Cafe French: A Flaneur’s Guide to the Language, Lore & Food of the Paris Cafe

The iconic, strolling Paris flaneur of the 19th century often expressed his ironic observations of the spectacular city he loved in paint, prose and poetry. Celebrated artist-flaneurs like Honore de Balzac, Charles Baudelaire and their 20th-century successors – from Andre Breton’s surrealists to Jean-Paul Sartre’s existentialists – have served up brilliant, if sometimes dark, images of the City of Light.

Now, following in their august footsteps, Berkeley writer and artist L. John Harris channels the historic flaneur with his witty cafe French lessons and whimsical illustrations taken from his Paris cafe journals.

While Cafe French proposes to guide fellow Francophiles on a journey into the cultural and linguistic codes and canons of Paris cafe culture, the author–with a dash of Dada–chronicles his own discoveries: the cafes he inhabits, the language he struggles to learn, the food he eats and the dreams he pursues in the city he loves.

In the end, Harris of Paris returns home to Berkeley where he transforms his journal entries and sketches into a curious curriculum. Cafe French, a delightful book that will instruct and amuse Paris newcomers and veterans alike – all who yearn for a taste of the flaneur’s creative cafe lifestyle.