A Paris Notebook
by C.W. Gusewelle
Overview
From Amazon.com
This collection of essays now in its second printing by C. W. Gusewelle is about a great Kansas City writer plying his trade in one of Europe's most glorious cities. Some 75, carefully crafted memories later, we learn about a beautiful city, her fascinating inhabitants and the impact of Paris, on a mother, father and two teen-age daughters. These are the stories never to be forgotten and the lives forged from the first-hand experiences shared together.
My thoughts
Oui, oui, I'm on this French kick and I'm enjoying it, so of course when I finished the castle book I wanted to continue reading about France! Digging through my rather large stack of unread books, I found a recent purchase written by a hometown man -- a writer from Kansas City. That was enough to draw me in.
I thought I was going to fall in love with this book when I read the opening chapter. Right off the bat the family, a father and his two teenage daughters, become stranded in Paris when their hotel reservations fall through. The city is packed, the hotels are booked solid, there's no place to go. I couldn't wait to hear what happened next! (No, I'm not going to tell you!)
The book is unusual in that the chapters are extremely short, often 2-3 pages in length, and there isn't a flowing storyline. Rather each chapter is a short story in itself. One chapter might be on a train ride, another might involve wild mushrooms, another might be an incident on the streets they witnesses. Don't expect the chapter on cats to flow gracefully into the subsequent chapter on a totally unrelated subject. They are, as you will see, totally unrelated!
The book is appealing in that you can pick it up and set it down for short spurts of reading without losing anything. Most of the stories are interesting, and I often wish I could hear a little more of each one. For some reason the writing seems more like stories you'd find in a magazine rather than in a book.
Favorite Passage
The problem faced by the contemporary Czars of Russia is esentially the same. Beetroot soup and boiled potatoes may nourish, but they do not inspire. Today's Russian has traded his independence of mind and voice for a mess of pottage. Now he would like to trade his mess of pottage for an occasional lamb shank or plate of beefsteak. But that isn't in the 5-year plan, and it can't be arranged. As a result, he works neither happily nor very hard. And the Soviet economy slips deeper into the doldrums, meaning leaner rations and even less work.
The narrow street I wandered along, the Rue Montorgueil, is not an important thoroughfare. But the chance to walk it, just once in a lifetime, would be the nearest thing to Heaven on Earth for half the population of the planet. It is a street of food merchants, and all the fabulous richness of agricultural France can be found there.
I thought of the Rue Montorgueil a few moments ago, as I was eating my pastries and reading about Soviet disappointments. This year's harvest again was small, the paper said. Food stocks on the shelves are lean. But societies are shaped by the choices they make.
There can be little doubt that the French, if they threw their whole resources into it for a generation, to the exclusion of all else, could manufacture almost as many missiles as the Russians have. But they have chosen not to do that. They are content, instead to be a culinary superpower. And the president of France sleeps easier in his bed at night than any Soviet first secretary ever will.
