Paris, Painters, Poets

This eighth collection of reviews, essays, and other pieces takes Paris as its starting point, with essays about artists like Picasso and Soutine, a look at the existentialists, a consideration of the role of the barricade in the various insurrections in the city, and the roles played by the photographer Nadar and the composer Offenbach in shaping images of the city both for its inhabitants and visitors. There are reviews of exhibitions by British painters, Sven Berlin, John Bratby, and Stanley Spencer, and of the work of American poets, Thomas McGrath, Lola Ridge, and William Wantling. The Beats get a look in with articles about little magazines that printed their work, and the effects of the blacklists in Hollywood are explored in several pieces. Jazz is represented with surveys of the music of Tony Fruscella and Willie Dennis, and the birth of rock and roll is explored. Other essays focus on the early days of communism in both Russia and America.