Sylvia Beach and the Lost Generation by Noël Riley Fitch

I found it an engaging work overall, although my lack of familiarity with less well-known English and American writers of the period and with French literary figures of the early 20th century made some parts of the work significantly less interesting than others. Direct all other inquiries to Benstock’s Women of the Left Bank and “Paris was a Woman.” (There is also Andrea Weiss’ Paris was a Woman: Portraits form the Left Bank, which I’m guessing, sight unseen, is probably dynamite.) ( )Įarlier this year I read Sylvia Beach’s memoir of the 1920s and 1930s in Paris,, named for the English language bookshop and lending library she founded in 1922. It is thoroughly researched on the day in and day out history of Shakespeare and Company. If you’re interested in who borrowed what book from Shakespeare and Company on which particular day, and if you delight in hearing just how big of an ass James Joyce was, take a gander at this book. This is an aspect that is hastily glossed over by Fitch, who sums this up in one line by saying “Eros channeled into sorority yielded both personal and literary fruits.” “Fruits”…ha! Said with humor, that would be a pun almost worthy of Beach herself unfortunately, Fitch uses it as a whitewash to cover the likes of Beach and Monnier, Stein and Toklas, Flanner and Solano, Barney and every woman on the face of the earth…take your pick. In this case Beach’s muse, Adrienne Monnier, goes a long way toward explaining Shakespeare and Company. What explains Beach’s work at that particular time and place is better covered by Benstock-women of the Left Bank were drawn to Paris by a freedom that allowed them to take the other women in their lives as their muse.

That should go without saying (rather than saying it over 400 pages). Of course Sylvia Beach was dedicated to literature, etc., etc., blah, blah, blah. Exhaustive almost to the point of tedium, Fitch’s work covers much of the same ground as Shari Benstock’s Women of the Left Bank and the documentary “Paris was a Woman.” Fitch’s approach, however, is the more banal one.

Sylvia Beach and the Lost Generation by Noël Riley Fitch