cover image The Continual Pilgrimage: American Writers in Paris, 1944-1960

The Continual Pilgrimage: American Writers in Paris, 1944-1960

Christopher Sawyer-Laucanno. Grove Press, $22.5 (345pp) ISBN 978-0-8021-1371-9

The experience of the ``Lost Generation'' in the 1920s was not unique: after the Second World War, Paris once again became a haven for expatriate American writers, shows Sawyer-Laucanno ( The Invisible Spectator , a biography of Paul Bowles). After setting the stage with an account of the old guard--Hemingway, Gertrude Stein and Sylvia Beach--at the time of the city's liberation from the Nazis, the author introduces his main characters, singularly and in groups: Richard Wright and James Baldwin; the literary cliques centered around the Olympia Press and the founders of the Paris Review ; Chester Himes; Irwin Shaw and James Jones; Harry Mathews and John Ashbery; Lawrence Ferlinghetti and even Beats such as William Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg. Figure by figure, Sawyer-Laucanno composes an impressive mosaic of the Parisian American literary scene. Detailing the material and social conditions that these writers found in Paris, Sawyer-Laucanno discusses how that city empowered them in ways that American cities could not have. His well-considered literary biographies succeed in capturing an important cultural moment. Photos not seen by PW. (Sept.)