The Paris Pilgrims

Set among the legendary literati and libertines of 1920s Paris, the late Carlile's (Children of the Dust) quasifictional account of Ernest Hemingway's adventures as a Left Bank expatriate is a titillating, if far-fetched, cornucopia of big names, gossip and sexual intrigue. Published to mark Hemingway's centenary birthday, the narrative runs amok with the reputations of such well-known figures as James Joyce, Gertrude Stein, Sylvia Beach, Ezra Pound, Djuna Barnes and Hilda Doolittle. Cameo appearances often seem contrived (Edna St. Vincent Millay caught in a sapphic kiss at Natalie Barney's salon), as do repeated walk-ons by the likes of Picasso, Braque, Colette and Cocteau. Opening with a name-dropping Hemingway meeting Sylvia Beach at Shakespeare and Company, her Paris bookstore, the book closes with Beach name-dropping as she tearfully sends the Hemingways back to the States. Among other people who turn up in this maze of artistic celebrities is a sniveling, frail ""Jim"" Joyce, who's given to scatological and submissive fantasies, and is, of course, sloshed, and ""ambisexual"" publisher/writer Robert McAlmon, who is married to the wealthy poet Bryher, who is shacked up with her lover, the poet H.D., in the Alps. Hemingway and his wife, Hadley, spend most of their time in Paris hungover after drinking debauches, scrounging for cash and angling for patrons and publishers. The Hemingway portrayed here is a pompous pugilist who generally loses his matches, a man unduly fixated on seducing, and having his wife seduced by, lesbians, while at the same time his violent disgust for male homosexuality thinly disguises his own latent tendencies. Hem's selfish whining and flailing quickly turns tiresome, especially when Hadley becomes pregnant and he obsesses over a possible abortion. Annoying character portrayals aside, this episodic yarn is undeniably entertaining, with such episodes as the Venetian police busting Cole Porter's spicy soiree, Hemingway overcome with lust for Gertrude Stein, and a covey of literary wives steamed at their unflattering portraits in husbands' fiction. Less a coherent novel than a hodgepodge of irreverent, decadent tall tales, it is a good summer read for those who enjoy voyeuristic gossip about the talented and famous. (July)