On Not Reading Proust in Paris
Last Days in Paris part 3, from the yellow Galignani notebook, May 2020. Reading: Erling Cage, Olga Tokarczuk, and Deborah Levy (Again)
I was sitting on a green bench behind the Theatre de la Ville, reading Erling Kagge’s Walking: One Step at a Time, which I had just picked up at Galignani on Rue de Rivoli. I had walked to Galignani to buy two books, including Deborah Levy’s Things I Don’t Want to Know.
At Galignani—which had recently re-opened as an essential business while most others remained closed—I had squirted hand sanitizer into my palms in the entryway, walked to the English language section in the back, found Levy’s book, and happened upon two others: Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead, by Olga Tokarczuk, and Walking. I made my purchases, along with a yellow notebook featuring the Galignani insignia. I loved these little paperback notebooks, with their plain covers and smooth pages, and I’d gone through a few of them during our Paris years.
