Paris Vagabond

The Paris described in this 1950s lowlife memoir/novel is so different from the modern version of the city as to be nearly unrecognizable. Jean-Paul Clebert is a fine writer though:

It is winter now, and with its coming, since I cannot do as the migrating birds do, and rely on thermal columns to carry me to a more temperate zone, I hibernate like an animal going to ground and falling into torpor, I winter like a boat laying over in a port sheltered from the ice, I shrink, I curl up in some corner of the city, I build walls, ramparts, around me, I wrap myself head to tow in woolens, I isolate the delicate clockwork of my brain, I huddle up, dig my hole, go into my shell, put myself on low, and move at a snail’s pace.

Recommended.