Left Bank
Page 39
20. Flanner, Paris Journal, 1944–1955, p. 70.
21. Les Temps modernes, March 1947, no18.
22. Theodore H. White, In Search of History (New York: Warner Books, 1978), p. 246.
23. Ibid., p. 251.
24. Ibid.
25. Ibid.
26. “I Tried to Be a Communist,” Atlantic Monthly, vol. 174, no. 2, August 1944.
27. White, In Search of History, p. 260.
28. In a letter to his friend Fig Gwaltney, quoted in J. Michael Lennon, Norman Mailer: A Double Life (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2013), p. 99.
29. Beauvoir, La force des choses, vol. 1, p. 170.
30. Ibid., p. 171.
31. Rowley, Tête-à-tête, p. 175.
32. Simone de Beauvoir, Letters to Sartre (New York: Arcade Publishing, 1991), p. 415.
33. Beauvoir, La force des choses, vol. 1, p. 171.
34. Her diary was later published as a series in Les Temps modernes (from the issue of December 1947, no. 27) and then as a book, L’Amérique au jour le jour (Paris: Gallimard, 1948), later translated into English as America Day by Day.
35. Her diary entry on February 27, 1947, published in the second installment of “L’Amérique au jour le jour,” Les Temps modernes, no. 28, January 1948.
36. Beauvoir, “L’Amérique au jour le jour.”
37. Beauvoir, Letters to Sartre, p. 446.
38. Ibid., p. 447.
39. Beauvoir, “L’Amérique au jour le jour.”
40. Beauvoir, Letters to Sartre, p. 447.
41. Beauvoir, “L’Amérique au jour le jour.”
42. Ibid.
43. Calder Willingham became a screenwriter for, among others, Stanley Kubrick (Paths of Glory, Spartacus), Richard Fleischer (Vikings), Mike Nichols (The Graduate), and Arthur Penn (Little Big Man).
44. Beauvoir, “L’Amérique au jour le jour.”
45. Ibid.
46. Beauvoir, Letters to Sartre, p. 453.
47. The Confédération Générale du Travail was founded in 1895.
48. Flanner, Paris Journal, 1944–1955, p. 70.
49. Lottman, Left Bank, p. 265.
50. Mamaine Koestler, Living with Koestler, p. 52.
51. The text of George C. Marshall’s speech is available at www.oecd.org.
52. White, In Search of History, p. 261.
9. Love, Style, Drugs, and Loneliness
1. Beauvoir, Letters to Sartre, p. 434.
2. Ibid.
3. Which she did. She was buried with it in 1986, five years after his death and twenty-two years after they last spoke.
4. A study of despair and corruption, Sciuscià was no entertainment but “a brilliantly executed social document,” as the critic for the New York Times reluctantly had to admit.
5. Beauvoir, Letters to Sartre, p. 454.
6. Beauvoir, La force des choses, vol.1, pp. 176–77.
7. Ibid., p. 182.
8. Flanner, Paris Journal, 1944–1955, p. 79.
9. Spurling, Girl from the Fiction Department, p. 82.
10. Little did Simone de Beauvoir know that Lucian’s future wife, Caroline Blackwood, a Guinness heiress, would years later elope with her dear friend Nathalie Sorokine’s husband, the Hollywood screenwriter Ivan Moffat.
11. Rowley, Richard Wright, p. 363.
12. Ibid., p. 364.
13. Gréco, Jujube, p. 104.
14. Interview with Agnès Catherine Poirier on January 7, 2014, at her home in Saint-Tropez.
15. As related by Elisabeth Quin in Bel de Nuit (Paris: Grasset, 2007).
16. “This is how the troglodytes of Saint-Germain-des-Prés live” by Robert Jacques, in Samedi Soir, May 3, 1947.
17. Gréco, Jujube, p. 104.
18. Beauvoir, La force des choses, vol. 1, p. 181.
19. According to Olivier Todd during an interview with the author at the Café Le Sélect on December 11, 2013.
20. Rowley, Tête-à-tête, p. 205.
21. Marie-Dominique Lelièvre, Sagan à toute allure (Paris: Denoël, 2008), p. 228.
22. Rowley, Tête-à-tête, p. 205.
23. Cronin, Samuel Beckett: The Last Modernist, p. 386.
24. Ibid., p. 387.
25. Ibid., p. 378.
26. Fonds Édith Thomas, Archives Nationales, quoted in David, Dominique Aury, p. 402.
27. Letter from Dominique Aury to Édith Thomas, August 6, 1947, Fonds Édith Thomas, Archives Nationales, quoted in David, Dominique Aury, p. 406.
28. Quoted in Dorothy Kaufmann, Édith Thomas, passionnément résistante (Paris: Autrement, 2007), p. 186.
10. Action and Dissidence
1. The expression is Zhdanov’s, in a report he wrote about the poet in 1946 for the Politburo. Quoted in Michael Ignatieff, Isaiah Berlin: A Life (New York: Vintage, 2000), p. 166.
