Document Type
Review Essay
Abstract
[First paragraph]
This is an inarguably beautiful book. Slightly textured yet sleek, the cover depicts the "Street of Virtues" (that is, Rue des Vertus in the Third Arrondissement), a picturesque pre-Haussmannian Parisian side street, all decaying buildings, dark corners, and muddied cobblestones. Taken by Marville in linear perspective, the photograph features, almost as an afterthought, a down-at-heel horse and carriage at the vanishing point. The casual Francophile browsing in the bookstore will flip through and feel his heartbeat speed up at the sight of so many period photographs and illustrations. Harvey appears to have written a love letter to everybody's favorite city; he has actually written the antidote to the Paris culture industry. Those muddy cobblestone streets, Harvey informs us later in the book, are actually glazed with raw sewage. We have before us a romanticized image of vieux Paris. By the end of Harvey's volume, the same streets run with the blood of the Communards.
Recommended Citation
Elkin, Lauren "On Harvey's Paris, Capital of Modernity." Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture, vol. 4, no. 2, 2004, pp. 1–4.https://digitalcommons.odu.edu/reconstruction/vol4/iss2/8