Geniuses Together: American Writers in Paris in the 1920s

by Humphrey Carpenter

, 246 pages with 10 introductory pages illustrated with 16 pages of black and white photographs maps to endpapers

Genres: History, Paris, Nonfiction, Writing, France, Biography, Biography Memoir

Paperback

First published January 1, 1988

About the author

Humphrey William Bouverie Carpenter was an English biographer, writer, and radio broadcaster. He is known especially for his biographies of J.R.R. Tolkien and other members of the literary society the Inklings. He won a Mythopoeic Award for his book The Inklings in 1982.

Reviews

[Illiterate · Rating 2 out of 5]

A chatty history of a bunch of surprisingly insular poseurs.

[Sharon Barrow Wilfong · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was not without it good points. The first couple of chapters give us some history of the first Americans to visit Paris such as Benjamin Franklin, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson. This was as informative as it was interesting. Then we get to the bulk of the book.

A lot of American writers traveled to Paris in the 1920s; for what reason will remain a mystery after you finish reading the book unless you find another source of information about the literary world in Paris and its attraction to Americans.

This book tells us nothing of Gertrude Stein, Alice B. Toklas, Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Sylvia Beach, not to mention T.S. Eliot, Ford Madox Ford and Ezra Pound that isn't found in a thousand other sources.

He spends an inordinate amount of time on writers that have long ago disappeared. Has anyone heard of Robert McAlmon, Kenneth Adams or Kay Boyle? Me neither. They were writers, but I don't know if they were ever successful in their own time. Their writing is not known except perhaps for the most devoted readers of that era.

But they were all part of the group that their more famous counterparts made up and they all bar hopped together and spent most of the day drunk. I don't know if this is supposed to make us think what a jolly lot these bohemians were or that being bohemian is something glamorous and exciting, but to me it all sounded boring.

In fact by the time I finished reading the book I was surprised that any one of them was able to produce anything worth reading at all. I'll assume that they made their sober moments count. Or they were exceptionally talented writers even inebriated.

I did appreciate the map on the inside of the book's cover; having just visited Paris last Christmas, I could place their hang outs in my mind.

All in all, not a bad read, but I would certainly look to other sources for more thorough or original information.

[James Henderson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Humphrey Carpenter has made a career of writing biographies of twentieth century icons - Pound, Auden, Tolkien, and Britten to name a few. He also has chronicled some of the groups of authors that formed friendships either in a certain place or time. No group is more famous than "the lost generation" as Gertrude Stein named them. Carpenter centers his narrative on the rise of Ernest Hemingway and contrasts Papa's rigorous work habits with the hedonistic abandon of most of his Paris contemporaries. It is a valid tool for investigating the period. The author undercuts his thesis, however, by eventually minimizing the impact and importance of Hemingway's works, pointing out that they underwent a critical and popular eclipse later in Hemingway's life. The result is a glimpse into the decade and some of the interplay between these artists.

[Emma Holtrust · Rating 4 out of 5]

Though highly speculative at times, an easy and comprehensive guide of The Lost Generation and the authors who dwelled in Paris in the 1920s. Not the most academic source, but easy to read and very inclusive.

[Dvora Treisman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some of the books about writers and artists in Paris in the 20s and 30s are written by those who were there and who give their first hand accounts. Others are researched and written by those who weren't there. The first person accounts have their obvious strengths, while the researched accounts have theirs, mainly a more likely (but not assured) lack of personal bias or ax to grind, and a broader perspective and access to the writings, memoirs, and letters of all those who were there.

Whereas Noel Riley Fitch's book about Sylvia Beach was probably thoroughly researched, the result was a badly written, encyclopedic volume that had some fine tidbits but was overall boring. Carpenter's book is a pleasure to read. This is not a encyclopedia. It is stories and anecdotes and quotes and pieces of information that tie it all together so that you get a coherent picture of the people and what they were doing and who they were doing it to. Or with.

A fair amount of space is devoted to Hemingway and the writing of The Sun Also Rises. I started to become impatient with how much time and detail Carpenter was spending on that one book. For the most part, he doesn't spend time talking about individual books. Why this one? Because the story behind it and how it came to be written and the effect of it after it was published are a critical element to that time and place in Paris.

Carpenter's book is more about the people than the literature they created. It is a social history composed of small individual portraits. At its core, it's about people and friendship. As Carpenter writes at the end, "The geniuses had mostly turned out not to be geniuses after all. Yet they had been geniuses at being together, drinking together, sleeping together, and quarreling together..."

Maybe that is why he stole McAlmon's title? If so, I almost forgive him.

[Mckeage · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very satisfying history of the American writers who flocked to Paris during the 1920's. It focuses on Hemmingway and the Americans, British and a few Canadians that he socialized with. I loved the epilogue which included what these people did once they went home. No wonder Woody Allen longs to time travel to this Paris.

[Don Cummer · Rating 5 out of 5]

Carter brings to life the "Lost Generation" of Hemingway and Fitzgerald, McAlmon and Boyle, Pound and Joyce, who frequented Montparnasse in the 1920s, and places their contribution into the broader themes of American literature. He has done a very impressive job of bringing together the many and varied accounts of the period, as well as a fascinating analysis of the evolution of the book that captured that scene for later generations and which, according to Carter, signaled the end of the era, "The Sun Also Rises."

[Mark Young · Rating 5 out of 5]

Amazing stuff. So many great anecdotes on the gang of expats and others in the Montparnasse of the 1920's. Title stolen from McAlmon and Boyle, but everything else meticulously researched and so well written. The man is a giant in literary biography.

[Sketchbook]

Robert McAlmon & Kay Boyle wrote, Live from Paris,
a splendid book of the 20s, "Being Geniuses Together."
This copycat title stresses me.

[Susan · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the book that introduced me to the Lost Generation.