Let's do the time dance again

First attempt at the "New Mombasa" chapter didn't work.

This is the last of what I am calling the "Proustian loops." I hadn't used flashbacks in this series before, and I'd rather not use them at all (well, really, use them ever...) but it seemed appropriate for this book, with the emphasis on memory and the way that one's impressions of Paris are always changing. The memoir -- the split time for this book -- is set in 1900 but it was written following the First World War, so it is consciously looking back with the understanding that those days were in the fin ds siecle, the tail of what had been the belle epoque.

(Like a lot of historical periods, the name and the understanding of the thing encapsulated in the name happens after it is all over. Even the Egyptian dynasties didn't start counting the things until at least five kings in.)

So what I'm doing here is revisiting a key moment in her Paris trip, but each time looking at it differently and drawing new conclusions about it. The last one, Penny put the lamp shade on by complaining she hadn't even gotten a madeleine out of it. This final one, I want her to be aware and in control, guiding the memory and consciously using it to understand better.

There are chapter epigrams which have a brief quote set out and attributed. Then there are the book passages, fully epistolary, framed with something like "I opened the book and read..." and placed out with white space and italic font.

And there are the inevitable fill-in bits. I find those annoying in 1POV. The first person narrator so much wants to present as that illusion of consciousness; the narration doesn't stop until they sleep. Doing the back-fill when you need to skip over something to compress time, and open on something new in media res can't help but feel awkward.

At least the cafe scenes -- I made the choice to have almost a running gag of the main cast always finding each other at this one cafe in the Place du Tertre -- I have the crutch of dialogue. "So what did you do this morning?"

And then the memories, which until this one were always framed; "I remembered that night..." and the first paragraph or so is in past perfect, until I can slip into "having" the experience (and a return to simple past) instead of recalling it. And then a wake-up after.

So this last one I was trying out a walking memory, where Penny could compare what she is seeing now with what she saw then. But it didn't work for me. The next try, I will let her choose the slip and go into simple past tense, but duck "back out" once or twice to her seeing the world around her in the present.

But I haven't quite worked out how I'm going to work her commentary, as she realizes what these memories are trying to tell her.

I did, however, open up some maps. The template for this is my own walk, but I started in the Marais and I did get somewhere around the Seine but I'm really not sure where I went. I do know the area around the Pompidou center seemed really familiar when I came back there later.

Penny is starting in Montmartre, near Abbesses station, then heading almost due South but cutting over (probably) before she hits the Louvre. And I was looking at the same map for where she is when she started this memory. Google Maps did actually cough up crepe stands when asked but I had to switch to street view to confirm they were actual stands, and not full-up restaurants with chairs and awnings.

I also shot off a sample paragraph for the French proofreader I am trying to hire.