Paris Interzone

Beginning with Richard Wright’s meeting with Gertrude Stein in 1946 and ending with his death in suspicious circumstances fourteen years later, Paris Interzone provides a compelling look at the Left Bank café society that dominated postwar Paris.

James Campbell writes about James Baldwin, Nabokov, Boris Vian, Maurice Girodias and reveals a multitude of strange tales: the resurrection of Samuel Beckett by a small Left Bank magazine; the truth about the scandalous best-seller The Story of O ; and what happened when the Beat Generation came to Paris. Above all, Campbell celebrates the prevailing spirit of freedom in those years and the art it fostered.

Further reading:

Douglas Field also writes about James Campbell's Talking at the Gates , his biography of African American author James Baldwin. Read it here .