“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 Morrison: Point of View Theoretical Framework 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

Rendezvous Eighteenth Summary and Criticism

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Rendezvous Eighteenth is a third person narrative that maps Ricky Jenks's detective case in Paris's Eighteenth Arrondissement. Ricky Jenks is an African-American expatriate who arrives in Paris shortly after his fiancée leaves him at the altar to begin a love affair with Ricky's cousin Cassius "Cash" Washington. To escape his heart-break and humiliation, Ricky begins an unattached life in Paris. He is a pianist at a crêperie and has an on-again-off-again relationship with Fatima Boukhari. Ricky's life radically shifts when he is hired by Cash to find Cash's wife Serena, who is thought to have friends in the African-American expatriate community. Ricky searches for Serena in places popular among African-American expatriates and in less touristy parts of the eighteenth arrondissement such as la Goutte d'Or and Barbes. He discovers that finding Serena in black Paris is not as straight-forward as Cash suggests.

Reviewers of Rendezvous Eighteenth highlight the books depictions of Paris. A review of the novel from Publisher's Weekly claims that "Mystery fans may feel shortchanged, but mainstream readers fond of Paris should feel fully satisfied" (par. 1). Also, a review in the Miami Herald attributes the best quality of the novel to Lamar's descriptions of the text, stating, "Best of all is the setting most literary tourists don't know: the intersection of arty Montmartre, sex-trade Pigalle and multicultural Barbs" (par. 1). Likewise, I see the third person narrator's chronicling of Ricky Jenks's movement in Paris worthy of more attention. The third person narrator's depictions of Paris illuminate a lesser known Paris Noir.

In fact, it is an aspect of Paris Noir that is distinct from what Trica Danielle Keaton discusses as a trend in narratives of inclusion written by African American expatriates in France. She argues that "the practice of 'Black American Paris' falls within the realm as an object of study, precisely because of the narratives that it has generated and regenerated. And, as much as these narratives rely on race terror in the United States to explain the causes of migration--legitimately so I might add--they must equally depict a tolerant, liberal, and racially topic France again, to rationalize being in a country where other African and Asian descended peoples have clearly not been well received, as a plethora of postcolonial literature aptly demonstrates" ("'Black (American) Paris' and the French Outer-Cities" 99). While Keaton's perspective may be true for some of African-American expatriate literature, this perspective does not hold up in terms of Jake Lamar's work. Lamar does not depict a tolerant, liberal and racially topic France, and setting his work in the Eighteenth arrondissement disrupts the typical narrative of inclusion explicitly. Moreover, though narratives of inclusion have been "generated and regenerated," Lamar through his use of the familiar and distinct (which I discuss later) does not "regenerate" certain tropes from narratives of inclusion.

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