The Measure of Paris

Stephen Scobie, flaneur 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 flanerie 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.

Stephen Scobie was born in Carnoustie, Scotland in 1943 and has lived in Canada since 1965, teaching at the Universities of Alberta and Victoria. A widely published poet, he won the Governor General's Award tn 1980 for McAlmon's Chinese Opera---a book about Paris. He has also published extensively on the criticism of Canadian literature. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. Stephen Scobie lives in Victoria.