“A Man Among Men” in Algerian Paris: Modeling Motivation and Movement in Jake Lamar’s Rendezvous Eighteenth Main Menu Rendezvous Eighteenth Header Splash Page Jake Lamar and Rendezvous Eighteenth An introduction to Jake Lamar French Impressionism and Rendezvous Eighteenth Thesis Thesis Statement Amine: Algerian Paris Keaton: Black American Paris Routes of Narration: Detective Fiction Routes of Narration: romance “A Man Among Men” in the Eighteenth "A Man Among Men": Valitsa "A Man Among Men": Fatima “Algerian Paris” Revisited "Algerian Paris" Revisited": Barbes "Algerian Paris" Revisited: Mairie of the Eighteenth "Algerian Paris" Revisited: La Goutte d'Or PDF

Guidebook: Toni Morrison and Zora Neale Hurston

1508 Morrison: Point of View Theoretical Framework
In Toni Morrison’s “Site of Memory” she addresses the question of point of view in Beloved and contextualizes the narrator as a guide. I find Morrison's description of the narrator device applicable to Lamar's use of his narrator in Rendezvous Eighteenth. I will quote her description at length; she states: 
As for the point of view, there should be the illusion that it’s the characters’ point of view, when in fact it isn’t; it’s really the narrator who is there but who doesn’t make herself (in my case) known in that role. I like the feeling of a told story where, you hear a voice but you can’t identify it, and you think it’s your own voice. It’s a comfortable voice, and it’s a guiding voice, and it’s alarmed by the same things that the reader is alarmed by, and it doesn’t know what’s going to happen next either. So you have this sort of guide. But that guide can’t have a personality; it can only have a sound and you have to feel comfortable with this voice, and then this voice can easily abandon itself and reveal the interior dialogue of a character. So it’s a combination of using the point of view of various characters but still retaining the power to slide in and out, provided that when I’m “out” the reader doesn’t see little fingers pointing to what’s in the text. (100)
There are two aspects of point of view that I will highlight in this passage. The first is that the guide is a comfortable voice, and a part of this comfort is that the guide is in some ways familiar to the reader. The second aspect is that the guide is also a distinctive perspective in the text such as a character. In this respect, the the point of view shifts—that is “slide[s] in and out”--from the familiar to the distinctive.
            In Rendezvous Eighteenth, Lamar uses a similar method of point of view. The novel is written in third person, and it also incorporates the distinctive voices of characters, especially Ricky Jenks. For instance, the beginning of the novel describes the city and includes the distinctive voice of Ricky:
April in Paris, 1999, had been typically dreary: leaden gray skies, a chill wind blowing spitty drizzle in your face. May tends to be the truly beautiful month in this town, the time when the sun reappears and the caf’es fling open their doors, round-top tables and rattan chairs taking over the sidewalks. 'This song should have been called 'May in Paris' Ricky Jenks often said before launching into his rendition of the famous standard at the creperie where he played the piano. (4)
This passage demonstrates the familiar and the distinctive. The words "April in Paris" is the name of a famous French song and expression, and the narrator uses that context and begins to depict April in Paris for the reader. However, instead of "chestnut blossoms" and "holiday tables" as depicted in the song, the narrator depicts April in Paris as "leaden gray skies" and "chill wind" (4). The narrator exclaims that it is in May that "the sun reappears" and "round-top tables" take "over the sidewalks" (4). Moreover, the narrator Ricky Jenks affirms that misnomer of April in Paris, stating that the song "should have been called 'May in Paris'" (4). These few sentences written at the beginning of the novel suggest that the narrator does incorporate the familiar and distinct through his descriptions and characters. This device is one aspect of the guide function in the novel.

When we consider Jake Lamar's claim that he "American Writers that are his friends don't know the Paris that I know. And that was very much on my mind in Rendezvous Eighteenth," he is suggesting a guided reading of Paris by way of the novel. He portrays this unfamiliar Paris through his third person narrator. I will show in my analysis that follows that the descriptions of the neighborhoods are in likeness to predecessor texts of the Parisian space. To illustrate, Lamar introduces Barbes by way of the more familiar neighborhood of Montmartre. Lamar portrays Montmartre as an artistic, electric neighborhood, but ---. And la Goutte d'Or is portrayed as --- reminiscent of William Gardner Smith's The Stone Face.  However, the narrator goes beyond the predecessor's text revealing how each of these communities have changed visibly--from the street view--due largely to second generation French citizens from the Caribbean and North and Subsaharan Africa. In these neighborhoods, the narrator shows the familiar about this sites but also something that Americans "don't know" (--).

If we use Google Earth as a way to apply Hurston’s articulation of going a piece of the way with them, what is the negotiation between the platform and the novel.
 
 
How do we negotiate what we see in Google Earth and what Jake Lamar depicts in the novel?
 
 
When applying Hurston’s articulation of “going a piece of the way with them” to Google Earth’s Street View and Rendezvous Eighteenth, the 
 

This page has paths:

  1. Thesis Tyechia Thompson

Contents of this path:

  1. A View of Google Earth and Scalar