A Parisian friend (hi, Whitney!) points me to Spectacular Realities by
Vanessa Schwarz for a fun-with-the-19th-century text.  Our own 21st, at least in the first/developed/crybaby world, seems hellbent on avoiding all reminders of life’s hardest realities  – daily pain and eventual death – thus producing a subset of people who actually believe they’re suffering when they miss a Netflix delivery, or have to take a boring meeting at work.

How refreshing would it be instead to have lunch with the strolling shop girls of Schwarz’ Paris!  As Whitney notes, “[V]iewing slowly decaying corpses was just a part of daily life in that time, like going to the theater only free. It was a lunchtime break for shop girls.”

I’ve got to get a copy of this book….