Book Review: John Baxter's We'll Always Have Paris: Sex and Love in the City of Light

reviewed by anna battista

There are people who go to Paris to spend the stereotypical romantic weekend, and there are those ones who move over there because they hope to pursue their dreams of becoming painters, writers or film-makers in the French Capital.

Australian writer John Baxter moved to Paris from Los Angeles, where he was enjoying a successfully career, to follow the woman he loved, French radio journalist Marie-Dominique. With no proper job and little knowledge of the language, things were a bit difficult at the beginning, but Baxter's love for Marie-Dominique and Paris, one of his obsessions since he was a teenager, helped him overcome any difficulty and settle down.

We'll Always Have Paris is not only a memoir of his new life in Paris, but also a tour through the streets of one of the most incredible places in the whole world. Baxter takes the reader to cafés and restaurants, telling anecdotes about food and local delicacies, quoting from the film Ninotchka where Russian Commissar Greta Garbo orders "raw beets and carrots" on her first visit to a Paris restaurant, and the restaurant owner replies her "Madame, this is a restaurant, not a meadow."

Sex dominates most of the book, with various excursuses on Josephine Baker's erotic dancing, clad in her infamous banana-skirt; erotic literature and old brothels and the fascination writers had with blue films.

There are many little stories about famous writers and artists, Sylvia Beach, Alice B. Toklas and Gertrude Stein, Graham Greene, Man Ray and Salvador Dali, all feature at some point in the book, while some anecdotes - such as the one about Ernest Hemingway reassuring Francis Scott Fitzgerald about the size of his member or Luis Buñuel putting hatpins through the bedroom keyhole as he was absolutely terrorised by the idea that someone was spying upon him - are particularly entertaining. Aside from the stories about famous figures, there are Baxter's personal tales, such as the unexpected visit of an annoying Australian couple, or his comical experience with the popular health treatment called thalassothérapie, that will definitely have you laughing aloud.

As a whole, We'll Always Have Paris is an enjoyable book, often charming and witty, written in an imaginative lively style. It might not appeal to everybody, but it will certainly appeal to the voyeur in you.

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