13 ways of looking at a blackbird

One of my favorite Christmas presents this year was a book S gave me called Trente-six vues de la Tour Eiffel. The reference is, of course, Hokusai’s 36 views of Mount Fuji, but it’s also an homage to a late-nineteenth century series of lithographs also called 36 views of the Eiffel Tower, commissioned when the tower was first built. Patience with the double references is well worth it (if you’re not lost already, imagine holding a mirror up to a mirror and trying to check your hair in the reflection of the reflection) – it’s an almost painfully wonderful book. It describes visually what I can never get at, exactly, in words about the Eiffel Tower – a structure that has become emblematic of Paris everywhere else in the world is also actually visible from almost everywhere in Paris. So it becomes a way of locating yourself within the city, in the same way that Paris, for many, is a way of locating themselves within the world (“We’ll always have Paris.”). And then a structure that was built with no other purpose than to be tall and beautiful and impressive becomes laden – but not heavy, not ever heavy -- with all kinds of meaning. A reference point.

The book’s author, André Juillard, is most famous as an artist of the bandes dessinés (BD in France, graphic novel or comic art in the US, variously), and the pictures profit from his gifts of minor shading and economies of expression. My favorite is view 17, “dans un grenier.” In the eaves of an old attic, a jumble of forgotten stuff piled around a desk. One dimly lit window. Among the stuff: broken chairs, andirons, a cracked washbasin, photo albums, tourist paraphernalia – the flotsam of life. On the far corner of the desk, a lamp in the shape of the Eiffel Tower, with a cockeyed shade. The author’s comment reads: “Between a model of the bateau-mouche and some old Lombard albums, the heart can, with some strain, balance. But the Eiffel tower-lamp, alas….” There’s a dissertation somewhere on the relationship between desire, loss, and kitsch.

The absolute best of the Eiffel Tower tourist trash, in my opinion, is a small glass model about four inches high, that comes equipped with a battery powered base that shines multicolored lights through the model in a repeated pattern, like tiny, spangly searchlights. You can buy these models from any of the touts around the Chaillot Palace for 2 euros, if you are very firm. Each comes with its own red velveteen case. I have given one to my mother and one to Mme. Marron in the south, and if S cannot stoop so low I will buy one for myself before it’s all over. Doubtless to end up in a corner of our attic one day, hélas.

The image is of a motion lamp of the Eiffel Tower. I can only dream.