Synopses & Reviews
Between 1952 and 1954, Jean-Michel Mension haunted Saint-Germain-des-Prés as a member of the legendary Letterist International, direct progenitor of the Situationist International. In a series of conversations, Mension recounts this very particular vie de bohème whiled away with Guy Debord and a rogue's gallery of hard drinkers and thinkers. The rich iconography includes many of Ed van der Elsken's celebrated photographs of "the tribe" and a trove of Letterist leaflets and posters. A rare, vivid tour of a moment and milieu barely noticed at the time by the tourists flocking to Saint-Germain for a glimpse of Sartre and Co.
Jean-Michel Mension (b. 1934) later joined the Communist Party and participated in the Ligue Communiste.
Synopsis
Portraits of the dissolute Left Bank youth whose lifestyle and ideas prefigured the May 1968 revolt.
Synopsis
Cultural Writing. Translated from the French by Donald Nicholson-Smith. Between 1952 and 1954, Jean-Michel Mension haunted Saint-Germain-des-Pres as a member of the legendary Letterist International, direct progenitor of the Situationist International. In a series of conversations with Gerard Berreby and Francesco Milo, "THE TRIBE relates the Parisian wanderings of a heterogeneous group of individuals who cultivated laziness and revolt, alcohol and talk, drift and chance...in quest of a Rimbaldian derangement of all the senses...but also by an altogether contemporary quest for a supersession of Marxism"-Le Monde libertaire. Also includes many of Ed van der Elsken's celebrated photographs of "the tribe" and a trove of Letterist leaflets and posters.