Montparnasse: Paris's District of Memory and Desire

Great Parisian Neighborhoods #3

by John Baxter

In the third portrait of his series Great Parisian Neighborhoods, award-winning raconteur John Baxter takes readers on a dazzling excursion of Montparnasse.

By the IACP Award-winning author of the national bestseller The Most Beautiful Walk in the World, MONTPARNASSE reveals the history and present delights of the iconic neighborhood that is best associated with the vibrant 1920-30s-era Paris—a romantic time and place evoked in Hemingway's memoir A Moveable Feast and Henry Miller's Tropic of Cancer. From the first meeting of Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald to their friendship's bitter conclusion; from the courage of the anti-Nazi resistance to the clubs where German generals partied; from the attempted murder of Samuel Beckett to the rise of Josephine Baker to stardom; from the high life of the Coupole and the Cafe du Dôme to the bawdy music halls of rue de la Gaité; no Paris quarter has witnessed more tumultuous events than Montparnasse.

In a ground-breaking reappraisal of this most glamorous of Paris's districts, Baxter looks beyond the nostalgia to the secret history of Montparnasse, a district where desire effaced memory and every taste could be satisfied—even those which were unexpressed. If, as Oscar Wilde suggested, all good Americans went to Paris when they died, it was Montparnasse that brought them back to life.

Genres: Travel, Nonfiction, France, History

272 pages, Paperback

Published October 19, 2017

About the author

John Baxter (born 1939 in Randwick, New South Wales) is an Australian-born writer, journalist, and film-maker.

Baxter has lived in Britain and the United States as well as in his native Sydney, but has made his home in Paris since 1989, where he is married to the film-maker Marie-Dominique Montel. They have one daughter, Louise.

He began writing science fiction in the early 1960s for New Worlds, Science Fantasy and other British magazines. His first novel, though serialised in New Worlds as THE GOD KILLERS, was published as a book in the US by Ace as The Off-Worlders. He was Visiting Professor at Hollins College in Virginia in 1975-1976. He has written a number of short stories and novels in that genre and a book about SF in the movies, as well as editing collections of Australian science fiction.

Baxter has also written a large number of other works dealing with the movies, including biographies of film personalities, including Federico Fellini, Luis Buñuel, Steven Spielberg, Stanley Kubrick, Woody Allen, George Lucas and Robert De Niro. He has written a number of documentaries, including a survey of the life and work of the painter Fernando Botero. He also co-produced, wrote and presented three television series for the Australian Broadcasting Commission, Filmstruck, First Take and The Cutting Room, and was co-editor of the ABC book programme Books And Writing.

In the 1960s, he was a member of the WEA Film Study Group with such notable people as Ian Klava, Frank Moorhouse, Michael Thornhill, John Flaus and Ken Quinnell. From July 1965 to December 1967 the WEA Film Study Group published the cinema journal FILM DIGEST. This journal was edited by John Baxter.

For a number of years in the sixties, he was active in the Sydney Film Festival, and during the 1980s served in a consulting capacity on a number of film-funding bodies, as well as writing film criticism for The Australian and other periodicals. Some of his books have been translated into various languages, including Japanese and Chinese.

Since moving to Paris, he has written four books of autobiography, A Pound of Paper: Confessions of a Book Addict, We'll Always Have Paris: Sex and Love in the City of Light, Immoveable feast : a Paris Christmas, and The Most Beautiful Walk in the World : a Pedestrian in Paris.

Since 2007 he has been co-director of the annual Paris Writers Workshop.

Reviews

[Pam · Rating 3 out of 5]

A short little social history the neighborhood of Montparnasse. Not surprisingly it focuses on the characters who inhabited the district in the twentieth century. That is really the heart of the book. I’d have given it 4 stars had the writing had a little more oomph.

[Forest Collins · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book gives the reader the flavour of the Montparnasse neighbourhood back in its historic heyday. It's not just entertaining to read about the famous artists and writers of the left bank, but also the lesser-known but very colorful characters like the ex-Jesuit seminarian sensualist who joined the surrealists or the Native American fire swallower who stuck himself with pins all day in front of the Dome until the police finally stopped him. Sometimes its hard to know if these stories of the degenerate, pleasure-seeking, freeloading, wild-living Mantparnos are 100% fact or there's a touch of romantic fiction woven in. But regardless of the nitty-gritty details, you get the general idea of life in the 14th in another era.

[Susan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Never been to Paris, may never go but I love to read about it. I got an Advance Reader Copy so it didn't have the map in it but this book was like taking a walk with a really smart friend around his neighborhood. Every building and intersection reminds him of a story. A little history, a little literature, a little literary history as well as sociology, psychology and gossip, all painless and geographically contextual. He's no John McPhee (nobody is) but he could be my second-favorite nonfiction writer.

