Montparnasse: Paris's District of Memory and Desire

By John Baxter

Book Overview

In the third portrait of his series Great Parisian Neighborhoods, award-winning raconteur John Baxter takes readers on a dazzling excursion of Montparnasse. By the IACP Award-winning author of the national bestseller The Most Beautiful Walk in the World , MONTPARNASSE reveals the history and present delights of the iconic neighborhood that is best associated with the vibrant 1920-30s-era Paris--a romantic time and place evoked in Hemingway's memoir A Moveable Feast and Henry Miller's Tropic of Cancer . From the first meeting of Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald to their friendship's bitter conclusion; from the courage of the anti-Nazi resistance to the clubs where German generals partied; from the attempted murder of Samuel Beckett to the rise of Josephine Baker to stardom; from the high life of the Coupole and the Cafe du D me to the bawdy music halls of rue de la Gait ; no Paris quarter has witnessed more tumultuous events than Montparnasse. In a ground-breaking reappraisal of this most glamorous of Paris's districts, Baxter looks beyond the nostalgia to the secret history of Montparnasse, a district where desire effaced memory and every taste could be satisfied--even those which were unexpressed. If, as Oscar Wilde suggested, all good Americans went to Paris when they died, it was Montparnasse that brought them back to life.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 006267904X
• ISBN13: 9780062679048
• Release Date: October 2017
• Publisher: Harper Perennial
• Length: 272 Pages
• Weight: 0.46 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 4.9" x 7.0"