Paris in Mind

From Mark Twain to Langston Hughes, from Saul Bellow to David Sedaris: Three Centuries of Americans Writing about Their Romance (and Frustrations) with Paris
Herausgeber: Lee, Jennifer

• Broschiertes Buch

Produktbeschreibung

"Paris is a moveable feast,” Ernest Hemingway famously wrote, and in this captivating anthology, American writers share their pleasures, obsessions, and quibbles with the great city and its denizens. Mark Twain celebrates the unbridled energy of the Can-Can. Sylvia Beach recalls the excitement of opening Shakespeare & Company on the Rue Dupuytren. David Sedaris praises Parisians for keeping quiet at the movies. These are just a few of the writers assembled here, and each selection is as surprising and rewarding as the next. Including essays, book excerpts, letters, articles, and journal entries, this seductive collection captures the long and passionate relationship Americans have had with Paris. Accompanied by an illuminating introduction, Paris in Mind is sure to be a fascinating voyage for literary travelers. Jennifer Allen * Deborah Baldwin * James Baldwin * Dave Barry * Sylvia Beach * Saul Bellow * Bricktop * Art Buchwald * T. S. Eliot * M.F.K. Fisher * Janet Flanner * Benjamin Franklin * Ernest Hemingway *Langston Hughes * Thomas Jefferson * Stanley Karnow * Patric Kuh * A. J. Liebling * Anaïs Nin * Grant Rosenberg * David Sedaris * Irwin Shaw *Gertrude Stein * Mark Twain * Edith Wharton * E. B. White

Produktdetails

• Verlag: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
• Seitenzahl: 288
• Erscheinungstermin: 8. Juli 2003
• Englisch
• Abmessung: 203mm x 131mm x 16mm
• Gewicht: 200g
• ISBN-13: 9781400031023
• ISBN-10: 1400031028
• Artikelnr.: 22419730

Autorenporträt

Jennifer Lee is an experienced editor with two previous anthologies, Martial Arts Are Not Just for Kicking Butt and 2sexE: Urban Tales of Love, Liberty and the Pursuit of Gettin' It On. She lives in the Bay Area in California and is happy to trade Paris and San Francisco restaurant tips.

