Unlike Ernest Hemingway in A Moveable Feast, Beach was not mean spirited, nor was she self-obsessed as Gertrude Stein demonstrated herself to be in The Autobiography of Alice B. While not at all literary - Beach had no pretensions to be a writer and in the memoir describes herself as a "plain reader" - the work comes across as honest and heartfelt. During that period, her store was a hub for expatriate writers including Ezra Pound, Ernest Hemingway, F Scott Fizgerald and, most signficantly, James Joyce. Beach was an American woman who operated an English language lending library and bookstore called Shakespeare & Company on Paris' Left Bank from 1919 to 1941*. The third book read in my project to learn more about literary expatriates in 1920s and 1930s Paris, Sylvia Beach's memoir was in many ways the most enjoyable reading experience to date.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |