Could the gathering of writers and artists in 1920s Paris happen again?

Cafe Society
21

“You need to stop saying this. Most of the artists on your list were struggling. Struggling is not the same as starving.”

One, DO. NOT. TELL. ME. WHAT. NOT. TO. SAY.

Two, you seem to have a strange definition of “struggling,” considering that ANY important part of being a professional artist is paying the bills with your art. Fitzgerald, Joyce, Picasso, and Dos Passos were all more than able to pay their bills, and Fitzgerald and Picasso had had careers well before they joined the Parisian avant-garde. (I will somewhat concede the point about money going further, although with smart budgeting, you can apply this to really any major city.) Also, NEVER SAID A DAMN THING ABOUT STARVING.

Three, my list is not “bizarre” AT ALL. I was raised a Westerner on the US mainland, but I now live in HI. Honolulu is one of the most culturally diverse cities on Earth and fittingly nicknamed “Pearl of the Pacific.” The mixture of European, Asian, and Polynesian cultures is unmatched on the Mainland, but that’s just me defending my city.

If you’re going to post your pretentious ignorance, go somewhere else. I don’t tolerate that.

22

Don’t say that.

23

Let’s see: you’ve been here for less than a day, posted only to this thread so far, describing a solid rebuttal from a long-time poster who usually knows what he’s talking about as "pretentious ignorance,’ and are already telling us what you don’t tolerate.

Yeah, that’s a really good start.

24

I take it back.

Please continuing posting statements that are at best historically inaccurate and at worst wildly wrong. Please continue contradicting other posters who are politely correcting you. Please continue dictating your version of reality to those who don’t share it. Please continue displaying ignorance about the history and present of culture. Please continue in the delusion that you get to dictate how your threads go on this board.

Please continue. I’d very much like to see what entails.

25

It’s not all that solid of a rebuttal, RTFirefly. I’m not the smartest guy on Earth, I’m nowhere near that smart. However, I do know my literary and art history.

A: F. Scott Fitzgerald. Already published two novels and several collections of short stories stateside. (I can’t remember how many exactly.) In fact, the reason he came to Paris, (at least from watching that really old A&E Biography episode about him) was because he wanted something new to write about, which any writer would.

B: James Joyce. Had quite some success in his home nation of Ireland with the famed “Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man” in 1916. He then published Ulysses in 1922, to critical acclaim in Europe, and to an obscenity ban in New York. (Cue Streisand Effect.)

C: Pablo Picasso. Painting and selling since the beginning of the 20th century.

D: In 1920s Paris, you could make your cash stretch further than in the States. (Again, that’s actually a good point. Although, with a decent budgeting plan, you could apply this to any city in any era.)

E: John Dos Passos had published two novels, both of which sold well enough*, “One Man’s Initiation: 1917” and “Three Soldiers.” (*“Well enough” means that he could afford the ship ticket to Paris. Those ain’t cheap.)

F: Aaron Copland was a music student studying at the Fontainebleau School in Paris. (with the assistance of his parents)

G: Hemingway was a reporter for the Toronto Star. He lived in a small (by US standards) apartment in the Latin Quarter. He was hardly unknown to the readers of the Star and was not, in the technical sense, “struggling.”

“Struggling” would be defined as, according to New Oxford American Dictionary: “make one’s way with difficulty.” “Difficulty” is really quite subjective when you think about it, and in the art field, your results may SERIOUSLY vary. Besides, in my personal opinion, art is SUPPOSED to be “difficult,” at least to the average man. Otherwise every schmuck and his brother would be doing it, and thus, would kinda louse it up for the rest of us.

Also, another crucial factor which that fellow forgot is that in the 1920s, passenger airplanes didn’t exist like we know them today. The only real way for middle-class people to travel from America to Europe was by boat, and, as anyone who crossed the Atlantic in a steamship before 1950 will tell you, those tickets weren’t all that cheap. (Source: My great-grandfather, who came over here as a little boy from Austria in the early 1900s.)

I refuse to let anyone, regardless of how long they’ve been on this site, start anything with me over a subject like this. I’m sorry if I came across as an ass, but I get irritated when someone tries to one-up me without backing it up.

I really think we should get back to the OP topic before this gets any further out of hand. Are we all agreed on THAT?

26

You don’t tolerate it? Well, you’re in for a rude awakening if you plan to stick around here!!

If you want cheap, war-torn city, maybe you should include Kabul or Baghdad. :slight_smile:

27

Well, what I mean when I say I won’t tolerate it is, if you try to one-up me, I will rebut. I will rip apart your statements and back it up with FACTS.

If I remember correctly, and feel free to correct me if I’m wrong, but in the First War, Paris sustained some damage, but not to any crazy level. Reference point, the Second War. (Where were all these writers gonna live?)

28

HawaiianBeachBoy You need to dial it back down. Your tone and language are inappropriate for this forum. If you have a problem with a poster, take it to the Pit.

