Left Bank : art, passion, and the rebirth of Paris, 1940-50 /

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Bibliographic Details
Author / Creator:	Poirier, Agnès Catherine, author.
Edition:	First edition.
Imprint:	New York, New York : Henry Holt and Company, 2018. ©2018
Description:	xiv, 331 pages, 8 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations, map ; 25 cm
Language:	English
Subject:	Intellectual life. Rive gauche (Paris, France) -- Intellectual life -- 20th century. Paris (France) -- Intellectual life -- 20th century. France -- Paris. France -- Paris -- Rive Gauche.
Format:	Print Book
URL for this record:	http://pi.lib.uchicago.edu/1001/cat/bib/11594244

Hidden Bibliographic Details
ISBN:	9781627790246 1627790241 9781627790253
Notes:	Includes bibliographical references (pages 293-313) and index.
Summary:	"An incandescent group portrait of the midcentury artists and thinkers whose lives, loves, collaborations, and passions were forged against the wartime destruction and postwar rebirth of Paris"--Amazon.com. "An incandescent group portrait of the midcentury artists and thinkers whose lives, loves, collaborations, and passions were forged against the wartime destruction and postwar rebirth of Paris. In this fascinating tour of a celebrated city during one of its most trying, significant, and ultimately triumphant eras, Agnès Poirier unspools the stories of the poets, writers, painters, and philosophers whose lives collided to extraordinary effect between 1940 and 1950. She gives us the human drama behind some of the most celebrated works of the 20th century, from Richard Wright's Native Son, Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex, and James Baldwin's Giovanni's Room to Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot and Saul Bellow's Augie March, along with the origin stories of now legendary movements, from Existentialism to the Theatre of the Absurd, New Journalism, bebop, and French feminism. We follow Arthur Koestler and Norman Mailer as young men, peek inside Picasso's studio, and trail the twists of Camus's, Sartre's, and Beauvoir's epic love stories. We witness the births and deaths of newspapers and literary journals and peer through keyholes to see the first kisses and last nights of many ill-advised bedfellows. At every turn, Poirier deftly hones in on the most compelling and colorful history, without undermining the crucial significance of the era. She brings to life the flawed, visionary Parisians who fell in love and out of it, who infuriated and inspired one another, all while reconfiguring the world's political, intellectual, and creative landscapes. With its balance of clear-eyed historical narrative and irresistible anecdotal charm, Left Bank transports readers to a Paris teeming with passion, drama, and life."--Dust jacket.

Table of Contents:

Chronology
Cast of Characters
Map: Paris Left Bank
Introduction
I. War Was My Master
1. The Fall
2. The Choice
3. The Fight
4. The Desire
II. Modern Times
5. A Philosophy of Existence
6. Lust and Emancipation
7. A Third Way
III. The Ambiguities of Action
8. How Not to Be a Communist
9. Love, Style, Drugs, and Loneliness
10. Action and Dissidence
11. "Paris's Gloom Is a Powerful Astringent"
IV. Sharpening the Senses
12. "They Owned Art While We Were Just Full of Dollars"
13. Stimulating the Nerves
14. Anger, Spite, and Failure
15. Vindicated
16. Farewells and a New Dawn
Notes
Acknowledgments
Index

Left Bank : art, passion, and the rebirth of Paris, 1940-50 /

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