The Continual Pilgrimage

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Between 1944 and 1960 a second great wave of American writers took up residence in Paris, seeking the artistically charged atmosphere so pervasive during the Jazz Age. While much has been written about the Lost Generation between the wars, little attention has been paid to their postwar successors as a group. And yet, what a dazzling array of talent was present in Paris during this period! Richard Wright, James Baldwin, William Styron, James Jones, Chester Himes, George Plimpton, John Ashbery, Harry Mathews, Allen Ginsberg, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Alexander Trocchi, and William Burroughs are among those who flocked to Paris and who flourished through the experience. Indeed, many of these literary wanderers and expatriates produced some of their most important and enduring poetry and fiction during these years, their collective efforts inspiring new creative directions for the second half of the century. The Continual Pilgrimage is a biographical/historical portrait of the friendships and associations they formed, the cross-cultural influences they occasioned, what they discovered, and what they brought back. Christopher Sawyer-Laucanno merges the Paris of glamorous legend with the sometimes starker reality they encountered into a highly entertaining and anecdotal account of writers following a dream and finding a vision.