Future posts like this will result in warnings.

29

So, back on the original topic: using the criteria from earlier, what would you pick as the city to replicate 1920s Paris? Remember, you can only choose 1 city.

The criteria were:

A) Relatively low cost of living. (Although back in the day, most of those guys weren’t exactly missing too many meals.)
B) It has to be culturally appealing. Part of the reason so many writers went to Paris back then was because that was where the avant-garde of literature and art and music and whatnot were living.
C) It has to offer something completely new and awesome to artists that had never been offered to them before. Paris in the 20s offered freedom to artists who, in many cases, wouldn’t have had in their home countries due to either government censorship or repressed social attitudes.
D) The climate has to be appealing. I know, this is probably going to start a huge argument. Just hear me out on this. Think about it: there’s a reason the poll above has something of a tropical bias. In my opinion, the perfect place to live is the beautiful tropics with palm trees and astonishingly nice weather year round and walks on the beach with my girl and all I have to do is write books for a living.

(Of course, I’d love to hear anyone else’s opinion on an appealing climate.)
E) This is probably (and ARGUABLY) the biggest factor of them all: it has to be a continuing source of inspiration for artists for the rest of their lives. (Hemingway wrote two books about his life in Paris: the sun also rises, and a movable feast. Fitzgerald wrote tender is the night based on his experiences in Paris. See where I’m going with this?)

If you ask me, I would prefer to pick somewhere out-of-the-way, so that artists, writers, etc. don’t have to be distracted by the concerns of their non-artist peers.

BTW, thank you to IvoryTowerDenizen for stopping me before I went too far over the line.

30

For me it has to be the United States, first and foremost. So I chose Miami or some other major city in Florida, well South Florida. I could go with Seattle also.

31

Interesting. Good weather, comparable to Honolulu, from what I hear. Of course, I’m going to stay right here in HI until I die. How’s the cost of living in Miami?

Does anyone else have a city they would choose? It doesn’t have to be on the polling list.

32

Are you sure of this? A fivefold difference in cost of living seems odd for two Western countries.
I wonder how much of Paris’ prominence in the 20s was due to immigration policies. France strongly promoted immigration in this era to fill the massive losses in its youth during WWI, and to close the population/industrial gap with Germany. This when the U.S. and other western countries were putting sharp curbs on immigration.

33

You’re right. France did loosen up their immigration laws. They did suffer serious population issues. On the bright side, France as a whole was thriving thanks to this policy, as was the United States.

Paris has always been sort of famous for its low cost of living. (IIRC, this low C.O.L. was one of the factors attracting the artistic avant-garde there in the 20s.) In regard to an alleged fivefold difference in cost of living, it is a pretty dubious claim, and I’ve checked into it. In short, there’s nothing backing this fellow’s claim whatsoever.

I do know for a fact that it is pure, unadulterated “agricultural fertilizer” :wink: to say the Lost Generation were “struggling” in any sense of the word. If you recall, almost everyone had to travel on boats, and those tickets were far from cheap.

But PLEASE DO NOT START THAT UP AGAIN.

What city would you choose, if you had to pick one? It doesn’t have to be on my list.

34

I prefer my artists not be ‘gathered’. Geographical diversity is what makes them interesting.:wink:

35

Austin Texas.

36

Prague and Budapest both seemed to have a little bit of this culture going in the mid-to-late-90s, early 00s (and both have been described as “the New Paris of the 20s”), but it never quite gelled together into that 1920s Paris sort of movement. I think you’d have to get away from Europe at this point, but where, exactly, I don’t know.

37

Yeah. I’m with you. I think it would be smart to stay away from Europe if we do something of this sort. Do any of you see any particular disadvantages to Honolulu, where I live? I already know full well that the cost of stuff is higher than on the mainland. But anything else that would drive writers and artists away from Honolulu?

38

Not everyone thinks the tropics are “the perfect place to live”. I feel the exact opposite, to be honest. I loathe heat and humidity, my paper-white skin is mortal enemies with the sun, and the insects and other creepy crawlies are terrifying. I actually adore wearing cozy layers and winter boots and think that freshly fallen snow (especially in wooded areas) is among the most beautiful sights in the world.

Tl;dr - there’s no universal “appealing climate”.

39

Every summer in St Tropez and every winter in St. Barts! well thats actors. I think NYC is where its at right now. Ive never been there but Im in LA and I find a lot of movie and music people have places in or near New York City.

You would have to name some people you would consider influential to you and see where they are. There are more famous people these days (with less overall money and fame) and they are spread all over the world but mostly in France, NYC area, LA/Malibu/Santa Barbara, San Fransisco, London.

40

I know. The appealing climate concept is really a matter of opinion. That is one of the major obstacles to something of this sort. Someone’s going to hate the climate, someone’s going to think there’s not enough inspiration. Again, enjoyment of climate is a matter of opinion.