You Went the Wrong Way, Old King Louie

Categories: Movies & Books , Rediscoveries , Staff Picks , Nonfiction

Happy Bastille Day, I guess.

Louis the Sixteenth was the King of France in 1789.
He was worse than Louis the Fifteenth.
He was worse than Louis the Fourteenth.
He was worse than Louis the Thirteenth.
He was the worst since Louis the First.

-- Alan Sherman

If You've seen La Nuit de Varennes, one of my three favorite movies (the other two being Nashville and Best in Show), or if you have an interest in the French Revolution, you're going to want to read Les Nuits de Paris; or, the Nocturnal Spectator, in which Nicolas Edme Restif de la Bretonne recounts--and probably sometimes invents--the events of his hundreds of nights spent meandering the streets of Paris betwen 1789 and 1793, and his general disapproval of the greed and crime in Paris during the days leading up to and following the Revolution.

Known by many readers as a prolific pornographer--his best-known (though apparently never translated into English) work is probably Le Paysan Perverti (The Corrupted Peasant)--de la Bretonne wrote on many subjects, including morality and communism.  If you read French, you might be interested in his sincere and serious homage to country life and to his father, La Vie de mon Pere.