John Baxter proposes some lively literary discussion on THE WILDER SHORES OF BOHEMIA via the Paris Writers' Salon...with Samuel Lopez Barrantes...

 

John Baxter, Samuel Lopez Barrrantes

Bonjour Everyone,

 

We’re pleased to announce the latest session of the Paris Writers’ Salon. I hope you can join Samuel and myself for some more lively literary discussion.

 

A bientot, on espere,

 

John

 

The Paris Writers’ Salon

The Paris Writers’ Salon is a series of 4 weekly Zoom Sessions chaired by John Baxter & Samuél Lopez Barrantes at John’s apartment, high above the sixth arrondissement, in the building where Sylvia Beach lived when she ran the original Shakespeare and Company bookstore. 18 rue de l’Odéon has welcomed the greatest names in modern literature: James Joyce, Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Gertrude Stein, Djuna Barnes, Anais Nin and Henry Miller, all of whom left their mark on the street, as it left its mark on them.

 

JULY Salon Schedule

Two novels this time, both by women, one British, one American, each set in Paris but at very different times and in vastly differing milieux, plus John Baxter’s Paris at the End of the World, which delves into life in Paris during World War I. As usual, a fourth session is devoted to discussion and elucidation.

Every Sunday at 1pm EST July 17 - August 7, 2022

 

Sunday, JULY 17th

QUARTET by Jean Rhys - 1928

British writer Jean Rhys had a stormier career than many Paris expatriates, sharing a ménage à trois with American writer Ford Madox Ford and his Australian wife while staying one step ahead of the police. The Paris of this 1928 novel, her first, is more seedy, smelly and sexy than that of Hemingway or Stein, a city in which Dashiell Hammett and Humphrey Bogart would have been right at home.

 

Sunday, JULY 24th

LE DIVORCE  by Diane Johnson - 1997

Don’t be misled by the French title of this entirely English-language 1997 novel (and at all costs avoid the mediocre film version). Diane Johnson’s social comedy is the most amusing portrait of Franco-American relations since Henry James. A suave older Frenchman educates a young American in sex and savoir faire while their families squabble over an old master painting. That Diane Johnson has lived in Paris for decades shows in her witty dissection of oddities on both sides of the Atlantic. 

 

Sunday,JULY 31

PARIS AT THE END OF THE WORLD by John Baxter - 2014

The City of Light During the Great War 1914-1918. The Germans never reached Paris in 1914 but for four years hovered just over the horizon, inducing unique tensions among its inhabitants and artists. Guided by such witnesses as Marcel Proust, Jean Cocteau and Ernest Hemingway, John Baxter evokes the often-surrealist atmosphere of Paris at war while reconstructing the military career of his grandfather, an Aussie “digger” adrift in an alien Europe.

 

Sunday,AUGUST 7

Open Forum Salon

As usual, the last session opens up to thoughts and suggestions. If earlier Salons are any guide, the conversation will range far and wide and provide a lively discussion to bookend the fourth rendition of the Paris Writers’ Salon. 

 

For bookingswalks@johnbaxterparis.com