Flâneuse: Women Walk the City in Paris, New York, Tokyo, Venice, and London
Lauren Elkin
Oct 2017 · Tantor Media Inc · Narrated by Abby Craden
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9 hr 13 min
Unabridged
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About this audiobook
The flâneur is the quintessentially masculine figure of privilege and leisure who strides the capitals of the world with abandon. But it is the flâneuse who captures the imagination of the cultural critic Lauren Elkin. In her wonderfully gender-bending new book, the flâneuse is a "determined, resourceful individual keenly attuned to the creative potential of the city and the liberating possibilities of a good walk." Virginia Woolf called it "street haunting"; Holly Golightly epitomized it in Breakfast at Tiffany's; and Patti Smith did it in her own inimitable style in 1970s New York.
Part cultural meander, part memoir, Flâneuse takes us on a distinctly cosmopolitan jaunt that begins in New York, where Elkin grew up, and transports us to Paris via Venice, Tokyo, and London, all cities in which she's lived. We are shown the paths beaten by such flâneuses as the cross-dressing nineteenth-century novelist George Sand, the Parisian artist Sophie Calle, the wartime correspondent Martha Gellhorn, and the writer Jean Rhys. With tenacity and insight, Elkin creates a mosaic of what urban settings have meant to women, charting through literature, art, history, and film the sometimes exhilarating, sometimes fraught relationship that women have with the metropolis.
Part cultural meander, part memoir, Flâneuse takes us on a distinctly cosmopolitan jaunt that begins in New York, where Elkin grew up, and transports us to Paris via Venice, Tokyo, and London, all cities in which she's lived. We are shown the paths beaten by such flâneuses as the cross-dressing nineteenth-century novelist George Sand, the Parisian artist Sophie Calle, the wartime correspondent Martha Gellhorn, and the writer Jean Rhys. With tenacity and insight, Elkin creates a mosaic of what urban settings have meant to women, charting through literature, art, history, and film the sometimes exhilarating, sometimes fraught relationship that women have with the metropolis.
The flâneur is the quintessentially masculine figure of privilege and leisure who strides the capitals of the world with abandon. But it is the flâneuse who captures the imagination of the cultural critic Lauren Elkin. In her wonderfully gender-bending new book, the flâneuse is a "determined, res...
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About the author
Lauren Elkin's essays have appeared in many publications, including the New York Times Book Review, Frieze, and the Times Literary Supplement, and she is a contributing editor at the White Review. A native New Yorker, she moved to Paris in 2004.
Abby Craden is a professional actress and voice artist who can be heard in numerous TV and radio commercials, video games, and audiobooks. An AudioFile Earphones Award winner as well as an AudioFile Best Voice of 2012, Abby is an award-winning stage actress and a resident artist with the prestigious theater A Noise Within.
Lauren Elkin's essays have appeared in many publications, including the New York Times Book Review, Frieze, and the Times Literary Supplement, and she is a contributing editor at the White Review. A native New Yorker, she moved to Paris in 2004.
Abby Craden is a professional actress and voice art...
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