Customer Reviews

Manual of Saint Germain-des-pres by Boris Vian

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A silly, very tongue-in-cheek user's guide and hymn to 1940's Paris' ground zero for jazz, artists, existentialists, hipsters, wanna-be's, stars, and hangers-on: the neighborhood of St Germain des Pres. Written by a Germanopratin and one of France's most unique postwar novelists, it's riddled throughout with big, beautiful period photos of locales, principal denizens, and famous slummers (Sidney Bechet, Prevert, Sartre and Beauvoir, Juliette Greco, even Garbo, Faulkner and Orson Welles, to name a few). The real attraction is the photos, but the content is pretty entertaining--part ethnography of a strange nocturnal and extinct species of Parisian scenester (both mocking and affectionate), part screed against the popular press' charicature of the neighborhood's inhabitants and habitues, it's funny, fascinating, and full of curious information. Did you know, for example, that the stereotypical existentialist's uniform included brightly colored Converse allstars and a plaid shirt unbuttoned to the navel?

There is coverage of Paris in the 1890's, and Paris in the 1920's, but coverage of the 40's and 50's, the era of the existentialists, is pretty sparse. To the media, existentialists meant both real philosophers, like Sartre and Camus, and, to make lurid copy, anyone who hung out in the infamous jazz and poetry cellar-clubs of St. Germain. Vian's book, however, is devoid of media-hype. It is, as the editor says, "a snapshot of history as it happens."
I happened to be there for some of it, like hanging at the Cafe de Flore that Sartre and de Beauvoir had established as the current literary scene; while across the street at Le Lipp I found a vestige of an older one: a dude who was still a surrealist. And I hung at Chez Inez, with jazz musicians and ex-pats from Harlem, a club owned by a zanzy black American woman; and at bars with people like Orson Welles' ex-girlfriend, and Juliette Grecko, who played in Cocteau's Orpheus and claimed she almost married Miles Davis.
For me, too naive to realize it, it was a time like none other. Fortunately, Boris Vian nailed it down.

Capturing the verve, vitality and creativity of St Germain at it's richest peak, this book seduces, subjects and forces one to submit to all that St Germain was in its artistic heydey! Take me back, take me back!!!

the book has a very unique design and a lot of nice photos, while the content is absolutely magnificent.
i bought it as a present along with the Duke Elington masterpieces box set since Vian was inspired by Indigo Mood while writing his masterpiece Foam of the Day.
I am thinking to order another copy of the book for myself.

1st class service all the way. Thanks.