2. Ibid.
3. Quoted in Kaufmann, Édith Thomas, passionnément résistante.
4. Chebel d’Appollonia, Histoire politique, p. 142.
5. Simone de Beauvoir, Beloved Chicago Man (London: Victor Gollancz, 1998), p. 69.
6. Ibid., p. 70.
7. Mamaine Koestler, Living with Koestler, p. 53.
8. Todd, Albert Camus, p. 610.
9. Lottman, Left Bank, p. 277.
10. Mamaine Koestler, Living with Koestler, pp. 57–60.
11. According to Simone de Beauvoir it was at the Café de Flore; according to Mamaine Koestler in Living with Koestler, pp. 57–60, it was at the Café des Deux Magots.
12. Speaking of Koestler and Camus. Beauvoir, Beloved Chicago Man, p. 75.
13. Ibid., pp. 78–79.
14. Mamaine Koestler, Living with Koestler, pp. 57–60.
15. Conversations avec le vieil Harold Kaplan.
16. Ibid.
17. Lennon, Norman Mailer, p. 1.
18. Ibid., p. 98.
19. Peter Manso, Mailer: His Life and Times (Simon and Schuster, 1985), p. 113.
20. Rémy Kaufer, “Les grèves insurrectionnelles de 1947,” Historia Magazine 733, January 2008.
21. Les Temps modernes, no. 27, December 1947.
22. Abel, Intellectual Follies, p. 73.
23. Ibid.
24. Mamaine Koestler, Living with Koestler, p. 65.
25. Ibid., pp. 62–70.
26. It was not published until much later.
27. A wordplay, of course, on Les Temps modernes.
28. Scammell, Koestler, p. 307.
29. Beauvoir, Beloved Chicago Man, pp. 97–98.
30. Ibid., p. 98.
31. “La Recherche de l’absolu,” Les Temps modernes, no. 28, January 1948.
“Il n’est pas besoin de regarder longtemps le visage antédiluvien de Giacometti pour deviner son orgueil et sa volonté de se situer au commencement du monde. Il se moque de la Culture et ne croit pas au Progrès, du moins au Progrès dans les Beaux-Arts, il ne se juge pas plus ‘avancé’ que ses contemporains d’élection, l’homme des Eyzies, l’homme d’Altamira. En cette extrème jeunesse de la nature et des hommes, ni le beau ni le laid n’existent encore, ni le goût, ni les gens de goût; ni la critique: tout est à faire. Pour la première fois l’idée vient à un homme de tailler un homme dans un bloc de pierre. Voilà donc le modèle: l’homme. Ni dictateur, ni général, ni athlèt
e, il ne possède pas encore ces dignités et ces chamarrures qui séduiront les sculpteurs de l’avenir. Ce n’est qu’une longue silhouette indistincte qui marche à l’horizon.”
32. Sartre had been offered a weekly one-hour series to produce and present on French state radio in September 1947, but “La Tribune des Temps modernes” was canceled on December 3, 1947, after Sartre’s anti-Gaullist tone went too far for the public broadcaster’s taste.
33. David Rousset, a résistant, had been a prisoner, first at Buchenwald then at Neuengamme, between 1943 and 1945.
34. Beauvoir, La force des choses, p. 206.
35. Beauvoir, Beloved Chicago Man, p. 188.
36. Quoted in Chebel d’Appollonia, Histoire politique, p. 162.
37. Mamaine Koestler, Living with Koestler, pp. 72–74.
38. Flanner, Paris Journal, 1944–1955, April 2, 1948, p. 82.
39. Ibid.
40. Ibid.
41. Mamaine Koestler, Living with Koestler, letter of January 13, 1948, pp. 72–74.
42. As reported by Harvey Breit, the New York Times journalist in charge of covering Arthur Koestler’s U.S. trip. “A Visit with Arthur Koestler,” New York Times, April 4, 1948.
43. Scammell, Koestler, p. 318.
44. In a letter dated April 1, 1948, quoted in ibid., p. 320.
45. Flanner, Paris Journal, 1944–1955, June 14, 1948, p. xx.
46. Wineapple, Genêt, p. 213.
47. Ibid., p. 207.
48. Ibid., p. 209.
49. Cronin, Samuel Beckett: The Last Modernist, pp. 386–94.
50. The writer Claude Roy, quoted in Lottman, Left Bank, p. 241.
51. Ibid.
52. Chebel d’Appollonia, Histoire politique, vol. 2, pp. 32–37.
53. Morin, Autocritique, p. 68.
54. Ibid.
55. “La technique de Citizen Kane,” in Les Temps modernes, no. 17, February 1947.
“Flaubert n’a pas inventé l’imparfait, non plus que Gide le passé simple, ou Camus le passé composé, mais l’emploi qu’ils font de ces temps leur est personnel. Encore faudrait-il ajouter à l’actif de Welles que s’il n’a pas découvert ces procédés, il a du moins inventé leur sens. Son écriture cinématographique lui appartient incontestablement.
“Évoquer comme le fait Georges Sadoul, l’emploi antérieur de certains procédés, pour en contester la propriété à Orson Welles, c’est oublier que l’invention appartient à ceux qui s’en rendent maîtres.”
