SOURCE: “The Great Migration: Parisian Aspects,” in Paris in American Literature, The University of North Carolina Press, 1989, pp. 136-163

In the following essay, Méral examines several works inspired by expatriate life in Paris during the 1920s.

The Reconstruction of Paris

The Paris of the 1920s makes a relatively rapid entry into literature, with roughly two-thirds of the relevant works being written during the decade itself. There is no very clear break with the preceding period. Some writers disappear from the scene. Dorothy Canfield returns to America, like her heroine Matey Fort, while Dos Passos drops out of Montparnasse life to pursue his travels elsewhere. Others, like Edith Wharton, Elliot Paul, Gertrude Stein, and e. e. cummings manage a sort of transition. New writers arrive in the capital, and some, like Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald, could well have witnessed the events that took place at the...