Paris in American Literatures

On Distance as a Literary Resource

Jeffrey Herlihy-Mera, Vamsi K. Koneru

• Publisher: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press
• Year: 2013
• eBook ISBN: 9781611476088
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literary Essays
• Index: Literature

"Paris" could be the first word of an epic poem. While there are many cultural pilgrimages in Western Arts (The Alhambra, Venice, Mumbai, Machu Picchu, and others), Paris stands above others, flourishing as an image of possibility and sophistication. The city has a rich history with foreign artists and writers, intellectual and political exiles, military leaders and philosophers from all over the globe. Americans have gone to Paris since the colonial period—and their writing about the city is a captivating corpus of literature. Looking into novels, memoirs, poetry and other writings, Paris in American Literatures: On Distance as a Literary Resource examines the role of the French capital in the work of a diverse range of authors, including Ralph Waldo Emerson, Edith Wharton, Sherwood Anderson, Ernest Hemingway, Henry Miller, Saul Bellow, Monica Truong, and many others.

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: On Distance as a Literary Resource
• Emerson in Paris
• Je l’ai dans mon sang!
• Forget Paris
• From Dada to Nada
• The Nightinghouls of Paris
• Miller’s Henry and Henry’s Paris
• Chicago Adventures in Paris
• The Road to Paris in Tim O’Brien’s Going After Cacciato
• “What Keeps You Here?”
• Epilogue
• Index
• About the Contributors