Mary McAuliffe
When Paris Sizzled: The 1920s Paris
Rowman & Littlefield, Lanham, MD, 2016
Introduction: (pp. 1-2)
The Twenties, or the Roaring Twenties, as they are known in America,
had a distinctive name
in Paris— les Années folles, or, roughly
translated, the Crazy Years. This era began after the war's
end, in late 1918, and continued through the decade, until brought to a halt by the Wall Street crash of 1929
and subsequent worldwide depression.
These year, stretching scarcely over a decade, saw great change on almost every front, from art
and architecture to music, literature, fashion, entertainment, transportation, and, perhaps most
notably, behavior. Most of what appeared at the time to be revoluntionary had roots that went
back to the war or even the prewar years, but these trends fully flowered— and drew the most
notice— during the postwar decade. (p. 1)
Photography & cinema were the new vehicles for artistic expression during these vibrant years,
but the era's innovative spirit also fostered the more traditional art forms as well as high-decibel
factories run by entrepreneurs such as André Citroën, Louis Renault, and the Michelin brothers.
The hard metallic clang of the assembly line and the roar of automobile traffic were reflected in
the clean-edged and streamlined forms of Art-Deco, while architecture such as Le Corbusier
found inspiration in the new gods of machinery, industrialization, and technology. (pp. 1-2)
The epicenter of all this creativity, as well as of the era's good times, was that unsight;y
quarter known as Montparnasse. There, impoverished artists and writers found colleagues
and cafés, while tourists discovered, at least for a night or two, the wild escapades of their
dreams. A swelling population of expats, dubbed the "Lost Generation", either found
themselves or became permanently mired in a haze of fantasy and booze. Escapism and
creativity mingled for a decade n this fizzy atmosphere, until the tourists vastly outnumbered
the locals and the party came to an end.
Throughout the decade, the sheer hedonism of those with money and leisure contrasted
starkly with the many who, in the war's aftermath, struggled to rebuild their lives. And, in
an ominous counterpoint to the new in all its forms, including hairstyles, hemlines, and
women in the workplace, gangs and armies of the extreme right emerged, seething with
righteous indignation.
Rather than a decade of unmitigated bliss, les Années folles thus encmpassed a striking
degree of tension, a combustible mixture that produced not only a remarkable surge of
creativity but also a ruthless attempt to annihilate whatevr threatened tradition and order—
a battle that would only escalate in the decade that followed. (p. 2)
Chapter 7: The Lost Generation (1922) (pp. 108-129):
Hemingway's recollections of his Paris years may be more fiction than reliable
memoirs, but they capture the essence of the city as he saw it, even as they created an image
of himself that he wanted, and wanted others, to see. (p. 109)
Hemingway & Hadley Richardson married in the autumn of 1921. Their new literary
acquaintance, Sherwood Anderson, influenced them to move to Paris. Hemingway spoke no
French, but Hadley had a schoolgirl's acquaintance with the language, and— bolstered by a
position offered Hemingway as roving reporter for the Toronto Star— they decided to give
the City of Light a try. After all, jobs in America remained scarce, and the cost of living in
Paris was low. Of course, the newlyweds were drawn by the idea that Paris was the place
for lovers, but it was the writers and artists that Anderson mentioned, such as James Joyce,
Gertrude Stein, and Picasso, that roused Hemingway's interest. Anderson promised to write
them all, and in addition promised that they would help. (p. 110)
And so, in early 1922, Ernest and Hadley Hemingway found themselves in a small, squalid
apartment in a dark and bitterly cold corner of Paris's Latin Quarter. "Home in the rue Cardinal
Lemoine", Hemingway later wrote, "was a two-room flat that had no hot water and no inside
toilet facilities except an antiseptic container." He called it "a cheerful, gay flat", but there was
no gas or electricity, & friends were appalled when they saw it, especially since Hemingways
did not need to live that way: Hadley had money, but Ernest (with macho pride) did not want
to use it. So while she tended to domestic chores, Ernest made the rounds, from Montparnasse's
Café du Dôme to Sylvia Beach's Shakespeare and Company in the Latin Quarter. He did not
like Montparnasse, which he later called "A dismal place", but he enjoyed Sylvia Beach and
especially enjoyed the opportunity to mend serious gaps in his education by borrowing from Beach's lending library—
works from Turgenev & D.H. Lawrence, Dostoyevsky & Tolstoy, as
well as current literary magazines. Hadley, alone much of the time & (to Ernest's embarrassment)
better educated than he was, also read avidly from books she borrowed from Shakespeare and Company.
But for the moment, the cold and the damp won out, as did the threat of Spanish
influenza. Soon after they arrived, Ernest and Hadley abandoned Paris for the clean and
healthful snow of Switzerland. (pp. 110-111)
On February 2, as the Hemingways were preparing to return to Paris from Switzerland,
Sylvia Beach was waiting on platform of the Gare de Lyon for the express train from Dijon,
which was bringing her the first two published copies of James Joyce's Ulysses. Joyce had
worked at fever pitch throughout 1921, trying— despite terrible pain in his eyes— to finish
the manuscript in time for its publication on February 2, 1922, the date of his 40th birthday.
