The Twilight Years: Paris in the 1930s

William Wiser, “The Twilight Years: Paris In The 1930s” Carrol & Graf, 2000, 274 pp


I would only recommend this book to those familiar with Paris and with an exceptional curiosity for all things Paris. (I have this same author’s book about Paris in the 20s on hold at the library). I was entertained by keeping my Paris map at my side so I could look up the places referenced. This is certainly not comparable to “The Greater Journey : Americans in Paris, 1830-1900” by David McCullogh which I recommend that everyone read. I found the characters portayed in Paris of the 1930’s to be a depressing and less than admirable lot. James Joyce and his selfishness, Henry Miller and his decadence, Gertrude Stein and illusions of just about everything leave the reader wanting it all to end. A more complete list of characters includes: Helena Rubinstein, Anais Nin, Coco Chanel, Salvador Dali, and Katherine Anne Porter, Sylvia Beach of Shakespere bookstore fame, Pablo Picasso, Josephine Baker, T. S. Eliot, Peggy Guggenheim, the Windsors,—the 1930s: an era that ended with perhaps the grimmest event in modern French history: the fall of Paris and the Nazi occupation in 1940. I did not even list the miserable politicians and military figures that led France to its predictable surrender.