Paris Interzone: Richard Wright, Lolita, Boris Vian and others on the Left Bank, 1946-1960 - Hardcover

Campbell, James

3.81

27 ratings by Goodreads

9780436201066: Paris Interzone: Richard Wright, Lolita, Boris Vian and others on the Left Bank, 1946-1960

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0436201062 ISBN 13: 9780436201066

Publisher: Secker & Warburg (London), 1994

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In the spring of 1946, the black American novelist, Richard Wright presented himself at the Rue de Fleurus apartment of Gertrude Stein, a meeting which symbolized the passing of one generation of "writers in Paris" and the birth of another. This account starts with that meeting and ends with the death - probably suspicious - of Wright, 14 years later. The intervening years yield a multitude of strange tales: links between writers and the CIA; the emergence of the shadowy Boris Vian; the resurrection of Samuel Beckett by a small Left Bank magazine edited by Scottish writer Alexander Trocchi; Maurice Girodias and the Olympia Press; the real "Story of O"; and what happened when the Beat Generation - the "White Negroes" - came to Paris, to find themselves sharing cafe tables with James Baldwin and Chester Himes. Above all, the author celebrates the prevailing spirit of freedom in those years, and the art it fostered.

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Review:

'James Campbell combines the understanding of a good social historian with an ability to analyse literary achievement in a narrative that has the same sort of interest as a novel' Guardian 'When on August 25, 1944 the Allied forces marched into Paris and freed the city from Nazi occupation, they prepared the way for another invasion - a new wave of writers...Taking Richard Wright's arrival in Paris as his starting point, James Campbell has produced a riveting account of this post-war period in Paris Interzone' Time Out

From the Publisher:

'A remarkable book' Guardian
‘James Campbell combines the understanding of a good social historian with an ability to analyse literary achievement in a narrative that has the same sort of interest as a novel’ Guardian

‘When on August 25, 1944 the Allied forces marched into Paris and freed the city from Nazi occupation, they prepared the way for another invasion – a new wave of writers...Taking Richard Wright’s arrival in Paris as his starting point, James Campbell has produced a riveting account of this post-war period in Paris Interzone’ Time Out

‘James Campbell’s striking book on the Paris literary scene from the end of the Second World War to the early 1960s develops an approach rarely adopted by the many authors who have produced studies of the period...permitting him – better than anyone else, to my knowledge – to bring together writers who are almost always considered independently’ Times Literary Supplement

‘Informative and exhilarating’ New York Times

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