RobertMcAlmon, 29, owner of the small publishing company the Contact Press, has just returned to Paris after a holiday in the south of France with some fellow Americans.
This is not his usual hotel. For the past few years that he’s lived in Paris, he has mostly stayed at the Hotel Foyot, about a 15-minute walk northeast around the Luxembourg Gardens.
Hotel Foyot
However, Sylvia Beach, just turned 37, proprietor of the Shakespeare and Company bookshop, the social center of the Left Bank on the rue de l’Odeon, has booked two of their mutual friends into the Foyot, close to her shop: McAlmon’s British wife, novelist Bryher (Winifred Ellerman, 29); and her American lover poet HD (Hilda Doolittle, 37).
Hilda Doolittle and Bryher
McAlmon figures he’s better off here, out of their way.
He has already reserved a room at the Unic for his recent traveling companions, poet William Carlos Williams, 40, and his wife Flossie, 33. Williams and McAlmon founded Contact magazine when they were friends back in Greenwich Village. The Williamses are traveling around Europe and plan to come back to Paris in a couple of months.
Dr. William Carlos Williams
Williams went to the University of Pennsylvania with American ex-pat poet Ezra Pound, 38, who is planning to visit from his home in Italy.
While Pound and Williams were at Penn, they were both entranced by a tall redhead who met them while she was commuting to Bryn Mawr—Hilda Doolittle.
McAlmon is anticipating a lot of tension, but figures that, when Bryher and HD leave at the beginning of the summer, things will calm down a bit and he can spend time showing the Williams around Paris.
This summer I will be talking about the literary 1920s in Paris and New York at the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at Carnegie-Mellon University.
Manager as Muse, about Scribner’s editor Maxwell Perkins’ relationships with F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway and Thomas Wolfe, is also available on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk in both print and e-book versions.
The 28th president of the United States, Woodrow Wilson, 67, is laid to rest today in two private, simple ceremonies, first at his home, then at the Washington Cathedral.
Entrance to the Wilson crypt, Bethlehem Chapel, Washington Cathedral
Officiating at both ceremonies are the pastor of the church Wilson attended while President, the bishop of Washington, and the Rev. Sylvester Beach, 71, who served as Wilson’s pastor when he was president of Princeton University.
Rev. Beach’s wife, Eleanor, 62, cannot attend as she is traveling in Europe, visiting their middle daughter, Sylvia, 36, who owns a bookshop in Paris.
*****
Two days ago, Time magazine reported on the thousands of people lined up to see the body of Russian revolutionary Vladimir Lenin, who died last month at age 53. According to official sources,
’the greatest number of people who had ever looked upon the same corpse’ (exact number unspecified) passed before his body which lay in state. All of them had stood in line in the streets. of Moscow for 10, 20, 30 hours in inhuman cold…A blizzard raged. Sparrows fell frozen in the streets. Ice covered the horses of the guards. Three gigantic bonfires in Red Square melted the ice for the burial.”
Later this month I will be talking about early 20th century supporters of the arts at the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at Carnegie-Mellon University.
Manager as Muse,about Scribner’s editor Maxwell Perkins’ relationships with F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway and Thomas Wolfe, is also available on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.ukin both print and e-book versions.
In what is becoming an annual tradition, this English-language bookstore is celebrating the anniversary of its publication of the controversial novel, Ulysses, on this date in 1922.
Shakespeare and Company
This morning, the author, Irish ex-patriate James Joyce, 42 today, sends flowers to the shop and its owner, American ex-pat Sylvia Beach, 36, who took on the role of publisher when no publishing company would touch his novel.
She has filled the shop windows with copies of the latest edition, and this evening there will be a party.
Truth be told, neither Sylvia nor any of Joyce’s benefactors are impressed with his latest work, so far just called “Work in Progress.” Joyce says he’s experimenting, and that he’s finished with the English language.
