The Paris Writers’ Salon
For the time being, The Paris Writers’ Salon remains virtual. It is a series of 4 weekly Zoom Sessions chaired by John Baxter & Samuél Lopez-Barrantes at John’s apartment, high above the sixth arrondissement, in the building where Sylvia Beach lived when she ran the original Shakespeare and Company bookstore. 18 rue de l’Odéon has welcomed the greatest names in modern literature: James Joyce, Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Gertrude Stein, Djuna Barnes, Anais Nin and Henry Miller, all of whom left their mark on the street, as it left its mark on them.
John and Samuél toasting at the end of a successful Salon session — Next Salon starting April 14, 2024 (see below for details)
The 4-week program costs €300. This price includes access to all lectures (as well as recordings) and recommendations to help guests on their 4-week virtual journey to the City of Light.
Enrolment is limited to 20 guests.
Please make PayPal payment in full
Salon no. 13: A Vintage Season
There are a few eras in the arts when everything goes right: painter meets model, writer encounters muse, performer discovers instrument, lovers’ eyes meet. Paris between 1925 and 1927 was such a time, and in this 13th Salon we discuss three books that capture the city of those years and its expatriate writers with exceptional vividness and clarity.
Every Sunday at 7pm CET
April 14 - May 5 2024
Watson is a dedicated Salon member
Sunday, April 14
The Great GaTsby by
F. Scott Fitzgerald(1925)
“There are no second acts in American lives,” observed Fitzgerald, then demonstrated its truth in his own career. A meteoric rise sputtered out in the indifferent reviews and mediocre sales of The Great Gatsby, acknowledged today as the Great American Novel. When Fitzgerald died in 1940 at 44 years old, none of his books were in print and royalties for the year totalled a mere $13.13.
Sunday, April 21
The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway (1926)
When Donald Ogden Stewart introduced Hemingway to Fitzgerald at the Dingo Bar in Montparnasse, it was Fitzgerald, a top scenarist and writer for Vanity Fair, who was the undisputed star. Hemingway parodies him in The Sun Also Rises as boozy Bill Gorton, mocking the exiles, professionally “lost”, as they run with the bulls at Pamplona or loiter in Parisian cafés.
Sunday, April 28
Memoirs of Montparnasse by John Glassco (1969)
18-year-old Canadian Glassco was an observant fly on the wall of expatriate Paris in 1927/8. He completed this chatty, often hilarious, sometimes scurrilous memoir after returning home in 1932, then forgot it for 35 years. In its pages, Gertrude Stein, Robert McAlmon, Kay Boyle and a varied cast of real-life characters bring literary Paris vividly to life as a city of “restlessness, scorn, frequent ecstasy and occasional despair.”
Sunday, May 5
Open Forum Salon
As usual, the last session opens up to thoughts and suggestions. If earlier salons are any guide, the conversation will range far and wide and provide a lively discussion to bookend the twelfth rendition of the Paris Writers’ Salon.