Why "Paris Werewolves"?

When I started this blog, the guided setup asked for a page name and url. Since I had no real vision for this site other than it would be about our time in France, I fell back on my usual method of drawing from something I was currently reading, watching, or listening to (that's how in the past I ended up with wifi networks named "Beast mode" and "Aquaboogie"). I had just finished reading Guy Endore's "The Werewolf of Paris" (published in 1933) so the name naturally suggested itself.

The book itself is a pretty good read--although with some very unsettling descriptions of the werewolf's cannibalistic habits. The setting of the main action within the yearlong siege of the 1870 Paris Commune is riveting and reads very true to the desperate conditions of starvation, savagery and mass murder described in historical treatments such as Alistaire Horne's "The Terrible Year." But to Endore's point, what's one murderous, body-snatching werewolf compared to the excesses of revolutions and counter-revolutions?

Serves me right for having lowbrow tastes.

Possible werewolf iconography in the 16th Arrondissement (but probably not)


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