He even managed to write the last two episodes simultaneousy. (p. 111)
Despite Ernest Hemingway's initial hesitation (he at first found Ezra Pound artsy and
pompous), Pound soon became Hemingway's close friend and literary guide."Ezra was
the most generous writer I have ever known", Hemingway later wrote of his mentor.
"He helped poets, painters, sculptors and prose writers that he believed in and he would
help anyone whether he believed in them or not if they were in trouble." Pound advised Hemingway
on what to read (in what amounted to a three-year course in the classics)
and helped him into print. Most importantly, he gave advice on Hemingway's writing—
emphasizing tightness and precision— and introduced him everywhere as a promising
young writer, a future literary star. Hemingway, in turn, followed Pound's literary advice
and tried to teach Pound to box. (p. 118)
Chapter 9: Americans in Paris (1924) (pp. 154-173)
As for American tourists and expatriates, they were everywhere. By the time Ernest &
Hadley Hemingway arrived back in in Paris that January 1924, more than 30,000 Americans
were living permanently in Paris, as well as twice that many British. Prices had risen in the
few months since the Hemingways had left, and cheap places to live were scarce. They finally
decided on a second-floor apartment over a lumberyard on Rue Notre-Dame-des-Champs—
with no electricity, & at three times the rent they had been paying on Rue du Cardinal-Lemoine.
But it was a larger space & had the definite advantage of being near the center of Montparnasse
and its cafés. (p. 155)
Hemingway frequented the Dingo and a number of other Montparnasse cafés, but
the place where he usually went to write was the Closerie des Lilas, just down the street from
his apartment. He needed to escape the noise: Bumby was a baby, after all, while down in the
courtyard, the lumberyard's huge saw hummed and screeched as it cut. Despite the name, the
Closerie never had lilacs, but its terrace was peaceful. There, Hemingway "sat in a corner with
the afternoon light coming in over [his] shoulder and wrote in the notebook." After a long dry
spell, he was writing again— eight short stories that spring, all of them good. (p. 157)
Mary McAuliffe
Paris on the Brink: The 1930s Paris
Rowman & Littlefield, Lanham, MD, 2018
Introduction: (pp. 1-2)
Emerging from the madcap romp of 1920s (or les Années folles, as these years were
known in Paris), denizens of the 1930s aspired to elegance and glamour. But as the
Depression spread from America and Britain to the Continent, fewer and fewer could
aspire to much beyond getting bread on the table, even though— prompted by cinematic fantasylands— they could and did continue to dream. (p. 1)
Dream and agitate. For this was a decade of strife, between the shrinking number of haves
and the ever-growing masses of have-nots. This decade, beginning with the Wall Street Crash
of 1929 and ending with the war and German Occupation, was a dangerous and turbulent one
in Paris, in which workers began to flex their economic muscle, and those who opposed them
struck back with increasing violence. The Popular Front itself, greeted by the masses as the
answer to their prayers, was viewed by their bosses as well as by well-to-do & conservatives
of all stripes as a moral as well as political and economic disaster. (p. 1)
Without question, life in Paris became increasingly difficult during the 1930s, as the economy
and the job market shrank. No longer were foreign workers welcomed in France, as during the
1920s, when they had replaced millions of French workers lost or wounded during World War I.
Jewish refugees from Hitler's Germany, often left wing in their politics, also encountered
increasing hostility. The addition of large numberof impoverished Spanish refugees, fleeing into
France during Spain's deadly civil war, only added to the instability of the times, in which workers
& the middle class alike were hit by rising taxes & a falling franc. And women workers, welcomed
to the workplace during & immediately after Worl War I, were now being shooed back into their
homes, to bear children for a nation that had suffered a huge loss of population and whose numbers were not rising fast enough to compete with Germany. (p. 2)
Chapter 1: End of an Era (1929) (pp. 5-19):
On the morning of October 19, 1929, as waves of alarm were beginning to sweep through the
New York stock exchange, Sylvia Beach placed a newly published copy of
Ernest Hemingway's
latest novel, A Farewell to Arms, in the window of her Left Bank bookshop, Shakespeare and
Company. First printing of 30,000 copies of Hemingway's novel had sold out within days, & two
more printings of 10,000 each were underway. Its closest competitor that autumn was another
unflinching novel from the Great War, All Quiet on the Western Front (p. 5).
