Paris in the fifties

To a one, writers familiar with the Paris of the 1920s wax nostalgic--those who still have the breath to do so, that is--about that time and place. But Karnow, Paris correspondent for Time during the 1950s, found that the seemingly less vibrant postwar period also offered no dearth of great memories. Of course, no etranger can correctly interpret or even comprehend all sides of the Parisian's psyche; even Karnow admits that "the longer I remained in France, the more its intricacies daunted me." Daunted or not, he had a glorious, eye-opening, consciousness-expanding time in the City of Lights, which he recollects in a rousing combination of voices: memoirist, traveler, and foreign correspondent. His anecdotally rich narrative begins in June 1947, when, fresh out of college, he inaugurated a summer visit that extended for 10 years. He was transformed from a wide-eyed kid into a seasoned appreciator of the nuances, ambiguities, ironies, and contradictions that are Parisians' staff of live. Not content with simply ensconcing himself in the Time bureau offices, which, however, "occupied the two floors above a bank in a magnificent eighteenth-century building on the Place de la Concorde, one of the splendors of Paris, if not the world," Karnow created a personal life for himself and took in all that Paris and the provinces had to offer. And now he offers this succulent book, which Francophiles will devour. Among his outstanding previous books is the Pulitzer Prize^-winning In Our Image (1989). --Brad Hooper

Pulitzer prize-winning author Karnow (Vietnam: A History, LJ 10/1/83) vividly chronicles his early years in Paris, where he worked as a young reporter for Time magazine (1950-59). Displaying a broad knowledge of French history and civilization, Karnow offers anecdotes ranging from a description of the construction of the guillotine to a report of a disastrous automobile crash at the racetrack at Le Mans in 1955. He astutely illustrates the contradictions in the national character‘how the French pose as individualistic, honest, open-minded, and tolerant but can be simultaneously extremely conformist, narrowminded, bigoted, and hostile to foreigners. Karnow closes with the collapse of the Fourth Republic in 1958 and the recall to power of Charles de Gaulle. His entertaining book will have enormous appeal to anyone interested in Paris and France, especially those fortunate enough to have lived in that great city in their youth. Highly recommended.‘Robert T. Ivey, Univ. of Memphis (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Strong reporting and storytelling skills combine to make this remembrance of Paris past a fine read. A Pulitzer Prizewinning journalist, Karnow (Vietnam, A History, 1983, etc.) apprenticed as a writer in postwar Paris, working his way up through the local bureau of Henry Luce's magazine empire. His long dispatches were generally filed away or, if published, cut drastically. But Karnow kept his carbon copies; here he distills that 1,000 pages of reportage into a memoir that artfully blends carefully detailed immediacy with considered personal reflection. The first few chapters, in which Karnow describes struggling as a GI Bill student in Paris and his subsequent initiation into the character-filled milieu of the Paris-based foreign press, seem somewhat insubstantial; but they are really only the set-up for the series of incisive reports that follow. Once past the requisite recounting of encounters with celebrities (Audrey Hepburn dazzles, Ernest Hemingway disappoints), Karnow uncorks a string of impressively realized chapters devoted to a wide variety of topics. They include le monde (a.k.a. the world of Parisian fashionables) and also the demimonde of striptease artists, prostitutes, and criminals; the intellectual circles of ``the mandarins,'' and also the French passion for car racing; the gastronomic divinations of the gourmand Curnonsky, Christian Dior's reign over the fashion world, and the strange career of Jules-Henri Desfourneaux, known as Monsieur de Paris, the city's guillotine operator. All the while, Karnow travels much further into French cultural history than his title might suggest. He never fails to provide historical context; one of his best passages retraces Ho Chi Minh's sojourn in Paris in the late 'teens and early twenties, long before he bedeviled France as leader of the Vietminh. Even the most jaded Francophile will find much stimulation here--indeed, so will any fan of punchy prose and intelligent observation and reflection.