*****
About a 20-minute walk north of the shop. British ex-pat Ford Madox Ford, 50, is still settling in to the new offices he is sharing with the Three Mountains Press, a small publishing venture started by American journalist Bill Bird, 35.
Quai d’Anjou, Ile Saint Louis
Ford is bringing out the second issue of his new literary magazine, the transatlantic review, funded by a generous American patron of the arts, New York lawyer John Quinn, 53.
The first issue of the magazine included works by some of the most talked-about American writers on the Left Bank: poems by Ezra Pound, 38, and E. E. Cummings, 29; and a short story by Robert McAlmon, 28, whom Pound had recommended.
Ford Madox Ford
A couple of weeks ago Quinn sent Ford an additional $500, but promised he would only contribute one more instalment if necessary, but then that would be it. Grateful for any help. Ford offered Quinn a life mask of Pound but Quinn cringed at the thought. The only thing worse, he told Ford, would be a death mask.
Ford has just “hired”—for no money—one of the other young Americans making a name for himself around the Left Bank, former Toronto Star foreign correspondent Ernest Hemingway, 24, just arrived back in Paris with his wife and new baby after a four-month stay in Toronto.
The Hemingways are getting ready to move into a second-floor walk-up apartment at 113 rue Notre Dame des Champs, close to where Pound lives, overlooking a sawmill and a lumber yard.
Ernie’s job at the transatlantic review is to scout out new material from the ex-pat authors on the Left Bank. He is trying to convince Ford that he should serialize a work by Gertrude Stein, turning 50 tomorrow, The Making of Americans. Hemingway is quite keen on it; Ford thinks it’s some kind of experimental short story.
Today, the second issue of the transatlantic review has been banned by the American Women’s Club of Paris. Ford is thinking he may need to hit on Quinn for more cash.
Don’t forget! Tomorrow, Saturday, February 3, we will be celebrating the 150th birthday of my fellow Pittsburgher Gertrude Stein, from noon to 4 pm at City Books on the North Side, a five-minute walk from where she was born. Details are here.
Later this month I will be talking about early 20th century supporters of the arts like the Stein family at the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at Carnegie-Mellon University.
Manager as Muse, about Scribner’s editor Maxwell Perkins’ relationships with F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway and Thomas Wolfe, is also available on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk in both print and e-book versions.
As they have since the beginning of the decade, Americans are still arriving in waves, motivated by three major changes:
The Great War has made them much more global. Men who were stationed in Europe in 1917 and 1918 want to bring their new wives and girlfriends to the places where they served.
U. S. soldiers arriving in Paris
The exchange rate is fantastic. Europe has been devastated so the dollar buys much more in Rome, Vienna and Paris. Including alcohol—not currently available back home thanks to Prohibition.
The cruise companies have come up with a new fare, “Tourist Third,” which makes the trip affordable for almost everyone.
The American Way to Europe brochure
For Dr. William Carlos Williams, 40, and his wife Flossie, 32, all three of these apply. In addition to continual nagging by his old college buddy from the University of Pennsylvania, fellow poet Ezra Pound, 38. Pound helped Williams get his first book of poetry, The Tempers, published in London, and he has been entreating Williams to come to Paris ever since.
So the good doctor has taken a year off from his New Jersey medical practice, spent half of it working on The Great American Novel—no, really, that’s the title—and he and Flossie are going to spend the next three months traveling around Europe.
First stop—Paris.
In addition to Pound, Williams is reuniting with another old friend, Robert McAlmon, 28. They had produced a magazine together, Contact, back in Greenwich Village a few years ago. McAlmon lives here now and has started Contact Publishing, using money from his British-heiress wife, Bryher, 29, to publish the new writers and artists appearing on the Left Bank.
Since the Williams’ arrival a few days ago, McAlmon has booked them into the expensive hotel where he is currently staying, the Lutetia on Boulevard Raspail, and introduced them to some of the leading characters in the Paris literary scene. Williams was pleased to finally meet Sylvia Beach, 35, owner of the Shakespeare and Company English-language bookstore, with whom he has corresponded. A couple of years back, McAlmon had convinced Beach to carry Williams’ books of poetry, and Williams had bought a copy of Ulysses from her—the controversial novel by Irish ex-pat writer James Joyce, 41, which Sylvia published two years ago.
Tonight, McAlmon is hosting a party for Bill and Flossie here at Joyce’s favorite restaurant, the Trianon, so they can meet other Left Bank literati. The crowd nearly fills up half the restaurant. Beach is here with her partner, Adrienne Monnier, 31, who operates the French-language bookstore across the street from Shakespeare and Company. Another American ex-pat, artist Man Ray, 33, whom Williams had known a bit back in Greenwich Village, is here with his chess buddy, French painter Marcel Duchamp, 36.
Rue de Rennes
Joyce has had too much to drink and is starting to loudly sing Irish ditties. His frequent drinking partner McAlmon responds by belting out Negro spirituals and cowboy songs; someone else is singing the blues.
Williams is starting to feel uncomfortable with this crowd. McAlmon asks the guest of honor to make a speech, and Williams feels as if he makes a fool of himself.
Williams thinks both the food and the conversation are disappointing. And that maybe being a pediatrician in Passaic would not be such a bad life after all.
Later next month I will be talking about early 20th century supporters of the arts like McAlmon and Pound at the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at Carnegie-Mellon University.
Manager as Muse, about Scribner’s editor Maxwell Perkins’ relationships with F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway and Thomas Wolfe, is also available on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk in both print and e-book versions.
On the Left Bank, inside the English-language bookstore Shakespeare and Company on rue de l’Odeon, there are festive decorations, including a lit Christmas tree perched on a table.
The shop owner, American ex-patriate Sylvia Beach, 36, had been planning to spend the holiday with her mother, who is visiting Sylvia’s sister in Florence for her birthday.
Shakespeare and Company
However, Sylvia has decided that, before the end of the year, she needs to bring out another edition of Ulysses by Irish novelist James Joyce, 41, which she first published early last year. The second edition didn’t include all the necessary corrections. Another edition, published in Paris by the London-based Egoist Press, had almost all of its 500 copies destroyed by UK customs last year. The owner of the Egoist, Harriet Shaw Weaver, 47, has suggested that Sylvia call this latest edition—which will include all the corrections—the fourth version. So the ones destroyed will not be forgotten.
This newest Ulysses will have a cover the reverse of the others, this time white paper with blue type. Sylvia wants to send one to her mother as a birthday present, and personally deliver one to Joyce at home for Christmas, the way she did on publication day last year, his 40th birthday.
Ulysses, fourth edition
This year has been hectic for Beach.
In the fall, she had a visit from the American writer living in London, T. S. Eliot, 35, whose poem The Waste Land, published last year, greatly impressed her. Sylvia wrote to her mother,
He is such a charming fellow and so interesting…the old fashioned sort of American and very good looking. I only wish he lived in Paris. He is our only modern writer I like after Joyce. Everyone that he was exhibited to was carried away with Eliot.”
Another American who came to visit early this month was Barnet Braverman, 35, an advertising man who successfully smuggled illegal copies of Ulysses from his Ontario office to his Michigan apartment. He brought along a copy for Joyce to sign.
A French tax man showed up the other day, requesting to see her company books. Sylvia sent him on his way, promising to have one of her assistants bring a set of accounts to his office.
All this activity has left Sylvia exhausted. But she and her partner Adrienne Monnier, 31, who owns the French-language bookstore across the street, have still managed to go out to the theatre most nights.
*****
Map to help find your way around Paris
On the Ile St. Louis, about a 20-minute walk north of rue de l’Odeon, another small American publisher is winding up a successful year. The Three Mountains Press, run by Bill Bird, 35, has brought out a series of six books by ex-patriates, edited by poet Ezra Pound, 38. The most promising is in our time, a group of 10 vignettes by the foreign correspondent for the Toronto Star, Ernest Hemingway, 24. Ernie is currently back in Toronto where he and his wife moved for the birth of their first child, John Hadley Nicanor Hemingway, now two months old. Bird has heard that they are not happy in Canada and will be moving back to Paris soon in the new year.
Ile St. Louis
*****
Up in Montmartre, Ezra’s mistress Olga Rudge, 28, recently performed a concert with American composer George Antheil, 23, who is renting an upstairs room at Shakespeare and Company. Ezra is tone deaf; but Olga jumped right in for the challenge of Antheil’s experimental Three Violin Sonatas, commissioned by her friend, French writer Jean Cocteau, 34. The first sonata is a dramatic piece which ends with the composer-pianist literally hammering out the notes.
Conservatoire National d’Art Dramatique, Montmartre
*****
Across the Right Bank, in mid-December there is a dramatic funeral procession from the church of Saint Honoré d’Eylau in the west to Pere Lachaise Cemetery in the east. Raymond Radiguet had died at the age of 20. His first novel, Le Diable du Corps, was such a big hit, all his fans had been hopeful for his second, which will now be published posthumously.
Saint Honoré d’Eylau church
Cocteau was so affected by his young friend’s death, he hasn’t been out to see anyone since. All the funeral arrangements were handled by designer Coco Chanel, 40. To emphasize Radiguet’s youth, the coffin, hearse, flowers and horses are all white. Marching with the mourners, who include Spanish painter Pablo Picasso, 42, and one of Radiguet’s former lovers, Romanian sculptor Constantin Brancusi, 47, is a jazz band from the club Le Boeuf sur le Toit, fronted by bandleader Vance Lowry, 34, the African-American “Banjo King.”
*****
Across the Seine, back on the Left Bank, another club is drawing in the ex-pats and the French as well. The Jockey on Boulevard Montparnasse, about a 20-minute walk south of Sylvia’s shop, has recently been bought and totally redecorated by American designer Hilaire Hiler, 25. He has used a cowboy motif, which appeals to locals as well as tourists.
The Jockey, 146 Boulevard Montparnasse
Radiguet and Cocteau frequented the bar, along with American publisher Robert McAlmon, 28. Painter Marcel Duchamp, 36, who recently returned to his native Paris after a few years in New York City, comes often with his American friend, Man Ray, 33, and his partner, Kiki of Montparnasse, 22. Man and Kiki have just moved into the nearby Istria Hotel, where Duchamp is staying, to be closer to Ray’s studio on rue Campagne-Premier. Ray has hired his first assistant, a sculptor he knew back in New York, Berenice Abbott, 25, whom he found almost starving on the streets of Paris. Ray is having more success with photography now, rather than the painting and sculpting he used to do.
*****
About a 15-minute walk east of the Jockey, other ex-pats are changing their living arrangements as well.
English editor Ford Madox Ford, just turned 50, has come to stay with his brother and brought along his Australian partner, artist and writer Stella Bowen, 30, and their three-year old daughter Julia. His sister-in-law has become annoyed with this intrusion, so she has rented the Ford-Bowen family a cottage behind their house on the Boulevard Arago for only 200Fr a month. They are near the tennis courts where Hemingway and Pound often play. Unfortunately, when Ford wants to give one of his frequent parties, he has to rent out a local bal musette.
65 Boulevard Arago
A few weeks ago, a friend, West Indian writer Ella Gwendoline Rees-Williams, 33, moved into the cottage with Ford and Stella. Rees-Williams’ husband was recently extradited to Holland for being in France illegally, and she is grateful to have a place to stay. Stella doesn’t seem to mind the attention Ford pays to their new roommate.
*****
All predictions are that, by the end of the year, the Seine will rise and overflow its banks, spreading itself throughout the Left and the Right Banks.
