Stephen Scobie, flâneur extraordinaire, deftly blends travelogue, memoir, literary criticism, and poetry in The Measure of Paris. He re-presents a "peripatetic speculation" on Paris and those others who have walked and written this "infinite city." Scobie's graceful wanderings into Parisian art, history, architecture, city planning, and flânerie prepare readers for his prolonged meditations on fellow Canadian writers such as Sheila Watson, Mavis Gallant, Gail Scott, Lola Lemire Tostevin, John Glassco, and Gerry Shikatani, and other literary visitors such as Gertrude Stein and Djuna Barnes. Scobie leaves us with personal observations, journal entries and lucid poems to mark and measure his own time there. Seldom do pleasures of form and content align so perfectly. Those who enjoy travel, great writing and great writers, and the city of light will love The Measure of Paris.