56. Aline Desjardins, Aline Desjardins s’entretient avec François Truffaut (Paris: Ramsay, 1987).
57. As recorded by Himes in his 1972 autobiography The Quality of Hurt: The Early Years, quoted in Rowley, Richard Wright, p. 373.
58. Rowley, Richard Wright, p. 373.
59. Flanner, Paris Journal, 1944–1955, June 14, 1948, p. 82.
11. “Paris’s Gloom Is a Powerful Astringent”
1. Beauvoir, Beloved Chicago Man, p. 142.
2. Ibid.
3. Michelle Perrot, Histoires de chambres (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 2009), p. 244.
4. Lennon, Norman Mailer, p. 103.
5. Shaw, Paris! Paris!, p. 94.
6. Norman Mailer, “The Art of Fiction,” no. 32, interviewed by Steven Marcus, Paris Review, Winter/Spring 1964.
7. Ibid.
8. Mary V. Dearborn, Mailer: A Biography (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1999), p. xx.
9. Lennon, Norman Mailer, p. 103.
10. Ibid., p. 99.
11. Dearborn, Mailer, p. 59.
12. Beauvoir, Beloved Chicago Man, p. 179.
13. Ibid., p. 181.
14. Michel Leiris, Journal 1922–1989 (Paris: Gallimard, 1992), pp. 462–63.
15. Ibid., p. 463.
16. Flanner, Paris Journal, 1944–1955, October 1, 1953, p. 215.
17. Ibid., May 26, 1948, p. 87.
18. Ibid., May 11, 1949, p. 101.
19. Ibid., May 26, 1948, p. 103.
20. Beauvoir, Beloved Chicago Man, p. 208.
21. The writer Claude Roy, quoted in Lottman, Left Bank, p. 241.
22. Quoted in Spurling, Girl from the Fiction Department, p. 89.
23. Simone de Beauvoir thought for years that Zaza had died of a broken heart after Merleau-Ponty refused to marry her. In fact, it was her parents who didn’t deem Merleau-Ponty’s family respectable enough for their daughter. In Deirdre Blair, Simone de Beauvoir: A Biography (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1990), p. 153.
24. Mamaine Koestler, Living with Koestler, p. 87.
25. Todd, Albert Camus, p. 665.
26. Raymond Queneau, “Si tu t’imagines,” in L’instant fatal (Paris: Gallimard, 1948).
27. François Forestier, Un si beau monstre (Paris: Albin Michel, 2012).
28. She confided this during an interview on January 7, 2014, at her home in Saint-Tropez.
29. Marlon Brando was born in 1924, Juliette Gréco in 1927.
IV. SHARPENING THE SENSES
12. “They Owned Art While We Were Just Full of Dollars”
1. Flanner, Paris Journal, 1944–1955, June 23, 1948, p. 91.
2. Ibid., p. 92.
3. Cazalis, Les mémoires d’une Anne, p. 106.
4. “Nés en 1925,” Les Temps modernes, no. 32, May 1948.
5. “Chief Prophet of Existentialism” by John L. Brown, in New York Times Magazine, February 2, 1947.
6. Art Buchwald, I’ll Always Have Paris (New York: Ballantine, 1996), p. 2.
7. Ibid., pp. 2–9.
8. Ibid.
9. Ibid.
10. Ibid.
11. Wadja was still there when I last checked in the spring of 2016. Art Buchwald went back thirty years later and cried when he saw that it was still run by the same owners. Buchwald, I’ll Always Have Paris, p. 20.
12. Ibid., pp. 2–9.
13. Ibid., p. 34.
14. Abel, Intellectual Follies, p. 106.
15. Ibid.
16. Seaver, Tender Hour of Twilight, pp. 82–90.
17. Ibid., p. 103.
18. Jack Youngerman in interview: Jack Youngerman talks with Collette Robert, Archives of American Art Journal 17, no. 4, 1977.
19. In a letter to Henry Volkening, September 27, 1948. In Saul Bellow: Letters, edited by Benjamin Taylor (New York: Viking, 2010), p. 63.
20. Saul Bellow, “My Paris,” New York Times, March 13, 1983.
21. James Atlas, Saul Bellow: A Biography (New York: Random House, 2000), p. 140.
22. Ibid., p. 139.
23. Julian Behrstock settled in Paris for life and had a three-decade-long career with UNESCO. He entered the Department of Mass Information of UNESCO in 1948 as head of the World Programme for Book Development.
24. Atlas, Saul Bellow, p. 138.
25. Saul Bellow, The Adventures of Augie March (1953; New York: Penguin Books, 2006).
26. Bellow in the New York Times Book Review in 1959, as quoted by Sam Tanenhaus in his review of Zachary Leader’s The Life of Saul Bellow: To Fame and Fortune, published in the New York Times Sunday Book Review on April 27, 2015.
27. Bellow, “My Paris.”
28. Saul Bellow, “The French as Dostoevsky Saw Them,” New Republic, February 23, 2010.