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A review by mirasu
Flâneuse: Women Walk the City in Paris, New York, Tokyo, Venice and London by Lauren Elkin
reflective
medium-paced
1.5
A tonal and conceptual flop. Flaneuse bills itself as an exploration of how women move through cities and inhabit public space. In reality, Flaneuse is the contrived collection of a few chapter length biographies of the bourgeoisie literati Elkin studied in graduate school, followed by several chapters of rants, personal anecdotes, and summaries of art the author likes.
Flaneuse says next to nothing about how women as a whole engage with urban life or the built environment. It is pitifully limited in scope — to Elkin, the great metropolises of the world are evidently NYC, Paris, London, Paris, Venice, Paris again (1/3 of the book is about Paris)... and a single, emaciated nod to Tokyo that ends up being depressingly racist.
For her Tokyo chapter, Elkin doesn't bother to research a SINGLE female Japanese writer, artist, or activist (despite exhaustively discussing at least one female creative for her Western cities). Instead, Elkin spends 30 pages wallowing in how mystifying and repulsive her time in Tokyo was (recounting with disgust the dirty buildings, the offensively exotic food [some of which she doesn't even spell correctly — it should be okonomiyaki with an "i"], the shrill pigeon-toed women...) — betraying her oblivion to the history of Japanese student + feminist movements, as well as her ignorance of the Japanese art scene.
As the orientalist cherry on top, the only other time Elkin discusses a non-Western country for more than one sentence is a paragraph about Gellhorn + Hemingway's trip to China ft. opium dens, mahjong parlors, and the lovely phrase "her hands were covered in 'Chinese rot.'" Joy! How about using that degree to research what WOC have to say about their own cities, Lauren?
tl;dr — Having a PhD does not a good writer make. Flaneuse suffers from terminal Academic Syndrome, and Elkin has clearly only ever had a captive audience that is forced to read her work and thus thinks everything she says is intelligent, interesting, and important. You're better off reading Benjamin + Barthes and watching Cleo 5 to 7 in your own time instead of wading through a sea of WW tears for scant crumbs of insightful synthesis.
Flaneuse says next to nothing about how women as a whole engage with urban life or the built environment. It is pitifully limited in scope — to Elkin, the great metropolises of the world are evidently NYC, Paris, London, Paris, Venice, Paris again (1/3 of the book is about Paris)... and a single, emaciated nod to Tokyo that ends up being depressingly racist.
For her Tokyo chapter, Elkin doesn't bother to research a SINGLE female Japanese writer, artist, or activist (despite exhaustively discussing at least one female creative for her Western cities). Instead, Elkin spends 30 pages wallowing in how mystifying and repulsive her time in Tokyo was (recounting with disgust the dirty buildings, the offensively exotic food [some of which she doesn't even spell correctly — it should be okonomiyaki with an "i"], the shrill pigeon-toed women...) — betraying her oblivion to the history of Japanese student + feminist movements, as well as her ignorance of the Japanese art scene.
As the orientalist cherry on top, the only other time Elkin discusses a non-Western country for more than one sentence is a paragraph about Gellhorn + Hemingway's trip to China ft. opium dens, mahjong parlors, and the lovely phrase "her hands were covered in 'Chinese rot.'" Joy! How about using that degree to research what WOC have to say about their own cities, Lauren?
tl;dr — Having a PhD does not a good writer make. Flaneuse suffers from terminal Academic Syndrome, and Elkin has clearly only ever had a captive audience that is forced to read her work and thus thinks everything she says is intelligent, interesting, and important. You're better off reading Benjamin + Barthes and watching Cleo 5 to 7 in your own time instead of wading through a sea of WW tears for scant crumbs of insightful synthesis.