These Boots Are Made For Walking

The flâneur's arcade

In the city, we walk. We don't have cars to drive in, and public transportation isn't always reliable. We walk because it is often faster and easier than other modes of transportation. We walk because we things are close enough. We walk because we like to be outside, even if there aren't pastoral fields or forests surrounding us. Sometimes we're walking in a straight line, A to B without detours or distraction, and sometimes we're strolling, leisurely, maybe with a destination in mind but no timeframe and no set route to get there. This kind of walking evokes the French term flâneur (from the verb flâner-- to stroll), a term developed and used by Charles Baudelaire to describe "a person who walks the city in order to experience it." Flâneurs are not in a rush. They are walking to absorb the essence and aesthetic of a city. They participate in the actions of a city, and may interact with other people in their space, but flâneurs are also removed: they observe the city, remaining somewhat detached at all times. Quinn, in City of Glass, is not a flâneur. He is certainly a walker, and the distance he covers on foot through New York City is impressive. While trailing the elder Stillman, Quinn loops through block after block of Manhattan, in an eerie letter-shaping pattern. Later, after losing Stillman, Quinn embarks on his longest jaunt, from the Upper West Side all the way to the Financial District and back again. He does not have a destination, per se, nor a route, which in some ways resembles the actions of a flâneur. But on this walk, Quinn is not observing the city or the people in it. He is not interested in the aesthetic or the essence of Manhattan as a place; he is instead in the grips of a mental breakdown. He does take the time to pause and write an account of the city's "tramps, down-and-outs, shopping-bag ladies, drifters and drunks," but says nothing of the city itself or anyone who isn't a societally marginalized figure. In the end of his diary entry, Quinn actually quotes Baudelaire: "Il me semble que je serais toujours bien la ou je ne suis pas. In other words: It seems to me that I will always be happy in the place where I am not" (from Baudelaire's poem "Anywhere Out of the World") (168). While Quinn's use of the quote in his own text is important in the context of his mental state, so too is Auster's (the "real" one, the author) invoking of the man who coined the phrase flâneur. Even though Quinn may not embody the character of a flâneur, he is still rooted in the tradition of those who walk.