Left Bank

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.

Chronology xiii Cast of Characters xv Map: Paris Left Bank xvi Introduction 1 I. War Was My Master 1. The Fall 9 2. The Choice 23 3. The Fight 46 4. The Desire 73 II. Modern Times 5. A Philosophy of Existence 95 6. Lust and Emancipation 116 7. A Third Way 136 III. The Ambiguities of Action 8. How Not to Be a Communist? 157 9. Love, Style, Drugs, and Loneliness 177 10. Action and Dissidence 189 11. "Paris's Gloom Is a Powerful Astringent" 213 IV. Sharpening the Senses 12. "They Owned Art While We Were Just Full of Dollars" 229 13. Stimulating the Nerves 240 14. Anger, Spite, and Failure 252 15. Vindicated 266 16. Farewells and a New Dawn 278 Notes 293 Acknowledgments 315 Index 317