River Seine flooding
N. B.: Thanks to Lisa Thomson (LisaT2@comcast.net) for the wonderfully helpful map of Paris.
Early in the new year I will be talking about the literary summer of 1923 at the Osher Lifelong Learning Institutes at the University of Pittsburgh, and early 20th century patrons of the arts in the Osher program at Carnegie-Mellon University.
Manager as Muse, about Scribner’s editor Maxwell Perkins’ relationships with Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald and Thomas Wolfe, is also available on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk in both print and e-book versions.
Mrs. Jeanne Foster, 44, is serving as social secretary to her…er, really good friend, American lawyer and art collector, John Quinn, 53, on his latest trip through Europe.
John Quinn and Mrs. Jeanne Foster on their European trip
A lucrative corporate case he is working on requires Quinn to take depositions from people in Paris, and he welcomed the opportunity to meet up again with his avant-garde artist friends. Quinn recently unloaded a lot of his paintings by English artists and is now focusing on his love for the French.
Mrs. Foster arrived before him to make arrangements and set up appointments. They’ve met American ex-pat poet Ezra Pound, 37, and his wife; they are looking forward to a dinner cooked by Romanian sculptor Constantin Brancusi, 47, one of Quinn’s favorites. Jeanne is recording all of their visits to studios and art galleries, as well as other meetings with interesting people.
Today they are here at the home of English writer Ford Madox Ford, 49, to talk about the new literary magazine he is planning, along the lines of the English Review which he edited back in the UK. Quinn is helping with some of the much-needed funding, and Mrs. Foster will serve as American editor. Ford, whose surname was Hueffer before the Great War, plans to run the publication from here, his brother’s apartment which he shares with his Australian common-law wife, painter Stella Bowen, 30, and their daughter Julia, age three.
65 Boulevard Arago
Before Quinn arrived in Paris, Jeanne had spoken to Ford to prepare him for the visit. John has been out-of-sorts lately, and, although he is excited about this Paris trip, he is in great pain from internal stomach problems.
Jeanne discussed with Ford one of the recent incidents which is contributing to Quinn’s foul moods—the New York visit this summer of one of the writers he generously supports, Joseph Conrad, 65. Quinn had been eager to get together with Conrad, but the Polish-British novelist totally ignored his benefactor’s phone calls and requests for a meeting. While being seen all over town partying with the literati.
Ford is friends with Conrad and had spoken to him about Quinn. Conrad had been told that Quinn had a violent temper, and, as Conrad was not feeling well himself, decided to just avoid him. He has regretted this since.
Mrs. Foster asked Ford not to bring this up when he meets with Quinn, as it will only upset him. But she keeps detailed notes of her conversation with Ford in her diary.
*****
Ford, Stella and Julia had arrived in Paris at the beginning of September. He had been here at the end of last year, but just for about a month, so was eager to come back and work on the magazine which his friend, Ezra Pound had proposed. They thought of calling it Paris Review but have decided on the name transatlantic review.
Stella is a skilled hostess at the parties she and Ford throw at the apartment. The first one they gave was for the ex-pats who spend their time on the rue de l’Odeon, including Sylvia Beach, 36, the owner of the popular English-language bookstore there, Shakespeare and Company. There was accordion music, a variety of cheeses and lots of wine.
Ford Madox Ford
Great, big, walrus-like Ford had kicked off his shoes and instructed Sylvia to do the same so they could dance. While Ford was bouncing and prancing with Sylvia, she looked across the room and saw her friend, Irish writer James Joyce, 41, looking on with great amusement.
Beach is making good use of Ford’s literary connections. She keeps urging him to write positive reviews of Joyce’s novel which Shakespeare and Company published last year, Ulysses, to overcome the bad press Joyce has been getting in England. In return, she has introduced Ford to the creative people of the Left Bank, and also listens to Ford drone on, reading her his latest poetry. Sylvia confesses she nodded off during one of these recitals. She suspects Ford wants her to publish his writings, but he’s never asked.
