On April 14th, Samuel Lopez-Barrantes and I will present the next series of Zoom Paris Writers’ Salon discussions, the 13th, this time under the title A Vintage Season.
There are a few eras in the arts when everything goes right: painter meets model, writer encounters muse, performer discovers instrument, lovers’ eyes meet. Paris between 1925 and 1927 was such a time, and in this 13th Salon we discuss three books that capture the city of those years and its expatriate writers with exceptional vividness and clarity.
14th April. THE GREAT GATSBY by F. Scott Fitzgerald (1925). “There are no second acts in American lives,” observed Fitzgerald, then demonstrated its truth in his own career. A meteoric progress sputtered out in the indifferent reviews and mediocre sales of this, acknowledged today as the Great American Novel. When he died in 1940, none of his books was in print and royalties for the year totalled a mere $13.13.
21st April. THE SUN ALSO RISES by Ernest Hemingway (1926). When Donald Ogden Stewart introduced Hemingway to Fitzgerald at the Dingo Bar in Montparnasse, it was he, a top scenarist and writer for Vanity Fair, who was the undisputed star. Hemingway parodies him in The Sun Also Rises as boozy Bill Gorton, mocking the exiles, professionally “lost”, as they run with the bulls at Pamplona or loiter in Paris cafés.
28th April. MEMOIRS OF MONPARNASSE by John Glassco (1969) . 18-year-old Canadian Glassco was an observant fly on the wall of expatriate Paris in 1927/8. He completed this chatty, often hilarious, sometimes scurrilous memoir after returning home in 1932, then forgot it for 35 years. In its pages, Gertrude Stein, Robert McAlmon, Kay Boyle and a varied cast of real-life characters bring literary Paris vividly to life as a city of “restlessness, scorn, frequent ecstacy and occasional despair.”
5th May. General discussion. As usual, the last session opens up to thoughts and suggestions. If earlier salons are any guide, the conversation will range far and wide and provide a lively discussion to bookend this rendition of the Paris Writers’ Salon.
Membership is $300/300 Euros for the four sessions. Payment can be made via PayPal. For further details, check:
https://www.johnbaxterparis.com/paris-writers-salon