Passage de l'Odéon: Sylvia Beach, Adrienne Monnier et la vie littéraire à Paris dans l'entre-deux-guerres

by Laure Murat

496pages. poche. Broché.

Genres: Nonfiction, History, France

512 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published January 1, 2003

Reviews

[Pascale]

How could so much archival research produce such a mess of a book? The fact is, Murat can't think and she can't write. The introduction and he conclusion are identical, strewn with hyperbole and rhetorical questions. When a plain statement would do, more often than not Murat prefers to turn it into a false question, as if that would make it more exciting or prove her point better. I find it aggravating that in spite of all her research, Murat doesn't seem to know whether La Maison des Amis des Livres and Shakespeare & Co. MADE money or LOST money. Murat does mention profitability, and especially the drain on Sylvia's finances when she set about publishing "Ulysses", which involved financing Joyce's entire family, but she never synthesises the information or reach any kind of assessment on the 2 bookshops as businesses. She is just as incoherent on the subject of the relationship between the principals. She seems so star-struck by Adrienne and Sylvia, and keen to perpetuate their legend, that she gives a cartoonish portrait of their relationship. The most irritating instance is how she deals with the disruption created by the advent of Gisèle Freund, whom Adrienne invited to move into their apartment while Sylvia was visiting her folks in the US. When Sylvia returned, she had to move into the apartment above her own bookshop. Freund spent 4 years in Adrienne's apartment, until she was forced to flee Paris in 1940. After that, Sylvia never went back to live in Adrienne's apartment. What gives Murat the confidence to blithely assert that the reshuffling of their living arrangements, seemingly imposed by Adrienne behind Sylvia's back, was a mere technicality without any impact on their feelings for each other? In other words, a useless piece of poor academic writing.

[Leo]

Hyper intéressant, une plume incr, vraiment un plaisir à lire