Paris In Literature
British/American Shari Benstock , Women of the Left Bank: Paris, 1900-1940 (Univ of Texas, US). Follows the lives and creativity of two dozen American, British and French women who moved to Paris and dared to be different. Charles Dickens , A Tale of Two Cities (Penguin). Paris and London during the 1789 Revolution and before. The plot's pure Hollywood, but the streets and at least some of the social backdrop are for real. Robert Ferguson , Henry Miller (o/p). Very readable biography of the old rogue and his rumbustious doings, including his long stint in Paris and affair with Anais Nin. Noel Riley Fitch , Sylvia Beach and the Lost Generation: A history of literary Paris in the Twenties and Thirties (W. W. Norton). Founder of the original Shakespeare & Co. bookstore and publisher of James Joyce's Ulysses , Beach was the lightning rod of literary Paris. The work also follows her relationship with her companion, Adrienne Monnier, the documentation of which helps to place homosexuality in a larger historical context. Brion Gysin , The Last Museum (o/p). The setting is the Hotel Bardo, the Beat hotel: the co-residents are Kerouac, Ginsberg and Burroughs. Published posthumously, this is 1960s Paris in its most manic mode. Ernest Hemingway , A Moveable Feast (Arrow/Touchstone). Hemingway's American-in-Paris account of life in the 1930s with Ezra Pound, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Gertrude Stein, etc. Dull, pedestrian stuff, despite its classic and best-seller status. Jack Kerouac , Satori in Paris (Flamingo/Grove Press) ? and in Brittany, too. Uniquely inconsequential Kerouac experiences. Ian Littlewood , Paris: A Literary Companion (o/p). A thorough account of which literary figures went where, and what they had to say about it. Herbert Lottman , Colette: A Life (Little, Brown & Co., UK). An interesting if somewhat dry account of this enigmatic Parisian writer's life. Barry Miles , The Beat Hotel: Ginsberg, Burroughs, and Corso in Paris, 1958-1963 (Grove Press). Follows the self-indulgent exploits of the residents of The Beat Hotel at 9 rue Git-le-Coeur on the Left Bank. Christopher Miller , Nationalists and Nomads: Essays on Francophone African Literature and Culture (Chicago UP). An exploration of the intermingling issues of nationalism, colonialism and post-colonialism in Paris's ever-evolving literary landscape. Interesting topic, if somewhat overly academic prose. Henry Miller , Tropic of Cancer; Quiet Days in Clichy (both Flamingo/Grove Press). Again 1930s Paris, though from a more focused angle - sex, essentially. Erratic, wild, self-obsessed writing, but with definite flights of genius. Anais Nin , The Journals 1931-1974 (7 vols) (Peter Owen/Harcourt Brace). A detailed literary narrative of French and US artists and fiction-makers from the first half of this century - not least, Nin herself - in Paris and elsewhere. The more famous Erotica was also written in Paris, for a local connoisseur of pornography. George Orwell , Down and Out in Paris and London (Penguin/Harcourt Brace). Documentary account of breadline living in the 1930s - Orwell at his best. Paul Rambali , French Blues (o/p). Movies, sex, down-and-outs, politics, fast food, bikers - a cynical, streetwise look at modern urban France. Jean Rhys , Quartet (Penguin/Norton). A beautiful and evocative story of a lonely young woman's existence on the fringes of 1920s Montparnasse society. French (in translation) Paul Auster (ed), The Random House Book of Twentieth Century French Poetry (Random House). Bilingual anthology containing the major French poets of the twentieth century, most of whom were based in Paris. Includes Apollinaire, Cendrars, Aragon, Eluard and Prevert. Honore de Balzac , Le Pere Goriot (Oxford UP). Cornerstone of his Comedie Humaine in which nineteenth-century Paris is the principal character. Baudelaire's Paris , translatedby Laurence Kitchen (Forest, UK). Gloom and doom by Baudelaire, Gerard de Nerval, Verlaine and Jimenez - in bilingual edition. Calixthe Beyala , The Little Prince