Paris: Literary Capital of America
This article lists a surprising number of American authors who had all found high levels of productivity in the city […]
1923
Articles from 1923
Mussolini’s Popularity
In this article, famed journalist Anne O’Hare McCormick went to great lengths to explain why the Italian people were so
His Popularity
(NY Times Book Review, 1923)
In the attached article, famed journalist Anne O’Hare McCormick (1880 – 1954) went to great lengths to explain why the Italian people were so coocoo crazy for the rule of Benito Mussolini. At this point he had only been in power for eight months:
“Mussolini has the people hypnotized, but he has been given so much rope that he is sure to hang himself in the end.”
Recalling the ‘Future’ of the Movies
(N.Y. Times Book Review, 1923)
Here is a N.Y. Times review of a volume concerning the origins and future of silent film. It was said that the author was quite good at recalling the genesis of the medium – and he was all wet about its future (silent films would dry up six years after this review appeared).
Fascist Thought in Italian Literature
(NY Times, 1923)
“Fascism, which began in Italy as a political and social force, soon became cultural as well. Already the movement has produced a considerable literature of its own. It is a literature of thews and sinews, of conflict and aspiration: its appeal is to a people awakened to a new consciousness of the possibilities and responsibilities of a life, a people that is confident that it has recovered the elixir of youth and has faith in the future.”
Paris: Literary Capital of America
(NY Times Book Review, 1923)
This article lists a surprising number of American authors who had all found high levels of productivity in the city of Paris, both during the Great War and afterward:
“In Paris the American author seems to get the right perspective of his native land. Three thousand miles away he finds himself better able to interpret or criticize the land of the free. Permeated by the French atmosphere, he suddenly develops a huge interest in America, and this interest, in turn, expresses itself usually in the form of a novel.”
Paris: Literary Capital of America
(NY Times Book Review, 1923)
This article lists a surprising number of American authors who had all found high levels of productivity in the city of Paris, both during the Great War and afterward:
“In Paris the American author seems to get the right perspective of his native land. Three thousand miles away he finds himself better able to interpret or criticize the land of the free. Permeated by the French atmosphere, he suddenly develops a huge interest in America, and this interest, in turn, expresses itself usually in the form of a novel.”
General Helmuth von Moltke
(N.Y. Times Book Review, 1923)
“If ever there was a German who foresaw nothing but defeat and punishment for his native land, even in the days when the great majority of his fellow-countrymen were mad with anticipation of victory and world domination, it was Helmuth von Moltke (1848 – 1916).”
Click here to read a 1922 review of the Kaiser’s war memoir.
Young Picasso
(Vanity Fair Magazine, 1923)
“Upon his first arrival in Paris, Picasso met with success. It was ’99… At that time he had a face of ivory, and was as beautiful as a Greek boy; irony, thought and effort have brought slight lines to the waxen countenance of this little Napoleonic man… At that time, Picasso was living the life of the provincial in Paris… He had won fame there by his portraits of actresses in the public eye. Jeanne Bloch, Otero – all the stars of the Exposition. Those paintings are priceless today; the intelligent museums have bought them.”
Observations Concerning Comic Strips
(Vanity Fair, 1923)
“From a study that covers practically all the comic sequences, I have roughly estimated that sixty percent deal with the unhappiness of married life, fifteen percent with other problems of the home, such as disagreeable children, and in the other fifteen is grouped a miscellany of tragic subjects – mental or social inferiority, misfortune and poverty. This last group contains a few subjects that carry no definite plan from day-to-day but are based on transient jokes such a Prohibition and the income tax.”
Fashion Notes from London
(Vanity Fair Magazine, 1923)
Written in a prose style reminiscent of an owner’s manual, these pages spell out the 1923 tailoring rules for men’s formalwear:
“Essentially traditionalist in matter of men’s clothes, London is never more
conservative than in dress clothes, and the changes from year to year are of the slightest… However, one still sees far more dinner jackets (ie. “tuxedos“) in restaurants than of yore, when black tie and short coat were for the home circle and the club alone, but in society, whether for small dance, ball, dinner or theatre party, the white tie is the rule.”
April is the Cruelest Month
(Vanity Fair Magazine, 1923)
“With the double-breasted coat, the single-breasted waistcoat is the rule and to repeat the crossing of lines twice in one suit is an entirely unreasonable exaggeration.”
”OOOPS – Sorry”
(Time Magazine, 1923)
Try as they may, the silver-tongued diplomats who rebuked Germany so mercilessly at Versailles in 1919 never could get an apology out of the Kaiser, or Hindenburg or Ludendorff. They just had to sit tight and wait – because in 1923 Michael Cardinal von Faulhaber (1869 – 1952), [alas] speaking in an unofficial capacity as a German, apologized for the whole monkey show: Lusitania, Belgium, etc. Everything comes to those who wait.
A French Response to the Kaiser Memoir
(Time Magazine, 1923)
Kaiser Wilhelm’s recollections of his part in the First World War (reviewed above) was released in the Winter of 1922. Former French president Rene Viviani (1863 – 1925; leadership, 13 June 1914 – 29 October 1915) quickly responded with his own book that appeared the following spring – it was titled As We See It:
“M. Viviani’s book is a direct answer to that puerile and invidious work known as the ex-Kaiser’s War Memoirs. It is impossible to escape from the logic of Viviani’s scathing denunciation of the ex-Kaiser’s tacit inculpation in the events which preceded the world-wide cataclysm.”
Trying to Demilitarize the Ruhr Valley
(Time Magazine, 1923)
It was easy for the French and Belgians to send their Armies into Germany’s Ruhr Valley in February of 1923 – not so easy getting them out. Attached are two news articles that reported on the assorted European officials who were applying all their brainpower to the problem.
Trying to Demilitarize the Ruhr Valley
(Time Magazine, 1923)
It was easy for the French and Belgians to send their Armies into Germany’s Ruhr Valley in February of 1923 – not so easy getting them out. Attached are two news articles that reported on the assorted European officials who were applying all their brainpower to the problem.
Trying to Demilitarize the Ruhr Valley
(Time Magazine, 1923)
It was easy for the French and Belgians to send their Armies into Germany’s Ruhr Valley in February of 1923 – not so easy getting them out. Attached are two news articles that reported on the assorted European officials who were applying all their brainpower to the problem.