Clearly Sante is a serious writer, and his research here is extensive and seems impeccable. However, in the end, the book is as much playful as scholarly, and a general reader can find plenty to enjoy. He seems to be both a more intrepid explorer and a far more entertaining writer than most of his psychogeographic forbears. And if the book lacks a grand overarching design, well that’s in the nature of his serendipitous, drifting methodology.
Here, we see the sneaky genius of The Other Paris, which, like Low Life, conceals the complexity of its structure, masquerading as a popular history or a set of popular histories, until it reveals that it has been about the circling all along.
