{"id":106289,"date":"2017-01-01T10:30:54","date_gmt":"2017-01-01T15:30:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=106289"},"modified":"2016-12-30T13:12:36","modified_gmt":"2016-12-30T18:12:36","slug":"paris-from-camuss-notebooks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2017\/01\/01\/paris-from-camuss-notebooks\/","title":{"rendered":"Paris from Camus\u2019s Notebooks"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>We\u2019re away until January 3, but we\u2019re reposting some of our favorite pieces from 2016. Enjoy your holiday!<\/em><\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_101584\" style=\"width: 610px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/08\/albert_camus2.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-101584\" class=\"wp-image-101584\" src=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/08\/albert_camus2.jpg\" alt=\"Albert Camus.\" width=\"600\" height=\"450\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/08\/albert_camus2.jpg 770w, https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/08\/albert_camus2-300x225.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/08\/albert_camus2-768x576.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (min-width: 62.5em) 67vw, 100vw\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-101584\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Albert Camus.<\/p><\/div>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>The myth is tenacious: an unknown writer on the verge of international fame, not suspecting that the scattered pages on his or her desk will become that miracle, a first published novel and a passport to glory. From March to May 1940, Albert Camus was that man, finishing a draft of the book he was calling <em>The Stranger<\/em>. The city, eerily calm, overtaken with a sense of dread, was weeks from the German invasion. Paris has changed enormously since 1940, but you can still walk in Camus\u2019s footsteps through places that a few literary specialists have put on the map and come close to a moment of artistic creation.<\/p>\n<p>Camus finished a first draft of his novel alone in a hotel room in Montmartre. The former H\u00f4tel du Poirier on the rue Ravignan sits atop one of Paris\u2019s \u201cbuttes\u201d or hills, whose cleaner air might have benefitted the young writer, who struggled with chronic tuberculosis. The site is still about as picturesque a place as Paris has to offer: up a terraced set of steps, on one side of a cobblestone square with its own fountain, the little hotel stood directly across from the Bateau-Lavoir, a beehive of artist studios, spread out like a ship. On this vessel of high modernism, Picasso painted <em>Les\u00a0Demoiselles d\u2019Avignon<\/em> in 1907. The glory days of the Bateau-Lavoir ended after World War I, but in March 1940, when Camus lived in its shadow, the place still exuded its bohemian aura. Crowned by the mammoth Sacr\u00e9-C\u0153ur cathedral, Montmartre was an acquired taste, with its own diehard citizens\u2014pimps and scoundrels, anarchists and poets. Far from the business districts, Montmartre was still, in 1940, practically a separate village, a neighborhood where an artist or writer could get by on almost nothing.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/09\/19\/paris-camuss-notebooks\/\" target=\"_blank\">Read More &gt;&gt;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Revisiting the places where Camus wrote The Stranger.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":893,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[26379],"tags":[3783,291,7682,9111,24621,15942,24619,24622,3294,11718,270,24620,24618,15806,75],"class_list":["post-106289","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-best-of-2016","tag-albert-camus","tag-algeria","tag-diaries","tag-existentialism","tag-francine-faure","tag-french-literature","tag-hotel-du-poirier","tag-lyon","tag-montmartre","tag-notebooks","tag-paris","tag-paris-soir","tag-the-stranger","tag-walking-tour","tag-writing"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v25.4 (Yoast SEO v25.4) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Walking Camus\u2019s Paris<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Revisiting the places where Camus wrote The Stranger.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2017\/01\/01\/paris-from-camuss-notebooks\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Paris from Camus\u2019s Notebooks by Alice Kaplan\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"January 1, 2017 \u2013 Revisiting the places where Camus wrote The Stranger.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2017\/01\/01\/paris-from-camuss-notebooks\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"The Paris Review\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/parisreview\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2017-01-01T15:30:54+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" 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