The Crazy Years: Paris in the Twenties” by William Wiser

This book revealed much about Paris that I didn't know. There were a few stories regarding Coco Chanel, Diaghilev, and other Russian expaptriates that I knew very little about and found very interesting. It also covered culture-makers as diverse as writers, dancers, musicians, fashionists, etc. This book had excellent authors who were the literary/artistic community in 1920s Paris. Almost everybody who had talent was there, Hemingway, Fitzgerald, James Baldwin, Picasso, and Dali within many others. The style of the authors individual stories were in the format of magazine articles which I thought were clever making me tune into each article that kept surprising me every step of the way. Even though this book was time consuming considering that it was packed with facts and real evidence such as addresses among others, every time I went into a different story I read many interesting anecdotes. To me this was the best book seeing that it was deep into the cultural history of Paris of the '20s.

“Plaisir D'Amour: An Erotic Memoir of Paris in the 1920s” by Anne-Marie Villefranche

This book was pretty much in the nude once I started reading it. It gradually followed a memoir that had many mini stories integrated into each chapter, each one giving more and more interesting details about life in Paris within the era that was incredibly liberating. Since this book was written by a well known young French widow who later remarried (1899-1980), these stories were fictionalized episodes, written in the third person, with all the names changed, Even with the pure sense of the 1920s, these happened to most likely be the author's fantasies about her assorted siblings and siblings in law who commit adultery in the most predictable places you can expect someone to get caught in, creating the characters personality to not care about anything but their self satisfaction. Aside from standard seductions, there's a lesbian sequence, a Swedish masseur, a sinning priest, and a couple of chapters devoted to Marquis de Sade, whom happens to become one of the main characters. The sexual seductions are graphic, though cut off when things that can happen later on, are left to your imagination. The sexual seduction scenes seen throughout the book are part of the theme that makes it more liable to know what exactly was happening during the 1920's when life was expressing ones self and having freedom.

Paris 1920's Image Exposition

“Hemingway's France: Images of the Lost Generation” by Winston S. Conrad

This book was very appealing to me in a sense that it gave me the answer to what my perception of Paris in the 1920s was really seen as. In this book, I happened to have created this sort of theme that I collected throughout the book. It’s mainly based on a well-known author whom I’m really curious to read about, as well as find out how he is known to have defined France in the 1920s, and people just can’t seem to describe France alone without mentioning his name. According to the reviews that I’ve read recommending this book, they find it filled with history and culture that cultivates the sense of that era and gets in on details about Hemingway being involved in WW2 as a soldier as well as being a writer. His story just seems so amazing. I’m already getting anxious to read what Hemingway has to showcase as “The biggest star of the 20th century literature.”

1920's Map

This map shows the approximate cities and popular places in Paris, which the authors visited or mostly have lived by.

Expatriate Paris: A Cultural and Literary Guide to Paris of the 1920s

this book has been super influential because of its overall interest in the depth of the life style in which people in Paris lived. From chapter to chapter it has constantly made me gain more knowledge and experience the culture that Paris had to offer during the times of the 1920s. It recreates important events in Paris which were considered the mark of history, and where great authors and artists came together to be recognized all throughout Paris. This novel really grabbed my attention because it showed authenticity in the way the author created scenes where you almost felt like you were breathing the same air the authors were at the time. I love to have found this particular writing style which has inspired me to be more creative and detailed with the stories that I tell from others perspectives. This book conveys a more surprisingly real and detailed style with true facts that occurred during this era, which I think is what I needed in order to imagine myself living in that time to understand it more thoroughly. I truly would recommend this book to other people whom are interested in traveling into a new world of cultural art, wealth, and tourism. I have also recognized the author’s way of “keeping it real” where he talks about topics that were common back in the twenties such as music in Paris, Russian immigration, lesbianism, the effect of rich Americans on Paris, and many others they discussed that made me find the book even more interesting and satisfied to have read.

Paris in the 1920's Timeline

Paris in the 1920’s Timeline 1920: American authors started moving into Paris as a result of the unstable America they were living in. They referred to their country of origin at the time as, judgmental in any type of delicate expression towards, sexuality amongst other things. Whereas in Paris, it was the total opposite. The Parisians went out often; they went to Music-hall shows especially the reviews, like Josephine Baker’s, operettas, theatre, and circus, but also to the cinema which was becoming more and more popular. John Dos Passos: “One Man's Initiation: 1917” “Three Soldiers” 1921: “France and Sherwood Anderson: Paris Notebook, 1921” by Sherwood Anderson 1922: The novel of Victor Margueritte, which was called “La Garçonne” was published in 1922. This book was a good illustration of the debauchery and the extravagance of this decade. 1923: “A Night Among the Horses,” by Djuna Barnes 1925: “The Great Gatsby” by F. Scott Fitzgerald 1927: “Transition” by poet Eugene Jolas, and his wife Maria McDonald In 1929, Beckett published his first work, a critical essay entitled "Dante... Bruno. Vico.. Joyce".