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Women of the Left Bank by Shari Benstock

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Women of the Left Bank by Shari Benstock Read and Download Ebook Women of the Left Bank... Women of the Left Bank Shari Benstock PDF File: Women of the Left Bank... 1 Read and Download Ebook Women of the Left Bank... Women of the Left Bank Shari Benstock Women of the Left Bank Shari Benstock Now available in a durable paperback edition, Shari Benstock's critically acclaimed, best-selling Women of the Left Bank is a fascinating exploration of the lives and works of some two dozen American, English, and French women whose talent shaped the Paris expatriate experience in the century's early years. This ambitious historical, biographical, and critical study has taken its place among the foremost works of literary criticism. Maurice Beebe calls it "a distinguished contribution to modern literary history." Jane Marcus hails it as "the first serious literary history of the period and its women writers, making along the way no small contribution to our understanding of the relationships between women artists and their male counterparts, from Henry James to Hemingway, Joyce, Picasso, and Pound." Women of the Left Bank Details Date : Published August 1st 1987 by University of Texas Press (first published January 1st 1976) ISBN : 9780292790407 Author : Shari Benstock Format : Paperback 518 pages Genre : Nonfiction, Biography, History, Feminism, Cultural, France, Art Download Women of the Left Bank ...pdf Read Online Women of the Left Bank ...pdf Download and Read Free Online Women of the Left Bank Shari Benstock PDF File: Women of the Left Bank... 2 Read and Download Ebook Women of the Left Bank... From Reader Review Women of the Left Bank for online ebook Elizabeth says I re-read this book, after having read it in 1993. It's still as wonderful as it was the firs time. Mary says a good bathtub book Amy says Very informative. Touches on even the more obscure writers in that circle. Charles says Magnificent study! Review published in The French Review 61.6 (1988): 999-1000. Thierry Sagnier says You like history? You like Paris? You like smart, independent women (and their men)? All right, this is the book for you. I love the left bank and was born and raised not far from it. The people there are still originals, somewhat snobby, largely fascinating. This book will make you feel you really did meet Gertrude Stein, Alice B., Edith Wharton and Jean Rhys. It belongs on your bookshelf and is, I believe, one of the more important volume ever authored on the history of feminism, without belaboring the issue. Theresa Cooper says "she will not experience the need, like a masculine reader, to own her favorite authors in beautiful and lasting editions- at bottom it is true that she is not a bibliophile in the sense in which this word is generally understood. she will prefer to keep the ordinary editions that were the very ones she read first, and she will surround them with her kind attentions... if the book pleases her intensely she will copy passages from it." "the metonymic economy of the heterosexual world in which women's value for men is measured by certain parts of their bodies (breasts, buttocks, legs, hair), reducing the complete woman to her sexual parts." "leave off looking to men to find out what you are not- seek within yourselves to find out what you are" - mina loy PDF File: Women of the Left Bank... 3 Read and Download Ebook Women of the Left Bank... "artists and writers remain impotent in the face of political danger: they may be able to diagnose societal ills accurately, but cannot do anything to change them." "if we have no example of what we wish to be, we have, what is perhaps equally valuable, a daily and illuminating example of what we do not wish to be." - virginia woolf "three guineas" "a womyn is yourself, caught as you turn in panic; on her mouth you kiss your own. if she is taken you cry that you have been robbed of yourself." - "nightwood" Jesse says As I said in my initial status update on this book, "I had intended to skim, but that quickly proved to be an impossibility," as almost instantly I was engrossed by this group of utterly fascinating women—fiercely intelligent, unapologetically complex, sometimes contradictory, but each in their own diverse ways dedicated to the artistic life, in the process often turning in very real ways life itself into an artistic statement. Utilizing both biography and literary analysis—and demonstrating how often these factors intimately intertwine—Benstock attempts to sketch the ambiguous boundaries of the vibrant Parisian Left Bank community as it functioned during the first four decades of the twentieth century. Benstock's task is an admittedly daunting one: the first comprehensive study of its kind, it is not particularly surprising that as the chapters progress one begins to get the impression that Benstock is struggling to retain control of her material in light of its obvious potential to branch