOIGNON, (MANSION) / 24 RUE PAVÉE, 75004 / 01 44 59 29 40 / KEYS : MANSION, LIBRARY, CITY OF PARIS, CORINTHIAN COLUMNS, 17TH CENT. SALON / CIP 191, OO 16, RD 05, YP 30/7-5

He was a myth and a legend and as such it is very hard to separate fact from fiction. His official biography has him down as an actual war hero taking part in the Normandy invasion with the Free French and, for sure, he was awarded the Medaille Militaire and the Croix de Guerre. Still he spent 1940-1943 unproductively in Hollywood having an affair with Marlene Dietrich and while there gained a reputation as having a very difficult personality. This was perhaps confirmed when he was the male winner of the Lemon Prize in 1953 as the nastiest French actor, this in a vote by French journalists. Artistically his career was something of a roller coaster, first with a very successful 15 years in theatre as a tragic romantic hero, then a decline between 1940-1955, and finally a rebirth. He was a very realistic actor who often truly got into his roles – one notable one being in Le Chat (1971) with Signoret. Many remember him as Simenon’s Inspector Maigret.

Original appearance Nov 5, 2005, © 2005 / Jean GABIN / 1904-1976 / actor, film, 100 movies / good / C / 18 / CIP 318, OO 16, RD 05, YP 30/7-5

The French are enamored with one name stage names – have been ever since Molière almost 400 years ago. André Zacharie Raimbourg was no exception. He chose Bourvil after the small village of Bourville in Normandy where he grew up. As he came to often play the gawkish peasant farmer or the brow-beaten innocent his was a prescient choice. His characters always managed to muddle through. His was a gentle comedy that he played with humanity and humility. It was from a kinder time and might still play well in the heartland. A Jimmy Stewart with a French beret – Monsieur Pierre Goes to Paris. Perhaps his best movie was the one with Louis de Funès called La Grande Vadrouille (The Great Wanderer, 1966). He made close to 50 movies between 1940-1970 and wrote and sang nearly 300 songs.

Original appearance Nov 5, 2005, © 2005 / BOURVIL / 1917-1970 / actor, singer, one word / better / B- / 7 / CIP 307, OO 16, RD 05, YP 30/7-5

James Michener and a number of other American novelists owe a debt of gratitude to Alexandre Dumas who was a very commercially successful author of historical adventure novels. He, along with Balzac, was an early adopter of the serial novel format. By the way, we are talking the father here, though the son of the same name was also an accomplished writer. We know him best as the author of The Three Musketeers (1844-45), The Count of Monte Cristo (1845-46), and The Man in the Iron Mask (1847). He is the nominal author of about 250 books. I say nominal because he had 73 assistants who wrote most of the action, and the outlines were done by Auguste Maquet, a history teacher. After that Dumas added the dialogue and the teaser chapter endings. He made fortunes and spent more. What is interesting is his novels have inspired over 200 movies. Actually I think virtually every successful American novelist owes this serially prolific author a great deal.

Original appearance Nov 5, 2005, © 2005 / Père (Alexandre) DUMAS / 1802-1870 / author, father, novelist / best / A / 68 / CIP 368, OO 16, RD 05, YP 30/7-5

This is one of the names I didn’t originally recognize, but now wish I had, and certainly think I should have. When someone is considered the ultimate actor by the likes of Alec Guinness and Orson Welles he is probably a pretty fair actor. It is a pleasure, however, to claim my ignorance is due to my youth (I haven’t been able to do that for a long time now). Jules Muraire, universally known as Raimu, built his reputation on the stage and in a series of three movies often considered the greatest trilogy ever. Marcel Pagnol’s play Marius (1929, film 1931), Fanny (1932), and Cesar (1936) provided the vehicle to establish his credentials. He played in 49 films between 1912-1946. 20 years as a comic entertainer in music halls and on the stage prepared him and his exceptional voice to bloom in the 1930’s. Sadly I was only 4 years old when he died of a heart attack in 1946, or perhaps I would have known him better. Pagnol said at his funeral: “One cannot make a speech on the grave of a father, a brother or a son. You were all three at the same time.”

Original appearance Nov 5, 2005, © 2005 / RAIMU / 1883-1946 / actor, one word, theater, film / ugly* / F-* / 79 / CIP 379, OO 16, RD 05, YP 30/7-5 /
For more relevant information see* On Recognition and Ranking

Looks like New York City. Feels like New York City. Only the arch is different, and I am not referring to McDonalds because that is the same. This is La Grande Arch, a really big cube plopped down in 1989 by Mitterrand in the middle of a bunch of multinational towers right outside Paris city limits. It is on a line with the Arc de Triomphe and I suppose that is its reason for being. Otherwise its just a business center set on the site of a monument to the War of 1870 from which it gets its name. Many of the towers are extremely modern and some are even geometrically interesting. They go by such names as AXA, EDF, and GAN. By and large its cold and cavernous and, they tell me, just a little dangerous at night. Feels and looks like New York, except for that ugly cube.

Original appearance Aug 4, 2005, © 2005 / LA DEFENSE (BUSINESS DISTRICT), LA GRANDE ARCHE / DEPT 92 / 01 49 07 27 57 / CIP 138, OO 13, RD 04, YP 30/6-4

I was going to go on at length and sing the praises of kiosks here. I was going to describe a quaint structure found on the sidewalks all over Paris and used for advertising the latest movies. They are charming, cylindrical billboards with just a touch of the Kremlin about them. They are updated every week, and thus they are very useful and current. The only difficulty is, I just found out, they are not called kiosks. They are called ‘colonne Morris’. I have been calling them the wrong name for over two years now. Kiosks here are the news stands, often located right next to a colonne Morris.

Original appearance May 07, 2005, © 2005 / CIP 085, OO 13, RD 04, YP 30/6-4

Real life is reflected slightly more accurately in the cinema in France than in our Hollywood product. Yes, they have the action genre, but many films tell real stories that seem to have the substance of everyday life. And their stars seem to rely a little more on acting ability and a bit less on looks. Star power does not pack the voltage and youth is not served. You see the same few actors over and over and over again. I knew of Gerard Depardieu before I came to France, but not Alain Delon or Jean Gabin. Similarly I was aware of Catherine Deneuve but not Sophie Marceau or Isabelle Adjani. Interestingly Couluche and Bourvil recently made the list of ‘Ten Greatest French Ever’ and, while De Gaulle was #1, Napoleon didn’t even make the list (he was 16th).

Original appearance May 07, 2005, © 2005 / CIP 095, OO 13, RD 04, YP 30/6-4