Review: Memoirs of Montparnasse

Memoirs of Montparnasse by John Glassco
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

“O Paris dawns, you are always beautiful, I think, no matter what the weather, but there was never one more beautiful than on that bitter morning in early March in 1928, with a sky of ashes and the tall houses grey and cold, the streets wet and only a few lights showing in the little cafés where the chauffeurs take their breakfasts and brandy. It was all too soon when I arrived at the Jules-César and staggered up the stairs to our windowless little room, where I vomited in the bidet and fell into bed with a sensation of pure happiness.” 

I was extremely ready not to like this book. An obviously overly-privileged college student decides he wants to become a poet, so he quits school and has his father cover his trip to Paris to "write poetry" with a friend. In fact, I expected to read a chapter or two and toss it aside. 

I ended up not only reading the whole thing, but spent a lot of time online researching the people and places he mentions. Glassco fully describes a lost era in Paris, when artists, writers and others mingled together, from royalty to prostitutes, all partying together, drinking too much, mooching off each other, and discussing literature and poetry. Aside from Hemingway and Joyce, we encounter Man Ray, Kiki, Ford Maddox Ford, Peggy Guggenheim, and many others (many with pseudonyms). The conversation is both scintillating and extremely trite, while the author goes around Paris, Luxembourg, Nice and Montecarlo, living both the high life and being homeless and working as a prostitute. 

I was somewhat surprised at how little overlap there seemed to be with Giacometti's biography, which I recently finished. He also lived in Paris in the 1920s, and interacted with plenty of artists, like Picasso, Max Ernst, etc. But I guess there were enough famous people for there to be many different circles. 

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