Paris: The Secret History

I was disappointed by this one. There are a lot of entertaining historical anecdotes in here, but somehow as a whole it doesn't quite hang together.

Part of the problem is that it wants to be more than just a factual history. Hussey says in the prologue that he is modelling the project on Peter Ackroyd's wonderful London: The Biography, but that sets the bar pretty high. He is decent when he sticks to the facts, but when he starts trying to be metaphysical, he just doesn't have Ackroyd's control, and ends up drawing rather silly and pseudo-profound conclusions like, "The death of [Princess] Diana [...] could only have happened here [...] she is only the latest and most famous example of those who have been fatally seduced here." And so show more on.

Part of the reason Ackroyd was so good at moving beyond facts into "psychogeography" (or whatever you want to call it) is that he took a catholic, thematic approach to his history. Hussey just starts with the Celts and works his way methodically forwards in time. Of course there's nothing wrong with that as a methodology, but it does mean he has to work hard to keep each chapter coherent, and occasionally it slips away from him.

The book's focus is neither one thing or the other. It claims to be a "secret" history which examines the city's underclasses, its back-alleys and criminals and occultists. Yet there is a strong relience on fairly un-secret narratives about kings and presidents and other "great men" or important dates. The result is that neither strand seems wholly satisfying.

Having one eye on the downtrodden was a good idea, and it provides the book with most of its best stories. It's great to hear details about things like the "bread of Madame Montpensier" (which used flour from ground-up human bones, during food shortages), or about the semi-mythical King of Thieves holding court over the city's beggars. But too often, his remit manifests itself only in a vague fascination with what he calls "whores", and a predilection for details which, while often interesting, can sometimes seem juvenile.

Finally, the quality of the writing itself irritated me. He does not know the difference between "flout" and "flaunt". He uses the seismological term "epicentre" as a lazy synonym for "centre". The net result of all this is a feeling that Hussey has a wealth of information about Paris, but not a very good idea about how to organise it or talk about it.

You'll get some interesting stuff out of this book, but it's more of an effort than it should be. show less

I enjoyed this book quite a bit. This is an history of Paris from Roman times to the present focusing on the working classes, the revolutionary, the thieves, the homeless, the prostitutes, the students, the literary underground, and other people on the margins. So often history is told from the perspectives of the royalty, the nobles, and the borgeousie, and it's refreshing whenever one gets to read about the lives of everyday people. The sheer scope of the time period covered means that Hussey often doesn't go into a lot of detail, and there are many off-handed comments that left me intrigued and wanting to learn more about certain incidents or people. Still, as an overview, this was very interesting portrait of a city and it's people show more constantly in flux. It's fairly readable, although sometimes I found Hussey's style to be somewhat lacking, and there are some bizarre grammar constructs that left me shaking my head and rereading paragraphs over and over to figure out what he was trying to say. Recommended for the casual student of history and those interested in Paris. Four stars. show less

Secret Paris?

Mr. Hussey's book was the second history of Paris I read within a few months’ time. Unfortunately, Mr. Hussey’s book compares unfavourably with Colin Jones’ book about the City of Lights. “Paris, the Secret History” brings mostly the same story, but with less detail and without making it significantly more readable. Consequently, few "secrets" were revealed. And the mentioning of thieves and “whores” in almost every chapter is first and foremost tedious. Still, if this is the only book available about the City of Light, read it. Paris vaut bien une messe!

i wish i'd started reading this long before i went to paris. i learned so much about the city... great great book for the traveller. now i want to collect all the great travel books for cities i visit. just added "first stop in the new world" about mexico city. other ideas?

I gave up on this ... it was too trendily rive-gauche leftie (and I'm a leftie myself).

entertaining, dense, recommended

Recommended by William C. 29.june.2011.