Overview
This book, save for one chapter, is not concerned with artists. It is concerned with men and women who achieved a degree of prominence or notoriety in the Paris of their day, but whose reputations have been dimmed by time. While they are not 'world-historical' figures in the Hegelian sense, each one seems to me to reflect some aspect of society and attitudes of nineteenth-century Parisians. Indeed, they may be even more representative of their times than are certified geniuses, those whose stature makes them exceptional rather than typical.Synopsis
This book, save for one chapter, is not concerned with artists. It is concerned with men and women who achieved a degree of prominence or notoriety in the Paris of their day, but whose reputations have been dimmed by time. While they are not 'world-historical' figures in the Hegelian sense, each one seems to me to reflect some aspect of society and attitudes of nineteenth-century Parisians. Indeed, they may be even more representative of their times than are certified geniuses, those whose stature makes them exceptional rather than typical.
Neil McWilliam - French History
Ranging from the Faubourg Saint-Germain of the Orléanist monarchy to the trenches of the Western Front, Gordon Wright's clutch of 'Brief Lives' offers the reader an impressionistic voyage across the nineteenth century by means of some of the period's more intriguing, though generally less celebrated, personalities. The ten subjects of these highly compressed biographical sketches represent the worlds of art, politics and letters, each apparently selected for the wider cultural insight they provide as well as for the inherent interest of their individual stories.
Editorials
French History
Ranging from the Faubourg Saint-Germain of the Orléanist monarchy to the trenches of the Western Front, Gordon Wright's clutch of 'Brief Lives' offers the reader an impressionistic voyage across the nineteenth century by means of some of the period's more intriguing, though generally less celebrated, personalities. The ten subjects of these highly compressed biographical sketches represent the worlds of art, politics and letters, each apparently selected for the wider cultural insight they provide as well as for the inherent interest of their individual stories.
— Neil McWilliam
Literary Review
Gordon Wright's gallery of Parisian personalities, Notable or Notorious? is like a series of intimate dinner parties; in a very relaxed and enjoyable fashion the newcomer quickly becomes acquainted with such a variety of people and milieux...Wright sketches deftly with clear and simple lines converging on horizons, his prose displaying a singular lack of clutter...[the lives of ten] people involved in politics, literature, art, the occult, the Wild West, the First World War...Wright's elegant Parisian gallery...breathes life into these people who have been dim shadows around the corners of our minds. Now when we meet them again they will be familiar faces, surfacing amid a crowd of strangers, reassuring landmarks on the journey to understanding, bright ripples carrying light to the edges of the city.
— Rosemary Stoyle
Times Literary Supplement
Wright has assembled a motley crew, individually fascinating and linked to some extent by their originality. Some of them did in fact cross paths, and Wright was surely led in such cases from one to the other...They do illuminate human nature and the challenges posed by societal inertia; also the distortions imposed by a defensive society on dissenters and mavericks. [Notable or Notorious and My France] are two imaginative, intellectually rewarding books; and each is also what is called a good read...Both set one to thinking about the perversities, varieties, and ironies of history, and both will stimulate work by other scholars. Who can ask for more?
— David S. Landes