JOHN GLASSCO

Diletante y libertino, refinado y sibarita, John Glassco dejó en sus Memorias de Montparnasse un testamento único que no sólo permite descubrir desde una perspectiva nueva la cartografía de un París mas idealizado que real en muchas ocasiones, sino tambien la mirada corrosiva sobre un estado de la cultura que nos alcanza en la actualidad. Quizas por ello, haya que ver en este libro una instancia superadora de los Dias tranquilos en Clichy, de Henry Miller, o como bien señalara Leon Edel, el consagrado biografo de James, una obra mas humana y actual que Paris era fiesta, de Hemingway.

Memoirs of Montparnasse is a delicious book about being young, restless, reckless, and without cares. It is also the best and liveliest of the many chronicles of 1920s Paris and the exploits of the lost generation. In 1928, nineteen-year-old John Glassco escaped Montreal and his overbearing father for the wilder shores of Montparnasse. He remained there until his money ran out and his health collapsed, and he enjoyed every minute of his stay. Remarkable for their candor and humor, Glasscos memoirs have the daft logic of a wild but utterly absorbing adventure, a tale of desire set free that is only faintly shadowed by sadness at the inevitable passage of time.