Glassco ran out of money along the way and certainly ruined his health, but he enjoyed every moment of his stay-despite, among other things, being treated for VD and repeated letter to Come Home from his father, who wanted him to be a lawyer. His description of her: 'a rhomboidal woman dressed in a floor-length gown apparently made of some kind of burlap, she gave the impression of absolute irrefragability… it was impossible to conceive of her lying down”).Īgain, though, the tone of the book was probably a result of being so young at the time the memoir took place and was written (18-22). Glassco manages to drop names like bricks (at one point in this memoir a man walks into a bar and someone calls him “Ernie ” it took me a while to realize that yes, it was that Ernie).and brag shamelessly (especially about insulting Gertrude Stein to her face and getting kicked out of one of her parties, but I thought that was actually quite funny. For example, Kay Boyle and Djuna Barnes, both important figures of the literary expatriates of Paris at the time, receive new names and there is a certain sense of scintillism to Glassco’s account-probably because the author was so young. Glassco wrote this memoir as truth, although it’s not completely factual.

Glassco set out to have a literary career and along the way rubbed shoulders with some of the greats (at one point in this memoir a man walks into a bar and someone calls him “Ernie ” it took me a while to realize that yes, it was that Ernie). The two set out to explore all that the city had to offer: the cafes, bars, and brasseries that the Americans of the Lost Generation would have been familiar with as well. It is a record of youth lived as it should be lived – a continuous round of debauchery, heavy drinking, frenzied sexual activity and earnest, erudite discussion about literature.In 1928, a young Canadian named John Glassco set out for Paris with his best friend.

He blagged entry to one of Gertrude Stein's soirées and quarrelled with her on Glassco's account she appears to have been a poisonous and barely human character.īut this is much more than a succession of celebrity vignettes. Even before reaching France, he and his friend Graeme Taylor secured an audience with the ancient George Moore in Paris he made the acquaintance of Hemingway, Ford Madox Ford, Lord Alfred Douglas, Man Ray and James Joyce. In a mere 18 months he had met everyone who was anyone. A Canadian expat with no contacts and no resources, except for a brains, a colossal dose of chutzpah and the self-confidence of youth, he set about storming the citadels of the literary scene. In 1929 John Glassco was 19 and in Paris.

Memoirs of Montparnasse by John Glassco