[Laura Brose · Rating 4 out of 5]

This seemingly trivial and unassuming little book contains a deep dive into the ultra-local history of a region of Paris called Montparnesse which dates back to before the English-speaking Paris-visiting readership for this book would come to exist. It was fascinating to find out that Montparnesse was initially separate from Paris and had been a smaller, simpler area which would later become engulfed by urban sprawl and incorporated into what would become a major city, in a similar way to the 5 boroughs of New York City, one of which had actually previously been a city of its own.
The US and UK expat community, many of whom lived in Montparnesse, were instrumental in giving Paris its reputation for avant-garde literature and the arts. Baxter gives the reader biographical sketches of several such interesting individuals and information about how they made reputations for themselves which echo through history long after their deaths.
Though Montparnesse was a working-class area as far as the locals were concerned, Baxter points out that due to a foreign currency exchange rate that was favorable to the US Dollar and the UK pound versus the French Franc, expats from those countries living in what was at the time an inexpensive area of Paris could buy studio space and leisure time (often in the form of hiring local household staff and/or not having to work a regular job) to free them up for creative pursuits even though some of them were really not very good. Disposable income and copious spare time enabled these putative artists, photographers, and literary figures to support area cafes at which these people networked and could quickly and easily meet others in the literary and artistic scene.
Art schools in the region also multiplied, and an open market for the services of nude models took place in the area as well.
Eventually the party was over for various reasons, and while at least one of the cafes where the famed artsy types would hang out still exists, like NYC's SOHO and Greenwich Village, gentrification came and as far as I know, it is no longer possible to exist for an extended time period as an expat starving artist living in a garret over there.
I also liked that the author included "the human element" making mention of some people he knew in the present day for whom a vestige of the region's reputation for the arts and cafes continues, as well as their sensibilities and opinions. No A.i. is going to accomplish that.
This is the first book written by Baxter I have read. I don't know if I will ever get to go to France, but I hope to find out if his other books about different areas of Paris stand up to the research in different areas, quality and ability to hold the reader's interest demonstrated by this one.

[Dan Zukowski · Rating 4 out of 5]

John Baxter knows whereof he walks. The Australian-born author, screenwriter and journalist has spent the past three decades living in Paris, much of it walking in the footsteps of Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Gertrude Stein and their compatriots. At 80, he still gives walking tours to the literary landmarks that dot the districts of the Left Bank.

By my count, Baxter has written eight books that serve as guides to the Paris of arts and letters, and at least two on the city’s history. I have, to date, consumed three of them, “Hemingway’s Paris: A User’s Guide,” “Montparnasse: Paris's District of Memory and Desire” and “Saint-Germain-des-Pres: Paris’s Rebel Quarter.”

I came to Baxter’s books by way of my own meanderings through the 5th, 6th and 7th arrondissements, my conversations about Hemingway with a fellow writer and friend, and the English-lit major in me that won’t go away.

I had only recently read “A Moveable Feast,” the posthumously-published memoir of Hemingway’s life in Paris in the 1920s, when I realized on an early-October morning that I was sitting at a cafe barely 100 feet from the author’s first Paris apartment. Baxter describes it as a “a two-room cold-water walk-up in a building of Dickensian bleakness” in what was then a squalid area populated by drunks and the homeless.

After just a couple of years, Hemingway and his wife, Hadley, would relocate to Montparnasse and Saint-Germain, areas that drew American ex-patriates including Fitzgerald, Henry Miller, Ezra Pound and Hart Crane. The rattan-chair cafes were their crossroads: the Cafe du Dome, La Rotonde, La Coupole and Le Select provided impromptu meetings, places to write, eat and consume much drink.

Baxter takes us also to Shakespeare & Company (not the one tourists take selfies in front of now, but the original bookshop on rue de l'Odéon), where proprietor Sylvia Beach nurtured the literati. And, in Baxter’s pages, we meet Gertrude Stein, the doyen of the inter-war Paris art scene, who took Hemingway under her influential wing.

The streets of Paris are haunted by the ghosts of writers past. Read any of these books by John Baxter to walk in their footsteps, whether truly on Parisian boulevards or kilometers away on a comfy couch.

[Marie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Australian ex-pat Baxter portrays Montparnasse and its adventurers (!) of the late 19th to mid 20th centuries as a community of creatives, outcasts, off-the-walls and, well, outrageously louche. He captures, in his chapters, the vitality and excessive behaviours of artists, authors, prostitutes and all and sundry types of performers. I enjoyed his short anecdotes, which to me read a bit like Rick Steves - it's not a deep biography of true Parisians, but those expats who landed and played games there. Of interest to readers of Hemingway, Fitzgerald and other self-important early 20th century authors. My favourite bit is his location of the notorious Le Sphinx (Now Demolished). It's now a really great Monoprix, and I still have some items I purchased there from my time in Montparnasse well, um, a few years ago. What a warm read on a blustery January day.