This fall I will be talking about the women of Bloomsbury and the Left Bank at the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at Carnegie-Mellon University, and about art collector John Quinn at the Tiffin-Seneca Public Library, co-sponsored by the Heidelberg University English Department, in Quinn’s hometown of Tiffin, OH.
Manager as Muse, about Scribner’s editor Maxwell Perkins’ relationships with F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway and Thomas Wolfe, is also available on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk in both print and e-book versions.
American ex-pat owner of this bookshop, Sylvia Beach, 36, is writing to her Dad, Rev. Sylvester Beach, 70, back home in New Jersey.
Rev. Sylvester Beach by Paul-Emile Becat
Sylvia updates him on all the Americans who have come to visit—former President Grover Cleveland’s daughter!—as well as the latest gossip from the Left Bank.
One of the most interesting Americans Sylvia has helped recently is pianist George Antheil, 22, also from New Jersey, and his Hungarian partner, Elizabeth “Boski” Markus, 20. On his recent successful concert tour of Germany, George met fellow composer Igor Stravinsky, 41, so George wanted to be sure to be in Paris to see the premier of Stravinsky’s latest ballet, Les Noces, earlier this month.
Sylvia has rented rooms on the mezzanine above her shop to the young couple for 300Fr a month (roughly $17), although she told George that he wouldn’t be able to get a piano in there. Antheil decided it was worth it to have Sylvia as his landlady, and he’ll compose without a piano. But he has been able to make use of one in the French bookshop across the street, La Maison des Amis de Les Livres, owned by Sylvia’s partner Adrienne Monnier, 31
Also helping support Antheil is one of the many American ex-pats who hang around the shop, writer and publisher Robert McAlmon, 28, from Kansas. He has given Sylvia £100 from his wealthy English wife Bryher, also 28, and £50 from his mother-in-law to put into a bank account, trusting Sylvia to distribute it to Antheil as needed.
Sylvia tells her Dad that Antheil’s father owns the Friendly Shoestore in Trenton, where the Beach family used to shop. And that George has developed a technique of climbing up her shop’s sign featuring William Shakespeare to crawl in through the second floor balcony window when he forgets his keys.
Shakespeare and Company
McAlmon has lost one of his drinking buddies for the summer. Irish novelist James Joyce, 41, recovering from eye and dental surgery, has taken his wife and daughter to London and then to Bognor in West Sussex. Sylvia writes to her Dad that the Joyces left Paris on June 16th, which she and Joyce have dubbed “Bloomsday” because it is the date when the events in Joyce’s novel Ulysses, which Sylvia published last year, happen to the protagonist Leopold Bloom. She notes that Joyce’s son, Giorgio, 17, has been left behind in Paris to find the family a new apartment. And that she thinks Joyce picked the Bognor coast because there are rumored to be giants there that he wants to write about.
In Joyce’s absence, McAlmon has been out drinking with a visiting American, Sinclair Lewis, 38, from Minnesota. His hit novel from last year, Main Street, has just been made into a film by a new Hollywood studio called Warner Brothers.
Sinclair Lewis
In the Left Bank cafes Lewis has been a rather rowdy customer. Drunk one night in the Café du Dome he loudly announced that he is a better writer than France’s beloved Flaubert. Someone shouted back,
Sit down. You’re just a best seller!”
*****
Outside on rue de l’Odeon a new arrival in Paris is making his way up the street toward the theatre at the top.
Archibald MacLeish, 31, originally from Illinois, graduated from law school, taught law for a bit at Harvard, fought in the Great War, published a few collections of his poetry, and then secured a lucrative job at the Boston law firm Choate, Hall and Stewart. This summer, after three years at the company, he quit.
