I’m trying to write this novel, and it’s set in Paris, and I’ve never been to Paris. It’s a work of historical fiction that takes place in 1921. The place and time are crucial to the story.
If I continue to write about these characters, there’s a strong possibility that I’ll plunk them down in New Orleans eventually. 1920s New Orleans is a time and place about which I think I could write without too much difficulty. I adore New Orleans, I’ve been there several times, I have shelves of books about it, and even before I visited, I felt like I knew the place.
But (is this literary or geographic blasphemy?) I’ve never been all that interested in Paris. It’s always seemed like kind of a cliche, I guess, and there are so many places I’d rather go and about which I’d rather learn. But now I find myself trying to write this story, and I have no sense of the place in which it’s set. Place is important to me; Savannah is practically a character in Dark Jests.
(My mother is still enjoying that part of the novel. I hope she doesn’t mind if I reveal that her enthusiasm for the rest, now that she’s almost halfway through, has turned to this: “I just have to wonder…what kind of mind thinks like this? Well, now I understand why you have nightmares, with this kind of stuff in your head.” As I’ve been trying to tell her for years….)
I’ve read books that are set in Paris, but not voraciously or deliberately, not the way I read about New Orleans, with the craving to develop a sense of the place. So I’ve stocked up on research texts, histories of the city, biographies of people who interacted with people like the ones in my novel, and a dose of the Decadents for flavor. And I feel more lost than ever. I can hardly afford a plane ticket to Paris, and even if I could, I’d need to do more research about what to see and where to go to get the sense of the city that I need.
So I’ll ask you, readers: Have you been to Paris? If you have, what are your brief, impressionistic memories, senses, feelings?
Monique Bos 
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