Americans in Paris

From the earliest years of the American republic, Paris has provoked an extraordinary American literary response. An almost inevitable destination for writers and thinkers, Paris has been many things to many a tradition-bound bastion of the old world of Europe; a hotbed of revolutionary ideologies in politics and art; and a space in which to cultivate an openness to life and love thought impossible at home. Including stories, letters, memoirs, and journalism, "Americans in Paris" distills three centuries of vigorous, glittering, and powerfully emotional writing about the place that Henry James called ?the most brilliant city in the world.? American writers came to Paris as statesmen, soldiers, students, tourists, and sometimes they stayed as expatriates. This anthology ranges from the crucial early impressions of Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin to the latter-day reflections of writers as varied as James Baldwin, Isadora Duncan, and Jack Kerouac. Along the way we encounter the energetic travelers of the nineteenth century?Emerson, Mark Twain, Henry James?and the pilgrims of the Gertrude Stein, F. Scott Fitzgerald, E. E. Cummings, Cole Porter, Henry Miller. Come along as Thomas Paine takes a direct and dangerous part in the French Revolution; Harriet Beecher Stowe tours the Louvre; Theodore Dreiser samples the sensual enticements of Parisian night life; Edith Wharton movingly describes Paris in the early days of World War I; John Dos Passos charts the gathering political storms of the 1930s; Paul Zweig recalls the intertwined pleasures of language and sex; and A. J. Liebling savors the memory of his culinary education in delicious detail. "Americans in Paris" is a diverse and constantly engaging mosaic, full of revealing cultural gulfs and misunderstandings, personal and literary experimentation, and profound moments of self-discovery. Letter to Mary Stevenson by Benjamin Franklin Letters from Auteuil by Abigail Adams Two letters by Thomas Jefferson from A diary of the French Revolution by Gouverneur Morris Shall Louis XVI. have respite? by Thomas Paine from The diary of James Gallatin by James Gallatin from Life, letters, and journals by George Ticknor Letter to Stephen Longfellow, Jr. by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow from Journal, 1833 by Ralph Waldo Emerson from Pencillings by the way by Nathaniel Parker Willis from Gleanings in Europe by James Fenimore Cooper from Struggles and triumphs; or, Forty years' recollections by P.T. Barnum from Catlin's Notes of eight years' travels and residence in Europe by George Catlin from Things and thoughts in Europe by Margaret Fuller from Sunny memories of foreign lands by Harriet Beecher Stowe from The French notebooks by Nathaniel Hawthorne from The innocents abroad by Mark Twain The proclamation of the republic by Elihu Washburne Occasional Paris ; "The velvet glove" by Henry James Letter from Paris by Frederick Douglass Letter to John Hay by Henry Adams from The show-places of Paris by Richard Harding Davis. from My life by Isadora Duncan from A life in photography by Edward Steichen from Along this way by James Weldon Johnson A traveler at forty by Theodore Dreiser The look of Paris ; from A backward glance by Edith Wharton Mon amie by Randolph Bourne Paris notebook, 1921 by Sherwood Anderson from Peter Whiffle by Carl Van Vechten Significant gesture by Malcolm Cowley from Life among the surrealists by Matthew Josephson from The big sea by Langston Hughes from Gentlemen prefer blondes by Anita Loos Four letters from Paris, 1925 by William Faulkner from Post impressions ; Vive la Folie! by E.E. Cummings from The spirit of St. Louis by Charles Lindbergh The flying fool by Waverly Root from A moveable feast by Ernest Hemingway Postcard to Samuel Loveman by Hart Crane Paris diaries by Harry Crosby You don't know Paree by Cole Porter Babylon revisited by F. Scott Fitzgerald From an early diary by Lincoln Kirstein from The autobiography of Alice B. Toklas ; from Paris France by Gertrude Stein Walking up and down in China by Henry Miller A spring month in Paris by John Dos Passos from The flower and the nettle by Anne Morrow Lindberg. The last time I saw Paris by Oscar Hammerstein II from Shakespeare and Company by Sylvia Beach Letter from Paris by Janet Flanner Paris, 7 A.M. by Elizabeth Bishop No. 13 Rue St. Augustin by Ludwig Bemelmans Place Pigalle by Richard Wilbur Three letters by Dawn Powell from First days in Paris by Art Buchwald Equal in Paris by James Baldwin from Remembrance of things past by Irwin Shaw The saucier's apprentice by S.J. Perlman Good-bye to a world by May Sarton from Departures by Paul Zweig The first time I saw Paris by James Thurber Trouble in Paris by Sidney Bechet from Between meals : an appetite for Paris by A.J. Liebling 17 Quai Voltaire by Virgil Thomson from Satori in Paris by Jack Kerouac Gare de Lyon by M.F.K. Fisher from D...