provide the right alternative to the thunderous roll of studio cinema. For the flaneur is a

solitary walker who traverses the pavement in order to "give free rein to [his] thoughts

and let [his] ideas follow their natural course, unrestricted and unconfirmed" (AP, "M

[The Flaneur]" 453). His path is determined by aesthetic choices. He would rather adhere

to the whimsy of his own notions than the standardized rules of traffic. After all, he

follows[] [his] inspiration as if the mere fact of turning right or turning left already

constitutes] an essentially poetic act" (qtd in AP, "M [The Flaneur]" 437).

 And it is this poetry of his turns and returns that distinguishes the flaneur from the

casual observer. As Charles Baudelaire put it, he "has a higher aim than any mere idle

spectator-a more general aim, something else than the fleeting pleasures of the

occasion" (36). Writing about flanerie in 1841, Auguste de LaCroix argued that the

flaneur's gaze gave him access "to unknown connections, to unperceived insights, to an

entirely new world of ideas, reflections and sentiments" (qtd. in Gluck 70). Therefore, it

would be incorrect to think of him as a cavalier onlooker. His idle gazing amounts to an

aesthetic interrogation. Nor is it accurate to equate the flaneur with the physiologist. That

he wishes only to make "a study of the physiognomic appearance of people in order to

discover their nationality and social station, character and destiny, from a perusal of their

gait, build, and play of features" is, in Benjamin's terms, a "shabby thesis" of flanerie

(AP, "M [The Flaneur]" 430). As Mary Gluck notes, modernity for the flaneur is no

longer just a social text. Its "essence [is] to be discovered not in scientific truth and

classification, but in aesthetic artifice and decoration" (Gluck 78). Ignoring the linear

path of scientific realism, the flaneur follows the contours of metaphor and analogy. His

interrogation of modernity results in a lyrical discourse. Uncertainty-doubt, Benjamin