He and his wife, soprano Ada Hitchcock, 30, have moved to Paris so he can work on his poetry. Walking up this street, with Beach’s bookstore to the right, and Monnier’s to the left, MacLeish is enthralled by the magic he feels. Joyce was here last week. Gide was there yesterday. MacLeish can’t believe his luck.
This fall I will be talking about the women of Bloomsbury and the Left Bank at the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at Carnegie-Mellon University.
Manager as Muse, about Scribner’s editor Maxwell Perkins’ relationships with F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway and Thomas Wolfe, is also available on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk in both print and e-book versions.
Happy birthday to Ulysses! Published here one year ago this day.
And happy birthday to the novel’s author, Irishman James Joyce, 41 today.
The courageous publisher, American ex-pat Sylvia Beach, 35, has filled the display window of her shop, Shakespeare and Company, with extra copies of the bright blue book.
Ulysses by James Joyce
A small group of friends has gathered to celebrate. Sylvia receives a bouquet of flowers and champagne toasts to her health.
Toasts also to the health of Joyce, who entertains the crowd by singing Irish songs and accompanying himself on the piano.
It’s been quite a year since Beach handed the first copy of Ulysses to Joyce. Her shop has had increased foot traffic, but Sylvia has spent a lot of extra time promoting the book—and arranging to have it smuggled into the United States where it is often confiscated for being declared obscene by the courts.
The fluctuation in exchange rates is also killing her. Beach feels she should have been paying more attention to the political situation in Europe. She thinks she should be reading those reports filed by the Toronto Star foreign correspondent who hangs out in her store, American Ernest Hemingway, 23.
Later this month I will be talking about the literary 1920s in Paris and New York City in the Osher Lifelong Learning program at Carnegie-Mellon University.
Manager as Muse, about Scribner’s editor Maxwell Perkins’ relationships with Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald and Thomas Wolfe, is also available on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk in both print and e-book versions.
Today’s Sunday paper in Ogden, Utah, carries a feature story about a young American entrepreneur, native New Jersey-ian Sylvia Beach, 35, and the glamorous life she and her actress sister Cyprian, 29, are living in Paris.
The “brilliance” of their careers shines through in the English-language bookshop Sylvia runs on the Left Bank, and the films Cyprian has appeared in.
Almost a year ago, Sylvia published the avant-garde novel Ulysses by ex-patriate Irish writer James Joyce, 40, which has scandalized literary circles in the United States and abroad.
According to the article, the Beach sisters, daughters of a Presbyterian minister, are living in Paris, “riding in luxury on the crest of a wave of fame and fortune.”
*****
Meanwhile, in Paris, business is brisk in Sylvia’s shop, Shakespeare and Company. The publication of Ulysses has definitely increased foot traffic. And those who come in to buy Ulysses usually leave with some of Joyce’s other works, as well as books by new authors they’ve discovered.
But her young Greek shop assistant has been ill for weeks, so Sylvia’s on her own most days. Joyce comes in almost every day to read sections of Ulysses to her and is planning a dinner party so he can “see” his close friends before he goes into the hospital for much-needed eye surgery.
Sylvia Beach and James Joyce
Ulysses sells well here in France, but in the UK copies have been confiscated and burned. Bookstores in the US, where excerpts from Ulysses have been declared obscene by a court, are getting impatient to receive their copies.
Through a connection with one of the young American wanna-be novelists who hang out at Shakespeare and Company, Toronto Star foreign correspondent, Ernest Hemingway, 23, Sylvia has arranged for copies to be smuggled into the US from Canada. But soon she will have to pay the expenses of the advertising guy who has been taking them into Detroit on the ferry from his office in Windsor, Ontario.
Cyprian’s film career is actually now non-existent. Being around her increasingly famous sister makes her miserable and she is thinking of permanently moving back to the States this year.
Next month I will be talking about the literary 1920s in Paris and New York City in the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at Carnegie-Mellon University.
Manager as Muse, about Scribner’s editor Maxwell Perkins’ relationships with Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald and Thomas Wolfe, is also available on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk in both print and e-book versions.