Inhaltsangabe

Introduction
Love
(How to Seduce and Be Seduced Like a Parisian)
E. B.White: “Liberation of Paris”
On the very first thing he did when he heard the news about the liberation
of Paris from the Nazis: read the Paris entry in the Encyclopædia
Britannica. The Britannica was never more moving.
Edith Wharton: from A Backward Glance
Wharton remembers “the bells of Paris calling to each other,” and
announcing the end of the First World War.
Art Buchwald: “April in Paris” from Art Buchwald’s Paris
An interview with Vernon Duke, the composer of “April in Paris.” Dorothy
Parker, George Gershwin, and plenty of April showers make their appearance
in the story of how the classic love song was born.
A. J. Liebling: “Passable” from Between Meals: An Appetite for Paris
Liebling poignantly recalls the working girl who befriended him and with
whom he explored Paris while he was a distracted student of medieval
history.
Maxine Rose Schur: “Passionate and Penniless in Paris”
Two very young, very love-struck Americans camp out in their VW van on the
Quai de la Tournelle along an enchanted Seine.
Irwin Shaw: “Paris in Winter” from Paris! Paris!
Shaw disavows Paris by counting all that’s wrong with the city in the
wintertime, and still he can’t help being seduced all over again once the
sun comes out.
Saul Bellow: “My Paris” from It All Adds Up
A rumination on the Paris of his youth and the Paris of today—from art and
anti-Semitism to how Paris lost its power as the center of European
civilization and why he’s still in love with the city.
Food
(How to Eat Like a Parisian)
Ernest Hemingway: “Hunger Was Good Discipline” from A Moveable Feast
In Paris, hunger—both physical and artistic—is keenly felt.
Patric Kuh: “Boulevard Des Italiens” from The Last Days of Haute Cuisine
The chef makes his way to the country of his American father by way of
County Cork, Dublin, a Parisian brasserie on the Boulevard des Italiens,
his American passport, and the declaration, “I am an American.”
M. F. K. Fisher: from “The Measure of My Powers” from The Gastronomical Me
Newlyweds in Paris escape the expatriate crowd in the city and head for
Dijon.
Naomi Barry: “Paris’s Haute Chocolaterie”
Parisians not only have haute cuisine and haute couture, they have haute
chocolaterie.
Grant Rosenberg: “A Day in the Life of a Parisian Café”
Where everybody knows your name, in French.
The Art of Living
(How to Live Like a Parisian)
David Sedaris: “The City of Light in the Dark” from Me Talk Pretty One Day
Sedaris moves to Paris, but spends most of his time in the dark, watching
classic American movies.
Sylvia Beach: from Shakespeare and Company
Dreams of opening a French bookshop in New York are crushed, and voilà, an
American bookshop in Paris is born.
Anaïs Nin: from The Early Diary of Anaïs Nin
The gravity of French Civilization, the “Legend of Paris,” weighs on her
own literary development, but in the end, she is sure that it can be good
for her “if one survives them.”
Stanley Karnow: “The Glass of Fashion” from Paris in the Fifties
The machines of haute couture—American department store buyers, an
interview with Christian Dior, models, and the most fickle of consumers,
the Parisienne.
Deborah Baldwin: “Paying the Way” from Paris Notes
Beauty doesn’t come cheap, even for a grand old city like Paris. Baldwin
shows how it’s paid for.
Thomas Jefferson: from The Autobiography
Writing from Paris, Jefferson gives a firsthand account of the beginning of
the French Revolution.
Gertrude Stein: from Paris France
Stein remembers the Paris she knew when she was four years old, and what
Paris meant before it became the home that would free her to become a
writer.
Tourism
(How You Can’t Help Being an American in Paris)
Langston Hughes: “Montmartre” and “Le Grand Duc” from The Big Sea: An
Autobiography
Hughes comes to Paris destitute, is rescued by an even poorer ballerina,
and gets a job at Le Grand Duc, the place for after-hours Mississippi blues
jam sessions.
Jennifer Allen: “Euro Disney: A Postcard”
An American visits the Happiest Place on Earth à la Paris, with her French
mother.
Benjamin Franklin: from The Papers of Benjamin Franklin
In a series of letters from Paris, Franklin describes the fashions of the
time, his warm acceptance by Paris society, and his thoughts on the
American colony’s war against England.
John Adams: from The Autobiography
Adams is at once delighted, envious, and distrustful of Parisian manners,
and engages in a bit of private venting about his elderly colleague in
Paris, calling Ben Franklin’s active social life “a Scene of continual
discipation. . . .”
Mark Twain: from The Innocents Abroad
Twain plays a wide-eyed country innocent in Paris. Twain is charming and
hilarious in his descriptions of Paris and a new Parisian dance called the
“cancan.”
Dave Barry: “Parlez-Vous Français?” and “An Aesthetically Challenged
American in Paris (Part II)” from Dave Barry Is Not Taking This Sitting
Down
In a two-part series, Barry parodies the modern American abroad in Paris.
He struggles with the infamous French “R,” sees the sights, and in a bold
move, takes a tax deduction.
T. S. Eliot: Letters from The Letters of T. S. Eliot
In a letter to his niece, Eliot describes the Luxembourg Gardens and
Parisian children. In a letter to Robert McAlmon, Eliot advises the young
American poet about Paris and literature.
Janet Flanner: “Tourist” from An American in Paris
A perfectly average American tourist takes up with a charming German in
Paris and is murdered.
Bricktop (cowritten with James Haskins: “Cole Porter . . . and Josephine
Baker” from Bricktop
The famed nightclub owner remembers her early days in Paris where she was
befriended by Cole Porter and where she looked out for a young, naïve
Josephine Baker.
James Baldwin: from No Name in the Street
To be black and American in Paris affords a freedom that being black and
French or black and Algerian does not.