[Sesana · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very interesting, but I do wish it hadn't focused so narrowly on basically 15 years. Almost the entire book is made up of stuff that happened between 1920 and 1935, and while there are some interesting characters involved, I just wanted to read more about everything else that had happened in Montparnasse.

[Rebekah · Rating 5 out of 5]

A quick tour of Montparnasse during the 1920s retracing the footsteps of Picasso, Gertrude Stein, Hemingway, F. Scot Fitzgerald, Salvador Dali, Man Ray, Josephine Baker, Sylvia Beach, Ezra Pound and others. I took copius notes for my upcoming trip to Montparnasse and I can't wait to check out some of the cafes and studios which were visited by many.

[Laura · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautiful guide with pictures, essays, and maps is the area. Really brings Montparnasse to life- it felt like visiting during the 18th century through the 1920s. Very enjoyable little book!


Thanks to the publisher for the copy and goodreads for hosting a giveaway.

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pretty good -- a literary and arts tour of Montparnasse, mostly regarding the 20s. If you're up on your Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Stein, Josephine Baker, Man Ray, Modigliano, etc., you could skip this book. If you want a mental map of what was going on, read. It is not a tour guide, though.

[Jen · Rating 5 out of 5]

I enjoyed this book, very informative and interesting.

[Susan White-Riggs · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting read, makes me want to time walk back to Paris and see all the craziness.

[Gregg · Rating 2 out of 5]

Mildly interesting. But after reading it there was nothing I added to my list of "Places I want to visit in Paris." I would expect a book like this to generate several sites like that.

[Bibliomama · Rating 4 out of 5]

Rollicking fun.

[Helynne · Rating 4 out of 5]

Once again, John Baxter, a transplant from Australia, shows his extensive historical and cultural knowledge of Paris, this time of the funky Left Bank quartier of Montparnasse and the glitterati and intellectuals who hung out there, particularly during Baxter’s era of expertise, the 1920s. First of all, the author warns readers not to confuse or include Montparnasse with the nearby region of Saint Germain des Prés with its Latin Quarter because each area has its distinct ambiance and particular charm. The name Montparnasse comes from a mountain in Greece called Parnassus, home of Apollo and the nine Muses who inspired creativity. During the 18th century “students from the religious schools of the Latin Quarter panting up the hill at the southern limit of Paris, may have looked back at the city . . . and [felt they were on] their own Parnassus” (13). Poet Apollinaire once called Montparnasse “a quarter of crazies.” But if they were mad, says Baxter, it was a fine wild madness with a touch about it of the poet. Those first drunken student explorers of this hill had been right. There were muses here” (223). Baxter focuses largely on several cafés that “Montparnos” especially love, all built just after World War I, and all still in existence: Café du Dôme, La Rotonde, La Coupole, and Le Sélect (where Picasso would come to dine, then draw a sketch on the back of the bill in lieu of payment), all located close together. The ambiance in each was so lively that Ernest Hemingway would often go several blocks away to the quieter Closerie des Lilas to write. The Dingo Bar (based on the French word dingue, meaning “crazy”) became the informal club house for thousands of U.S. expats who flocked to Paris during the Jazz Age. (The Dingo was, in fact the spot where Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald first met). This literary tour includes a description the gangly Tour Montparnasse (once called the second ugliest building in the world, beat out only by Boston’s City Hall). Parisians were so outraged at the 1969 high-rise that they reverted to Baron Haussmann’s 19th-century admonition to build no structures higher than seven stories within the city limits. At the base of tower is the Gare Montparnasse, where trains bring visitors from Spain and Africa, and where cinema pioneer Georges Méliès once disappeared into obscurity as a toy seller. The book includes a picture from the famous wreck of 1895 in which a locomotive crashed through the outer second-floor wall of the station and nose-dived onto the pavement below. (No one on the train was hurt, but what a photo op). There are some explicit descriptions of the sexploits of Alice "Kiki" Prin, the infamous "Queen of Montparnasse," and a discussion of Henry Miller's Tropic of Cancer, which was first published in Montparnasse. (Baxter includes a pretty heavy pornographic quote from the novel). Another chapter gives the background of the Montparnasse Cemetery, once a potter’s field, or burial ground for the “anonymous dead,” and now the resting place of Charles Baudelaire, Man Ray, Samuel Beckett, Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, and other luminaries. Baxter include chapters on many other landmarks and historic tidbits that make Montparnasse a fascinating portion of the City of Light.