posted on 10 May 2009 07:54
by
Peter Stockwell
Amazing
I recommend Being Geniuses Together by Robert McAlmon and Kay Boyle. Despite its uninspired title it is a good read. It is about the amazing period in the 1920s when most of the great writers of the century were in Paris. Joyce, Stein, Pound, Hemingway, the Fitzgeralds and many more were all there. Not only writers were working together. Man Ray with his famous model and companion Kiki and artists like Brancusi and Derain were also in the group. They seem to have spent most of their time drinking, but Joyce managed to write Ulysses and Hemingway had the first of his books published. Robert McAlmon was the publisher of Hemingway, who repaid him by punching him on the jaw. No doubt it all helped with the Hemingway man of action and decision image. A remarkable number of the group died from tuberculosis or suicide, but we will never see its like again.
Horse Painters is on its way to publication at long last. I think I have returned the proofs to the publisher in the wrong format, but no doubt this will be sorted out. Probably.