Geniuses Together

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Dubbed the ``Lost Generation'' by Gertrude Stein, they were Americans who flocked to Paris in the post-WW I years, convinced that in the bohemian quarter of Montparnasse their creativity would flourish. Principal among them was Hemingway, who has the major share of this collective portrait by Carpenter, who also has written biographies of Auden and Tolkien. He follows the evolution of the Hemingway style``no fat, no adjectives, no adverbs''in anecdotes that reveal the personality of a not entirely likable man. Sherwood Anderson, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Kay Boyle, Djuna Barnes, Pound, Joyce and others who frequented the Shakespeare and Company bookstore or the art-filled rooms of Stein also contributed to the ``long, wild party'' whose glamour has not faded. In this social history, Carpenter illuminates as well the dark side of the heady period. Photos. (January 5)

Library Journal

Described by its author as ``a collage of Left-Bank expatriate life as it was experienced by the Hemingway generation,'' this work benefits from Carpenter's wealth of rich memoir material, engaging style, and acute eye for lively anecdote. He also accepts the stereotype of the Lost Generation's decade-long party chiefly remarkable for the fun it afforded the participants and subsequent myths of artistic brilliance. This is an easy thesis to advance as gossip-journalism, essentially the book's intellectual locus. A more rigorous artistic and historical perspective would shred Carpenter's thesis to tinsel, but it would also deny the book its genuine, though superficial, charm. Earl Rovit, City Coll. , CUNY