Customer Reviews

Women of the Left Bank

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I picked up this book out of interest in expatriate Americans in the early part of the 20th century. I was immediately drawn into the worlds of these writers and artists and ultimately learned about incredible characters like Sylvia Beach, who was the first person to publish James Joyce's Ulysses, and Margaret Anderson, publisher of the modernist The Little Review.

As a feminist scholar, Benstock analyzes the places these women occupied in the Paris scene as well as in a world in transition. She admirably examines the literary works of the writers, but the book never feels solely like a book of criticism. Biographical information abounds and gives each chapter something of a story arc.

For readers who enjoy biographies of literary personalities but often miss the lack of detailed discussion of a writer's works, this book will not disappoint. And if you are at all interested Paris in the early part of the last century, modernism, or any of the many women discussed in the book (Edith Wharton, Djuna Barnes, Gertrude Stein & Alice Toklas, HD, Mina Loy, etc.) this book will be an invaluable source of information.

Not really a biography, tho it is very biographic. Not really a study of Feminism, tho most of the women were early pioneers. Not really a study of Lesbians, tho most of the women were, at least, bisexual. What this book does, and it does it extremely well, is illustrate how these women struggled to 'define' themselves, as artists, as authors, as sexual beings, as individuals at a time when women were generally perceived as little better then simple minded children factories. From Gertrude Stein to Djuna Barnes to Natalie Barney (Rene Vivian...'a life spent looking for death')such different people but sharing a common thread of struggle (and cost). I've read a lot about this period and these women, and no book has given me a better understanding of them and emotional empathy with them, then this book.

This is a great book on the women who made huge contributions to that legendary period of culture: Left Bank Paris between the wars. Impeccably researched and beautifully written, it reveals, through multiple layers of history, biography and social commentary, the enormous and subtle influence of an extraordinary group of talented women whose remarkable gifts and achievements were usually overshadowed and often at the service of the male figures of the left bank scene. A completely absorbing book, I couldn't put it down from the moment I started reading it. One of those books you want to share with everyone, (and everyone I have shared it with shares my enthusiasm for it). An absolute favourite; I can't recommend it highly enough.

I couldn't even get through the beginning of this biography; it was so dull. Now, I'm a feeler-type person, (an INFJ), so perhaps it's the style in which it's written that puts me off. It is very well-written, but, Women of the Left Bank is singularly mental; ironic since much of this time period was about the passions of the senses in oneself and towards each other.

I far preferred Paris Was a Woman: Portraits of the Left Bank, by Andrea Weiss; Wild Girls: Paris, Sappho, and Art: The Lives and Loves of Natalie Barney and Romaine Brooks (a delicious account of the intense and magnetic passion between these two artists), by Diana Souhami; Sylvia Beach and the Lost Generation, by Noel Riley Fitch; Found Meals of a Lost Generation by Suzanne Rodgriguez-Hunter (more a cookbook than an examination of the history), and Forbidden Fires by Margaret C. Anderson (who really was there!). In fact, Paris Was a Woman goes remarkably well with Forbidden Fires (which starts with a biography and moves into a semi-autobiographical story). With the exception of Benstock's book, all of the above books create a sensual path of France's expatriate movement in the 1920's.

This book was a good introduction for me to read more about women who lived in Paris, but like so many, they went there to live a life ahead of their time.