The Left Bank: Writers, Artists, and Politics from the Popular Front to the Cold War

by Herbert R. Lottman

This story begins in the Paris of the 1930s, when artists and writers stood at the center of the world stage. In the decade that saw the rise of the Nazis, much of the thinking world sought guidance from this extraordinary group of intellectuals. Herbert Lottman's chronicle follows the influential players—Gide, Malraux, Sartre, de Beauvoir, Koestler, Camus, and their pro-Fascist counterparts—through the German occupation, Liberation, and into the Cold War, when the struggle between superpowers all but drowned out their voices.

"Surprisingly fresh and intense. . . . A retrospective travelogue of the Left Bank in the days when it was the setting for almost all French intellectual activity. . . . Absorbing."—Naomi Bliven, New Yorker

"As an introduction to a period in French history already legendary, The Left Bank is superb."—Michael Dirda, Washington Post Book World

"An intellectual history. A history of the interaction between politics and letters. And a rumination on the limitless credulity of intellectuals."—Christopher Hitchens, New Statesman

Genres: History, Nonfiction, France

335 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1982

About the author

Herbert Lottman was an American journalist and author who spend most of his life in France.
He majored in English and biology at the University of New York, graduating in 1948 and earned a master’s in English from Columbia in 1951.
In 1956 he moved to Paris and became the manager of the Paris branch of the publisher Farrar, Straus and Giroux. He also was writing for Publishers Weekly for four decades and wrote a novel, Detours From the Grand Tour.
But he is most reknowned for his biographies on French personalities and his writings on French intellectual life.

Reviews

[Dylan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Quotes:

For Henry Miller, the political drama of the 1930s was a nuisance that interfered with his living and working in Paris.

Collaborative novel: Daniel Halevy and Charles Peguy on Cahiers de la Quinzaine

Did those who came to prominence between 1940 and 1944 (Sartre, Camus, Beauvoir) realize that their careers had been facilitated by the vacuum created by the Nazis, and that their competition had often become prisoners and inmates of concentration camps, unable to speak, to write, to publish?

Jean Galtier-Boissiere: Some blew up trains / Others touched up quatrains.

Ilya Ehrenberg would comment on the declining importance of artists and writers and the rise of scientists, when the development of atomic energy made it a great deal more important to listen to scientists than to poets.

[Santiago Gonzales · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very thorough book on the political leanings of writers of the left bank of Paris. They wielded enormous influence on politics between the world wars culminating in a writing war between the fascist minority and the more common communist. A large section of the writer's community was heavily under the influence of Stalin and there was a large denial of the atrocities that occurred. It seemed to me that the intellectuals were much less about communist doctrine and more against fascist and capitalist exploitation. Alas, after the war they found themselves politically inconsequential outside of France. It was the end of France as the intellectual center of the universe.

[Tony Gualtieri · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was interesting to learn about the behavior of intellectuals before, during and after the occupation; but on the whole, the book is flat and fails to show the relevance of these thinkers to the broader world. It's a history of relationships and not ideas.