Helen Simpson , Jeremy D. Popkin (review)

Abstract

response. Coleman justifies his approach in a passage (pp. 12-13) of the introduction :the 'melancholynovel', he says,underminesprevioussymbolicforms, and this may be perceived as an act of culturalaggression,with the resultthat readers become hostile to change. The emerging realist novel seeks to 'incorporate an awarenessof thesepossibleconsequences',but, given genreassumptionsaboutwhat forms of behaviour can decorouslybe represented,this awarenessis demonstrated more at the margins of the text than at its representationalcentre. My criticismis that the resulting analyses are curiously ungrounded: one has the sense that mourning and loss lose all experiential thickness, and are made to carry an undefinedsymbolicload. On this centralpoint, I thinkthe book is confused. DUBLINCITYUNIVERSITY DAVIDDENBY Louis-Sebastien Mercier: 'Panorama ofParis':Selectionsfrom 'LeTableau deParis'.Based on the translation by HELENSIMPSON.Ed. and some trans. byJEREMYD. POPKIN. University Park:Pennsylvania State University Press. 1999. 235 pp. $50 (paperbound$I6.95). In 1787 a journalist spoke of numerous guides on the French capital lacking any clear sense of order (Mercure deFrance, 8 September 1787, p. 7 ), and it was not the I050 separatearticlesof the Tableau deParisthat would satisfysuch a need. Indeed, Meister complained that Mercier's work was a careless labyrinthine mixture of trivia and bad taste as well as useful truths,with occasional passages of eloquence, originality, and sensitivity lost amidst curious anecdotes, scenes of horror, and dubious, extravagantly expressed opinions (Maurice Tourneux, Correspondance litteraire, philosophique etcritique par Grimm, Diderot, Raynal,Meister, etc.,16 vols (Paris: Garnier, I877-I882), XII, 529-30, XIII, I18, 35I). Yet, he admitted that the work was full of interestingvariety, with a picture of the low life in the city worthy of a breviaryfor a lieutenant of police. The subjectwas rich and the form of the work was amusing. Besides,Mercierwas not alone in presentingthe many varied aspects ofthetown in sucha seeminglyunconnectedway. In theLettrespersanes, Montesquieu had used a fictional story line that allowed his Persianvisitors to describe people and institutions as their fancy took them. In the NuitsdeParis,Restif's night owl wandersthe town, witnessingall sortsof strangescenes.This isthe artof serendipity. The walkerthrough the town finds things of interest as if by chance, and drawson them for sociological study. It was a technique that was to be taken up again most noticeably by Balzac, but asJeremy Popkinremarksin his extremelyclearand cogent introduction,Mercier's influentialtext was largelyneglected untilrepublishedin a criticaledition by a team of scholarsworking underJean-Claude Bonnet, 2 vols (Paris:Mercure de France, 1994). Seven of the hundred articles given here have been translated by Popkin himself. The others are based on the translationby Helen Simpson, firstpublished in 1933under the title of TheWaiting City,though Popkinhas correctedher text and rearrangedthe order in line with that of the definitiveFrenchedition. Small as the selection is, it shows at least some of the main featuresof Mercier'swork, revealing the contrastbetween rich and poor, and the power of money, vanity, and lust. The resultis a well-producedusefulsample of an immensely extensive seriesof glimpses of pre-Revolutionary life that deserves to be better known in all its splendour. As TheUniversal Register remarkedon 5 November 785: 'Mercier,in his Tableau deParis, response. Coleman justifies his approach in a passage (pp. 12-13) of the introduction :the 'melancholynovel', he says,underminesprevioussymbolicforms, and this may be perceived as an act of culturalaggression,with the resultthat readers become hostile to change. The emerging realist novel seeks to 'incorporate an awarenessof thesepossibleconsequences',but, given genreassumptionsaboutwhat forms of behaviour can decorouslybe represented,this awarenessis demonstrated more at the margins of the text than at its representationalcentre. My criticismis that the resulting analyses are curiously ungrounded: one has the sense that mourning and loss lose all experiential thickness, and are made to carry an undefinedsymbolicload. On this centralpoint, I thinkthe book is confused. DUBLINCITYUNIVERSITY DAVIDDENBY Louis-Sebastien Mercier: 'Panorama ofParis':Selectionsfrom 'LeTableau deParis'.Based on the translation by HELENSIMPSON.Ed. and some trans. byJEREMYD. POPKIN. University Park:Pennsylvania State University Press. 1999. 235 pp. $50 (paperbound$I6.95). In 1787 a journalist spoke of numerous guides on the French capital lacking any clear sense of order (Mercure deFrance, 8 September 1787, p. 7 ), and it was not the I050 separatearticlesof the Tableau deParisthat would satisfysuch a need. Indeed, Meister complained that Mercier's work was a...