of Belleville , translated by Marjolijn De Jager (Heinemann). The tale of seven-year old Loukoum and his efforts to reconcile the hypocrisies and hard truths about his family and his adopted city. The harsh realities facing Paris's African immigrant communities are recounted with honest clarity. Andre Breton , Nadja (Grove Press). A surrealist evocation of Paris. Fun. Louis-Ferdinand Celine , Death on Credit (o/p). A landmark in twentieth-century French literature, along with his earlier Voyage to the End of the Night , (Calder/Cambridge UP). Celine recounts the delirium of the world as seen through the eyes of an adolescent in working-class Paris at the beginning of the twentieth century. Blaise Cendrars , To the End of the World (Peter Owen/Dufour). An outrageous bawdy tale of a randy septuagenarian Parisian actress, having an affair with a deserter from the Foreign Legion. Didier Daeninckx , Murder in Memoriam (Serpent's Tail). A thriller involving two murders: one of a Frenchman during the massacre of the Algerians in Paris in 1961, the other of his son twenty years later. The investigation by an honest detective lays bare dirty tricks, corruption, racism and the cover-up of the massacre. Alexandre Dumas , The Count of Monte Cristo (Penguin). One hell of a good yarn, with Paris and Marseilles locations. Gustave Flaubert , Sentimental Education (Oxford UP). A lively, detailed 1869 reconstruction of the life, manners, characters and politics of Parisians in the 1840s, including the 1848 Revolution. Victor Hugo , Les Miserables (Penguin). A racy, eminently readable novel by the French equivalent of Dickens, about the Parisian poor and low life in the first half of the nineteenth century. Book Four contains an account of the barricade fighting during the 1832 insurrection. Francois Maspero , Le Sourire du Chat (translated as "Cat's Grin"; Penguin/New Amsterdam Books). Semi-autobiographical novel of the young teenager Luc in Paris during World War II, with his adored elder brother in the Resistance, his parents taken to concentration camps as Paris is liberated, and everyone else busily collaborating. An intensely moving and revealing account of the war period. Guy de Maupassant , Bel-Ami (Penguin/Viking). Maupassant's chef-d'oecuvre reveals the double standards of Paris during the Belle Epoque with a keen observer's eye. Daniel Pennac , The Scapegoat and The Fairy Gunmother (both Harvill). Finally, two of the series of four have been translated into English. Pennac has long been Paris's favourite contemporary writer, with his hilarious crime stories set among the chaos and colour of multi-ethnic Belleville. Georges Perec , Life: A User's Manual (Harvill/David R. Godine). An extraordinary literary jigsaw puzzle of life, past and present, human, animal and mineral, extracted from the residents of an imaginary apartment block in the 17e arrondissement of Paris. Edith Piaf , My Life (Penguin, UK). Piaf's dramatic story told pretty much in her own words. Marcel Proust , Remembrance of Things Past (Penguin). Written in and of Paris: absurdly long but bizarrely addictive. Jean-Paul Sartre , Roads to Freedom Trilogy (Vintage). Metaphysics and gloom, despite the title. Georges Simenon , Maigret at the Crossroads (Penguin/Harcourt Brace), or any other of the Maigret novels. Literary crime thrillers; the Montmartre and seedy criminal locations are unbeatable. Michel Tournier , The Golden Droplet (Harper Collins, UK). A magical tale of a Saharan boycoming to Paris, where strange adventures, against the backdrop of immigrant life in the slums, overtake him because he never drops his desert oasis view of the world. Emile Zola , Nana (Penguin/Viking). The rise and fall of a courtesan in the decadent times of the Second Empire. Not bad on sex, but confused on sexual politics. A great story nevertheless, which brings mid-nineteenth-century Paris alive, direct, to present-day senses. Paris is also the setting for Zola's L'Assommoir , L'Argent and Therese Raquin .
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