As we discussed last week, the two main waves of American ex-pat writers in Paris visited in the twenties and in the fifties. One important note is that some of the most famous Paris-inspired writing from the Lost Generation was actually published much later. Hemingway's A Moveable Feast, a memoir of his time in Paris in the twenties, was, according to Adam Gopnik, "the ultimate fifties echo of the Paris twenties" (xxiii). An interesting publishing note: A Moveable Feast was "published posthumously in 1964" (Gopnik xxiii). When Hemingway died (he committed suicide), he didn't consider the book finished. Motoko Rich explains that "[Hemingway's first wife, Mary] created a final chapter that dealt with the dissolution of Hemingway’s first marriage and the beginning of his relationship with Pauline, building some of it from parts of the book he had indicated he did not want included" (Rich). This newest edition is an attempt to restore the book more in line with Hemingway's wishes. Whichever version we read, this is a remininiscence about earlier days, an attempt to capture the Parisian moment of the twenties from tha vantage point of the fifties and sixties.
In the 1930s, American Jazz, and a wave of African American writers traveled to Paris. Gopnik notes that the French fascination with American jazz has endured (xxv). As for the writers, they too succumbed to the illusion that Paris offered more freedom than at home. James Baldwin, however, introduced a note of reality, and, according to Gopnik, "wrote, ruefully, about the disillusioning reality of being a black man in Paris, the good city of equality that turns out to be just as treacherous as New York" (xxvi).
Artists in Montmartre, Life Magazine, 1960
After World War II, American writers and artists once again flocked to Paris, "drawn to a city they had never seen but already knew through the writings of the generations that preceded them," as Christopher Sawyer-Laucanno notes in The Continual Pilgrimage: American Writers in Paris, 1944-1960 (3). This wave of writers was inspired by both the promise of Paris and their experience of the city through the earlier wave of writers covered in last week's blog entry (Sawyer-Laucanno 4). One of the biggest attractions was a sense of "artistic enfranchisement"—that is, writers and other artists felt accepted and even celebrated for being artists while in Paris (Sawyer-Laucanno 4). Sadly, this was not necessarily the case back in the United States.
This wave of writers, once again a diverse crowd containing the academic and "bohemian," the realist and experimental, attracted both positive and negative attention at home and abroad. Sawyer-Laucanno notes that though French graffiti declared "US Go Home," many French felt much more connected to this group of American ex-pats than there predecessors, because this wave connected more with French people and culture (6). Publications like the venerable Life magazine attempted to capture the ex-pat experience, but often wound up romanticizing or bohemianizing the artists (5).
Paris remains an important piece of American literature in the mid-late twentieth century because it "nurtured this generation immeasurably by providing an environment that encouraged the art and artists. translated into personal experience, this meant belief in the value and viability of writing, and beyond that belief in oneself as a creative person" (9). A sense of recognition and encouragement, a culture that celebrated artistic achievement and offered greater personal freedoms (especially for African American and homosexual writers)...this is Paris' gift to these artists. Their literature, in turn, is their gift to us: an insight into American literature and culture, created outside of the limiting bounds of post-war America.
William S. Burroughs, in a Paris Cafe, 1959
Writers and Artists reunite in Paris, 1959
Since the storied days of the fifties, much writing about Paris has focused on one of my favorite topics: food. Julia Child's monumental work, Mastering the Art of French Cooking, co-written with Simone Beck and Louisette Bertholle, transformed home cookery in America, and made the pleasures of the French table irrevocably part of the American consciousness. With the recent release of the film Julie and Julia, based on Julie Powell's blog project, the allure of Paris and French food has strengthened.
Works Cited
Gopnik, Adam.
Rich, Motoko.
Sawyer-Laucanno, Christopher.
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