Pages:
236
Original
date of publication: 1970
My
edition: 2007 (NYRB Classics)
Why
I decided to read:
How
I acquired my copy: Joseph Fox bookstore, Philadelphia, February 2012
In
1928, a young Canadian named John Glassco set out for Paris with his best friend.
The two set out to explore all that the city had to offer: the cafes, bars, and
brasseries that the Americans of the Lost Generation would have been familiar
with as well. Glassco set out to have a literary career and along the way
rubbed shoulders with some of the greats (at one point in this memoir a man
walks into a bar and someone calls him “Ernie;” it took me a while to realize
that yes, it was that Ernie).
Glassco
wrote this memoir as truth, although it’s not completely factual. For example,
Kay Boyle and Djuna Barnes, both important figures of the literary expatriates
of Paris at the time, receive new names; and there is a certain sense of
scintillism to Glassco’s account—probably because the author was so young.
Glassco manages to drop names like bricks (at one point in this memoir a man
walks into a bar and someone calls him “Ernie;” it took me a while to realize
that yes, it was that Ernie).and brag shamelessly (especially about insulting
Gertrude Stein to her face and getting kicked out of one of her parties, but I
thought that was actually quite funny. His description of her: "a rhomboidal woman
dressed in a floor-length gown apparently made of some kind of burlap, she gave
the impression of absolute irrefragability… it was impossible to conceive of
her lying down”).
Again,
though, the tone of the book was probably a result of being so young at the
time the memoir took place and was written (18-22). Glassco ran out of money
along the way and certainly ruined his health, but he enjoyed every moment of
his stay—despite, among other things, being treated for VD and repeated letter
to Come Home from his father, who wanted him to be a lawyer. He describes his
lifestyle with ease: encounters with prostitutes, affairs with famous writers, work
as a pornographer’s model, and homosexual encounters are all detailed. Throughout
the book, Glassco is carefree and hedonistic; unconcerned with
responsibility; he flits through the landscape of literary 1920s Paris without
a care. His story is entertaining, but not wholly believable.
Comments