Customer Reviews

Being Geniuses Together, 1920-1930

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This is a strangely, piercingly affecting book ostensibly by and about two largely forgotten writers among the "Lost Generation" of writers and artists in Paris in the 1920's. It is an emotionally engrossing tale, especially on Boyle's part, of what physical and emotional/spiritual sacrifices the life of the committed artist demands.-----Yes, there is plenty of name-dropping and stories concerning Pound, Joyce and Hemingway-But that hardly seems the point and neither does their art (except for Boyle, at times). This book is about what sort of People they were, how they lived their lives, both internally and externally.

The stereotype of the artist as a self-destructive martyr to his or her art is certainly on display here, but the characters aren't represented as hollow stereotypes (which themselves exist, after all, for very good reasons). They leap from the page as living, breathing people, and one gains an insight into the modus vivendi of each of them. And it must be said that, of the writers from that milieu that are still remembered today (mentioned above), only Joyce comes through as a lovable figure, and a good man, despite his drinking bouts.

The major achievement of this book is that it brings home the humanity of both Boyle and McAlmon as they lived their externally festive (especially McAlmon's), inwardly tormented (especially Boyle's) lives. There are several other aspects on which one could dwell, Mcalmon's generosity and relative selflessness (as written of by Boyle, not he), Boyle's supposedly more "Romantic" way of life and art (as written of by McAlmon, not she), but the main effect is that of laying out a physical and psychological tableau of their lives in the 1920's.-As McAlmon confesses, "It is a horrible admission, but some of us are driven to work at times to forget about living life. That creative urge, if you will, or is it that something remembered or contemplated is more entertaining than the actual scene and event being experienced? Somebody else spoke of Marsden as an 'eagle without a cliff', but aren't we all?"-Later he writes, "...we had moments of enjoying the sodden destruction of time in a weary world."---

As we look back on this supposedly "dated" attitude of those expatriate writers, can we really say that their actions and outlook were so dated? What artist or what person has not had thoughts or periods of life such as expressed above?---At one point in the book, McAlmon reports a fellow reveller at a Parisian cafe chiding him for his well-known generosity and telling him that he has "too much humanity." This is the only criticism that can be levelled at this book, if you choose to categorize it as such.

The erudite editor, wit, flaneur extraordinaire and exuberant
writer Robert McAlmon published his memoir of Paris, '20s,
in 1938. It's an outstanding revisit to the most colorful
chapter in Americana abroad and it tugs the heart of anyone
who has lived and loved in Paris, even if the love was the
city itself. A handsome, generous American who funded other
writers, McAlmon married a British heiress who needed 'the
ring' to flee her family. She had no sexual interest in men;
he had no lust for women. Theirs was a discreet 'modern'
marriage and it paid his bills - he used the money to
enhance the reputations of Gert Stein & James Joyce. (He's
a key player in John Glassco's 'Memoirs of Montparnasse').

The independent & flamboyant Kay Boyle, a personal pal
from Paris, expands McAlmon's story in her own striking
manner. The civilized novelist Boyle, oft married, always seductive,
reveals two worlds: McAlmon's and hers. You can't ask for anything
more. Their edgy lives, which involve the usual '20s suspects, as
well as Caresse & Harry Crosby, Hart Crane & William Carlos
Williams, intersect dramatically and comically. You have to
sip between the guarded lines and lives, but here's a wistful
nightcap to a culturally aware decade.

If you have read extensively about the Lost Generation and their Paris, then the McAlmon chapters will further illuminate what others have said. If you are fairly new to the subject, this book will bore you to tears with its laundry lists of who/what/where/exactly when and at what time so-and-so got drunk. I do not think Kay Boyle's chapters do anything but prove how odious she was.

This is an evocative memoir -- much more substantive than many books exploring the lives of expats in Paris in the 20s & 30s.