Sitting in the backroom of Librairie Six, his friend’s bookstore and art gallery, English poet and publisher John Rodker, 27, is pretty sure he has everything organized for the big day tomorrow.
John Rodker surrounded by publishing friends
In a little more than a month he has managed to pull together the publication of a second edition of the scandalous novel Ulysses by Irish-expat in Paris James Joyce, 40, the day before the copies arrive from the Dijon-based printer Darantiere.
Back in England, Rodker had been approached by one of Joyce’s many benefactors, Harriet Shaw Weaver, 46, publisher of Joyce through her Egoist Press and Egoist magazine.
Weaver has bought the British rights to all Joyce’s work, and she is eager to publish a second edition to follow up the debut of Ulysses this past February, published by the Left Bank bookshop Shakespeare and Company, owned by American ex-pat Sylvia Beach, 35.
Ulysses has been banned in America and confiscated in the UK, so Harriet has determined that the best approach is to have all the production, promotion and administrative work done in Paris, and then ship the books out to other, less tolerant, countries.
Rodker is a good choice for this assignment as he has already founded Ovid Press to publish limited editions, and, as a Conscientious Objector during the Great War, is willing to take risks for his principles.
Joyce, Beach and Weaver look at this second edition as an opportunity to correct the more than 200 typographical errors they’ve found in Shakespeare and Company’s 700-page original. However, rumors are circulating that pirates in the States are hurrying to bring out unauthorized editions. Weaver knows she has to work faster than originally planned. So—no corrections.
From this backroom office Rodker has mailed out flyers trumpeting the publication and then processed the orders. The plan he and Weaver concocted to service the UK customers involves him sending a bulk shipment to a collaborative wholesaler in London who will unbind them, pull them apart, shove sections inside British newspapers to avoid confiscation and tariffs, and then send them to the States via a merchant ship with a first mate who has agreed to serve as their smuggler. The American wholesalers will put each clandestine copy back together and deliver it to middlemen and booksellers.
Weaver will finance the whole operation, including £200 for Rodker’s services.
Rodker’s next step is to receive the shipment of 2,000 copies—complete with typos—from Darantiere tomorrow.
Ulysses, published by the Egoist Press
*****
About a half hour’s walk across the Left Bank, in the basement of the Hotel Verneuil, Rodker’s partner in crime, critic Iris Barry, 27 (actually Sylvia Crump from Birmingham, UK), has set up shop to handle the fulfillment function for individual orders.
Iris Barry
In this small room she has gathered rolls of brown parcel paper, piles of mailing labels, scissors and string. When the books arrive tomorrow, she will wrap and tie up each one individually, write out the address of the brave person in America who has ordered it, and then take Ulysses to the nearby post office in groups of four or five and send them off with a prayer that each will be delivered to its buyer before U. S. Customs starts confiscating them.
*****
In London, Miss Weaver has decided to handle the delivery to local individuals and bookstores herself. Those copies will be sent by Rodker to a private mailing firm. When the Egoist Press receives an order from a bookshop, Harriet plans to pick up the copies from the mailing company and take them—discreetly—to the store which placed the order. There they will keep Ulysses behind the counter until a special customer requests a copy.
Gloucester Place, Marylebone
Although Weaver’s lawyers have advised against it, she is going to keep some copies of Ulysses in her office and her home. Her wealthy family has always supported Harriet’s work for liberal causes but cannot imagine why she is interested in publishing smut. Her brother-in-law laments,
How could she? How could she? An enigma! An enigma!”
Early next year I will be talking about the centenary of the publication of T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land at the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at the University of Pittsburgh, and about The Literary 1920s in Paris and New York City at the Osher program at Carnegie-Mellon University.
Manager as Muse,about Scribner’s editor Maxwell Perkins’ relationships with F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway and Thomas Wolfe, is also available on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk in both print and e-book versions.
SuchFriends Blog 