Hemingway had first arrived in Paris in 1921 as a young newlywed, eager to partake of the
renowned joys of life in the City of Light and to become a famous— and rich— writer. His wife,
Hadley, had been just as eager to join the literary life in Montparnasse and the Latin Quarter,
which meant getting acquainted with Sylvia Beach, the American owner of the bookshop on
Rue de l'Odéon. Ever since its establishment in 1919, Beach's bookstore had been an essential
hub for the Left Bank's English-speaking expats, where they could keep up with the latest gossip
as well as the latest publications. Beach also served cheerfully as an informal (and free) post office:
members of the community regularly left her with messages as well as forwarding addresses
for one another, prompting her sympathetic friend, the poet Bryher, to order a post office case for her, complete with cubbyholes. (p. 5)
Shakespeare and Company operated as a lending library as well as a bookstore, but Beach also
lent money to her tribe of frequently broke patrons, leading her to observe that she 'used to call
the shop 'The Left Bank'." The journalist Wambly Bald took due note of Beach's generosity, and
in an October 1929 column for the Paris edition of the Chicago Tribune (informally known as the Paris Tribune),
he wrote that the Left Banker's Trust, located in Sylvia Beach's Rue de l'Odéon bookshop,
"is not incorporated and des not extend its favors to everyone... Men of letters have become so attached to the place
that they usually call there for their mail, cash checks and borrow
money. They usually return the money." (pp. 5-6)
Joyce wrote his father that his new book would be about the night, much as Ulysses had been
about a day, and he similarly told Sylvia Beach that the meaning of Finnegans Wake was obscure
because it was a "nightpiece." He also insisted that the book's structure was mathematical, and
told Beach that his method of writing was "working in layers" rather than the flat method that
others employed. In particlar, she noted, "Joyce was having all the fun you wanted with the
word game," and she was as willing as anyone to enter into his Amazonian jungle of language,
"so that by the time whole book appeared I was at home in it & inured to his way of writing." (p. 7)
money. They usually return the money." (pp. 5-6)
By the late 1920s, another form of dream had taken hold among some of the most avant-garde
writers and artists in Paris. It began with the nihilistic Dada movement, formed in the detritus of
the Great War, and soon grew into the dream-obsessed movement called
Surrealism. Its basic
premise was that art arises from the subconscious, and since (according to its leader,
André Breton)
Surrealism freed the spirit from the chains of reason, this led the Surrealists into the realms of
dream narratives, automatic writing, and explorations of the unconscious. Breton took his disciples
a significant step further by relentlessly attacking reason-based Western literary culture, which he
considered sufficiently dangerous that extreme actions were justified in opposing it... Surrealism's
newest recruits include the star strange young Spaniard,
Salvador Dali. (p. 13)
Chapter 5: End of an Era (1931-1932) (pp. 81-105):
In the meantime, Sylvia beach's troubles with James Joycce had only accelerated. Joyce, still
upset about suggestions from his benefactors that he try to live within his means, had sulked
alone through his February 1931 birthday. To make amends, Beach soon arranged a "grand
meal with champagne" at his favorite restaurant, to which all who attended ordered in advance
and contributed to allay the expense. When Joyce's plate arrived, it appeared that he had ordered
only a dish of lentils— a gesture of "pure cussedness", as one of the guests put it. (p. 103)
It was the little things like this that rankled— such as when Beach held her first poetry reading,
with Edith Sitwell, and Sitwell's friends
Gertrude Stein & Alice B. Toklas were given seats in the
front row. Joyce came in late, sat in the back row, and— could not help but notice— ostentatiously
slept through the whole thing. But it was the bigger picture, the ongoing and escalating demands,
that exhausted Sylvia. Even while Joyce sojourned with Nora in England for several months in
1931 to establish an Emglish domicile, he kept Beach busy with a barrage of requests and
continued to spend wildly. In addition, Joyce was beginning to sound out American publishers
about publishing Ulysses, and— given the inquiries that Beach was receiving— clearly was
misrepresenting her decadelong role, characterizing her merely as his representative rather
than as his publisher, with no mention of her rights as publisher. (p. 103)
Finally Beach's devoted partner, Adrienne Monnier, had enough. If Beach would not give
Joyce a piece of her mind, then Monnier would. Monnier had stood by for years as Joyce had imposed on Sylvia,
contributing to her declining health and straining her financial resources.
In May 1931, Joyce had written Sylvia about royalties. Monnier now wrote back, opening with
a dismissal of André Gide's remark that Joyce's indifference to success or money had something
saintly about it: "What Gide doesn't know", she wrote, "[because] we put a veil over it— is that
you are, on the contrary, very concerned about success and money... Rumor has it that you are
spoiled, that we have ruined you with overwhelming praise and that you no longer know what
you are doing... My personal opinion is that you know perfectly well what you are doing."
And then she added, "Times are hard, and the worst isn't over." Joyce ignored the letter,
but it undoubtedly contributed to his sense of martyrdom. (pp. 103-104)
Beach angrily called Joyce and released all claims to Ulysses. Earli in 1932, on the occasion
of Joyce's 50th birthday, she resigned as his publisher, giving him full control of Ulysses. It was
a birthday gift— much as the first printed copy of Ulysses had been, exactly ten years before.
She did not air her grievances in public, even in her published memoirs, but it was clear that,
even though there was no open breach between them, their friendship was over. (p. 105)
Joyce— who after the American edition of Ulysses came out told Beach that he had already
received $45,000 from Random House— had never felt any financial obligation to Beach. For
her part, she had come to realize that "working with or for James Joyce, the pleasure was mine— an infinite pleasure; the profits were for him." (p. 105)
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