out infinitely, and the first few chapters function as marvelous portraits of a number of women and/or pairings (romantic, professional and often both at once), most particularly those dedicated to Edith Wharton, Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas, Janet Flanner, Sylvia Beach and Adrienne Monnier, Djuna Barnes, Natalie Barney and the coterie of women circling her. Once she gets to the substantial chapter on H.D., however (included in this study rather tenuously as she intensely disliked Paris and actively avoided spending time there), Benstock is attempting to weave into this histiocultural narrative the stories and accomplishments of a number of individuals, and often these attempts fail to do their subjects justice. Aside from H.D.'s odd inclusion in this study and much space devoted to Colette (undoubtedly a crucial player in this world, but not an expatriate), exactly who and what is excluded is also rather curious: Radclyffe Hall and The Well of Loneliness barely warrant a few passing mentions, and a number of names listed on the cover (Kay Boyle, Caresse Crosby, Maria Jolas and Solita Solano and several others) collectively receive less analysis than, say, the paintings of Romaine Brooks, a topic supposedly outside the scope of study. But such problems are minor compared to what Benstock does accomplish, which on the one hand is bringing these various women's life stories to vivid life, and on the other providing a much-needed countering voice to the heterosexual masculine (and extremely romanticized) depiction of the expatriate life as depicted in Hemingway's A Moveable Feast, the text which has almost singlehandedly defined this period in the popular imagination. Benstock also does important work in being part of the movement to reexamine and completely reinterpret the literary work of Stein, Barnes, Barney, H.D., Nancy Cunard and others, proclaiming their central importance in any analysis of the Modernist literary movement, defying the condescending marginalization this work has traditionally received by creating spaces of "alternative Modernisms." What I most appreciated, however, was how Benstock directly confronts the ways in which the writing of these women resists easy canonical assimilation, and attempts to take into account the ways in which very little of the collective artistic output that was created present a clear, unproblematic case studies for feminist study and discourse. Benstock recognizes this, and it makes her analysis and the portrait of a place and time all the more richly observed. PDF File: Women of the Left Bank... 4 Read and Download Ebook Women of the Left Bank... The documentary Paris Was a Woman (Greta Schiller, UK, 1995) provides a nice cliffnote-type accompaniment to this (admittedly hefty) volume, with archival footage, photographs and films which provide a brief but tantalizing taste of the period (with Benstock and several other scholars she prominently quotes throughout Women of the Left Bank providing context and analysis). Not an adequate substitute by any stretch of the imagination, but a nicely realized introduction and/or supplement. The entire film can be found on YouTube. See here. Review originally posted on my blog, Memories of the Future. Carol says Although suffering from an overabundance of academic reasoning and prose, the chapter on Gertrude Stein is worth the slog. I may not believe that "the disruption of expectation in masculine/feminine distinctions emphasized by Stein's odd dress...poses difficulty for the analyst." No difficulty for me. She wore skirts not to subvert male hegemony, but because she was fat. I do agree that "her status as a genius allowed her to subsume gender distinctions and ignore them." A genius is a dyke is a rose. Lindsey says really got me in the mood for more scholarly books, analyzing and critiquing works and the history of women of the left bank. i wasn't able to finish it because the library only allowed one renewal but trust me, it's a great book and requires a lot of time and effort in it's reading. These were important women of the day who've been overlooked. this book inspired me to create my own salon (and to be more well-read and go get a masters in english). Cindy Huyser says This sweeping study of expatriate women writers on Paris' left bank from the late 1800s through the 1940s is a must-read for anyone interested in this period. It's a great source book. Helynne says This hefty volume—518 pages including its extensive chapter-by-chapter footnotes and length PDF File: Women of the Left Bank... 5 Read and Download Ebook Women of the Left Bank... bibliography—is an exhaustive description of the lives and works of numerous women—mostly ex-patriot Americans—who assimilated into the Bohemian-style life on the Left Bank of Paris between 1900 and 1940—in the middle of the belle époque and the Dreyfus affair, continuing through World War I, the prolific Entre Guerres period, and the tumultuous years leading up to World War II.
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