Synopses & Reviews
For centuries, France has cast an extraordinary spell on travelers. Harvey Levenstein's
Seductive Journey explains why so many Americans have visited it, and tells, in colorful detail, what they did when they got there. The result is a highly entertaining examination of the transformation of American attitudes toward French food, sex, and culture, as well as an absorbing exploration of changing notions of class, gender, race, and nationality.
Levenstein begins in 1786, when Thomas Jefferson instructed young upper-class American men to travel overseas for self-improvement rather than debauchery. Inspired by these sentiments, many men crossed the Atlantic to develop "taste" and refinement. However, the introduction of the transatlantic steamship in the mid-nineteenth century opened France to people further down the class ladder. As the upper class distanced themselves from the lower-class travelers, tourism in search of culture gave way to the tourism of "conspicuous leisure," sex, and sensuality. Cultural tourism became identified with social-climbing upper-middle-class women. In the 1920s, prohibition in America and a new middle class intent on "having fun" helped make drunken sprees in Paris more enticing than trudging through the Louvre. Bitter outbursts of French anti-Americanism failed to jolt the American ideal of a sensual, happy-go-lucky France, full of joie de vivre. It remained Americans' favorite overseas destination.
From Fragonard to foie gras, the delicious details of this story of how American visitors to France responded to changing notions of leisure and blazed the trail for modern mass tourism makes for delightful, thought-provoking reading.
"...a thoroughly readable and highly likable book."and#8212;Deirdre Blair, New York Times Book Review
Review
and#8220;A fascinating, compelling, and sometimes hilarious look at the Americans of the Right Bank: those who lived across the river from the Lost Generation and belonged to a world apart. Who knew that 90 percent of the interwar Americans in Paris rarely visited Shakespeares' and never heard of Gertrude Stein? Greens' wonderful book tells the untold story of the American businessmen, lawyers, renters, heiresses, and slackers who created the 'American colony' in Paris and never thought of writing the Great American Novel.and#8221;
Review
and#8220;Historians of international migration are undoubtedly familiar with the literary Americans living in Paris in the 1920s but only rarely have they incorporated such migrants into their scholarly field of study. With The Other Americans in Paris, Green gives migration historians ample reason to re-visit and to re-think both Paris (as a unique host society) and Americans as emigrants and immigrants.and#160; Green appreciates and documents the individual idiosyncrasies of American businessmen, soldiers, wayward countesses, and#8216;expats,and#8217; and working-class wanderers, even while making mobility, community organization, and transcultural contacts and misunderstandingsand#8212;bread and butter issues for migration historiansand#8212;central themes in her very readable account of Parisand#8217;s American and#8216;colony.and#8217;and#8221;
Review
and#8220;With her keen sense of the French American difference, her deep understanding of the vicissitudes of migration, and her incomparable wit, Nancy L. Green has transformed the literary clichand#233; about Americans in Paris into an original and compelling social history. Whether she isand#160;taking us into the territory of marriage and divorce, which inspired Edith Wharton and Henry James with their best plots, unearthing consular records of American misdeeds, or tracking down the capture of Baby Cadum soaps by Palmolive, she surprises and delights on every page. The Other Americans in Paris will captivate historians of business, cultural critics, political scientists and, most of all, tourists and expats discovering life in the City of Light.and#8221;
Review
and#8220;and#8217;The other Americansand#8217; were a diverse and slippery crew of people on the move who fortunately had a predilection to organize, write, or at least come under arrest, and thus they could come under the purview of accomplished historian Nancy L. Green.and#160; This witty and deeply scholarly book makes a cogent argument about prewar Americans in Paris and#8211; the lovers, workers, corporate managers, the idle rich, soldiers, the and#8216;financially down and legally out,and#8217; complementing the better known left-bank intellectuals and jazz performers. Chockablock with entertaining tales of the famous and obscure, young and old, Green offers the reader a lesson in intellectual ingenuity and acumen as she analyzes yesterdayand#8217;s transnationals, united in location, but divided by class, circumstance, and interest.and#8221;
Review
and#8220;Green has given us the most comprehensive, incisive, and entertaining account yet written of the and#8216;American Colonyand#8217; in Paris across the first half of the twentieth century. and#160;The conceptual sophistication and research skill Green brings to the study of this emigrant community sets new standards for the field, and will be much discussed and emulated by those working on other portions of the American and#8216;ex-patand#8217; global archipelago. and#160;A masterful and sparkling work of social history.and#8221;
Review
"A thorough and perceptive study. . ."
Review
andldquo;Green has distilled an immense quantity of archival and printed sourcesandhellip;into a readable and lively narrative packed with thumbnail and often full dress portraits of many of the colourful figures who made Paris their home either permanently or transitorily.andrdquo;
Synopsis
The largely untold story of Americans on the Right Bankand#151;who outnumbered the Left Bank writers and artists by ten to oneand#151;turns out to be a fascinating one. and#160;These were mostly businessmen, manufacturersand#8217; representatives, and lawyers, but also newly-minted American countesses married to dashing but cash-poor foreigners with impressive titles, though most of the women were spouses of the businessmen. Thanks to Nancy Greenand#8217;s superb archival research, this new cast of characters emerges with singular vitality. and#160;While Gertrude Stein, Hemingway, and other writers all appear here, and do so in a new light, the focus is on the men and women who settled into the gilded ghetto of the Right Bank. and#160;and#160;Greenand#8217;s story of these overseas Americans is a way of internationalizing American history (it is also a way of questioning the meaning of and#147;Americanizationand#8221; in the 20th century).and#160;
and#160; and#160;
Synopsis
While Gertrude Stein hosted the literati of the Left Bank, Mrs. Bates-Batcheller, an American socialite and concert singer in Paris, held sumptuous receptions for the Daughters of the American Revolution in her suburban villa. History may remember the American artists, writers, and musicians of the Left Bank best, but the reality is that there were many more American businessmen, socialites, manufacturersand#8217; representatives, and lawyers living on the other side of the River Seine.and#160; Be they newly minted American countesses married to foreigners with impressive titles or American soldiers who had settled in France after World War I with their French wives, they provide a new view of the notion of expatriates.
Nancy L. Green thus introduces us for the first time to a long-forgotten part of the American overseas populationand#151;predecessors to todayand#8217;s expatsand#151;while exploring the politics of citizenship and the business relationships, love lives, and wealth (and poverty for some) of Americans who staked their claim to the City of Light. The Other Americans in Paris shows that elite migration is a part of migration tout court and that debates over and#147;Americanizationand#8221; have deep roots in the twentieth century.
About the Author
Harvey Levenstein is professor emeritus of history at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario. He has published a number of books on American history, including Revolution at the Table: The Transformation of the American Diet and Paradox of Plenty: A Social History of Eating in Modern America.
Table of Contents
Introduction
and#160;
1 and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160; The Not So Lost Generation: The and#147;American Colonyand#8221;
2 and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160; Uses of Citizenship, Tales from the Consulate, or How Mrs. Baker Got Her Hat Back
3and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160; For Love or Money: Marriage and Divorce in the French Capital
4and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160; Americans at Work: Of Grocers, Fashion Writers, Dentists, and Lawyers
5and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160; Doing Business in France: The Formal and the Informal
6 and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160; Down and Out in Paris: The Tailed, the Arrested, and the Poor
7 and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160; French Connections, Reciprocal Visions: Love, Hate, Awe, Disdain
8and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160; Heading Home: War, Again
and#160;
Conclusion
Acknowledgments
Notes
Index