The Apprentice Writer

by Julien Green, Giovanni Lucera (Introduction), Éric Jourdan (Introduction)

Julian Green, the American-born writer living in Paris who now writes predominantly in French, is intensely aware of how language and personality can change together. It is this insight that he explores in this collection of essays, written originally in English between 1920 and 1946.

Julian Green begins with some fundamental literary inquiries: How does one write a novel? Who am I when I write? Where do the images come from that permit the writer to create an imagined world more real in many ways than everyday life? In answering these and other questions, Julian Green displays the subtle development of his thought and the depth of his interpretative powers.

In The Apprentice Writer Julian Green provides vivid glimpses of the world of the Parisian literary salons in the twenties and thirties and weaves in portraits of the major figures in American and Continental letters whom he knew personally.

This collection also includes the short story 'The Apprentice Psychiatrist', Green's first work of fiction written in English while the author was still a student at the University of Virginia.

Genres: France, Essays

224 pages, Hardcover

First published November 1, 1992

About the author

Julien Green was an American writer, who authored several novels, including Léviathan and Each in His Own Darkness. He wrote primarily in French.