He therefore did it again after moving to rue Marc-Séguin in the eighteenth arrondissement, “poorest in terms of income” of the capital. From La Chapelle, where he lives, to the Grandes-Carrières district (Place de Clichy and company) via La Goutte-d’Or, Clignancourt and Montmartre.
We almost never get bored
For more than 600 pages, Thomas Clerc, an obsessive darling, takes us on a long stroll through the “425 streets, squares, squares, avenues, cities, gardens, villas, boulevards and passages”, as presented on the back cover. . This could seem like an ordeal, of course, except that in fact we almost never get bored.
Firstly because his work in the style of Georges Perec or Jacques Roubaud (Ode to line 29 of Parisian buses) is full of references, information and “fun facts”. The person who presents himself as a “patient with detaillitosis” teaches us a lot about the architecture, the history of the city, its sociology, etc.
Thomas Clerc is full of wit and humor. Jumbled together, “corporate language” “means exactly the opposite of what it claims”the Subway brand “is to cooking what Luc Besson is to cinema.”
During his crazy walks, this dandy visits apartments with agencies without intending to rent them, he enters condemned or shady places (an Asian massage parlor, areas selling cigarettes or crackers, esoteric stores ). Above all, he listens and speaks with the people he meets (we think of Riad Sattouf for The Secret Life of Young People or to the podcast Cerno, the investigation by Julien Cernobori) to sometimes paint a vitriolic portrait. Or how to understand why Paris can drive you crazy, between the prostitutes, the drug addicts, the income gaps between people, the gentrification, the crass poverty.
With, sometimes, an underlying class contempt like his rather indecent “tramp performance” where he conditions the donation of a one euro coin to the signature of a poor wretch in his notebook.
⇒ Paris, museum of the 21st century: the eighteenth arrondissement | Wanderings | Thomas Clerc | Les Éditions de Minuit, 624 pp., €25
