Café French: A Flâneur's Guide to the Language, Lore & Food of the Paris Café

The iconic, strolling Paris flâneur of the 19th century often expressed his ironic observations of the spectacular city he loved in paint, prose and poetry. Celebrated artist-flâneurs like Honoré de Balzac, Charles Baudelaire and their 20th-century successors -- from André 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 flâneur with his witty café French lessons and whimsical illustrations taken from his Paris café journals.

While Café French proposes to guide fellow Francophiles on a journey into the cultural and linguistic codes and canons of Paris café culture, the author--with a dash of Dada--chronicles his own discoveries: the cafés 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. Café French, a delightful book that will instruct and amuse Paris newcomers and veterans alike -- all who yearn for a taste of the flâneur's creative café lifestyle.