Final

Truth, Expectations and Art in between

My inhabitation of Paris over the past five months, infused by the study of walking literature and the genre of the Lost Generation, has been a tread between the lines of quotidian reality and surreal beauty. The parallels I drew between text and personal experience are numerous. The most striking is the confrontation of expectation and reality. The writers of the Lost Generation created an expectation of Paris for their readers. Within their penned worlds, they flirt with appearance and reality. On the other hand, walkers such as Thoreau seek truth through nature and equate beauty to nature while Sinclair challenges our visualization of truth by rearranging our perception of space. The walks set a pendulum to their exploration of truth, and many of them involve the walks mental and physical engagement with the external world. In the case of this essay, beauty is defined as the expectations that humans hold as the ideal. Art then becomes the mediator of truth and beauty. It manifests in the forms of literature, visual artworks, social etiquette and more. In this account, I will examine the attempts of Ernest Hemingway, John Dos Passos, Henry James, Ian Sinclair and William Thoreau as well as myself to conflate truth and beauty.

THIRTEEN HEMINGWAY

Fin.

When the reading is completed, I turned to the first few pages of the book again. The dedication struck me: THIS BOOK IS FOR HADLEY AND FOR JOHN HADLEY NICANOR. I begin to wonder if the Hemingway’s non-fiction circumstances influenced the fictitious world he crafted in The Sun Also Rises. Published in 1926, a year prior to Hemingway’s remorseful divorce from Elizabeth Hadley Richardson, The Sun Also Rises approaches promiscuity bluntly with its heroine, Lady Brett Ashley. Helbig points out the confessional nature of the text which is inherent in a first-person narrative. This characteristic becomes more prominent towards the end of the novel, when we witness the most intense exchanges between Jake and the other characters, particularly Brett and Robert. Finally, the novel finishes with a sense of continuity that furthers its realistic quality as a Modernist work.

THIRTEEN WALKING

Introspect

Meditation. Perhaps something I will never know whether I have achieved in life. My mind is always busy, even in the most serene environment. I still have doubts whether I had meditated on my walk of meditation. 

TWELVE HEMINGWAY

All is fair in love and war

As we continue to explore the world of American Europe through Jake’s eyes, Hemingway introduces the intricacies of human relations in this microcosm of an expatriate community. In particular, we are brought to attention the competitive nature of male relationship. Furthermore, he dives deeper in the underlying influence of war in his veteran characters. 

TWELVE WALKING

Les Morts qui Marchent

Comme le mort, les temps sont sombres. C’est dimanche et tout le Paris est endormi. 

ELEVEN HEMINGWAY

Daybreak

In Book One of The Sun Also Rises, Hemingway keeps to the first person narrative as we have encountered in this class earlier in A Moveable Feast. Such a style, together with the circumstances and the personality of Jake, cannot help but reminds us of the author himself. The perspective of Jake brings us into his American Paris and introduces the American expatriates within it. We are reacquainted with memory, the intricacies of human relationships, the status of women and the idea of a better land elsewhere (the very essence of expatriation in this context). In terms of craftsmanship, Hemingway balances the emotions of his story with a literary austerity that delivers a realism that we now consider a Hemingway signature. 

ELEVEN WALKING

Walk; Ponder

I think, therefore I am.

One never stops thinking. Even in a blank state of mind, there is still thought.

TEN HEMINGWAY

The Other American Expatriates 

Baldwin and Hughes provide us with a new dimension of the expatriate life in Paris through the lens of African-Americans. They too, believe in a myth of Paris “as a crucially non-racist city”. Baldwin presents a rather unfortunate encounter in Paris and expresses his negative feelings over his fate. Yet he chooses to remain in the city of lights. On the other hand, Hughes delivers his story with a frankness with exclamations of humor despite it having his fair share of misfortunes.It is through Kramer that we learn about the reason behind Baldwin’s fondness of Paris — its cultural hybridity. Both the writers reflect this hybridity through their tales while replicating the insular nature of the expatriate community in the French capital. In this process, their expectations of Paris are also confronted with her realities.

As African-Americans, Baldwin and Hughes arrive in Paris about two decades later than the first Lost Generation to escape the racial discrimination in America. Parallel to the idle, romantic notion of Paris that the Lost Generation had in the 1920s, a racially-tolerant, liberating idea of Paris was held by the African-American hopefuls. However, both writers soon learn that Paris was difficult in her own ways to survive in. 

TEN WALKING

Le Sentiment

I.

In 1965, the 16th arrondissement reaffirmed itself in cinema as the district of affluence and power when a traffic warden retracts his order to Emilio Largo’s illegal parking when the Bond villain steps out of the car in Thunderball. The notion that the atmosphere of a neighborhood varies with its average household income is compelling. However, I made an conscious effort to not hold any expectations of the neighborhood before my walk in it. It was out of my past experience of reality falling short, or being simply different, from my imagination. 

NINE WALKING

The Grains of Wood

In 1965, the 16th arrondissement reaffirmed itself in cinema as the district of affluence and power when a traffic warden retracts his order to Emilio Largo’s illegal parking when the Bond villain steps out of the car in Thunderball. The notion that the atmosphere of a neighborhood varies with its average household income is compelling. However, I made an conscious effort to not hold any expectations of the neighborhood before my walk in it. It was out of my past experience of reality falling short, or being simply different, from my imagination. 

NINE HEMINGWAY

An American Returns

F. Scott Fitzgerald is introduced as one who “understood loss better perhaps than any American writer”. Babylon Revisited acutely relates to this theme as it speaks of a man trying to reclaim what he had lost. Paris becomes the setting for this quest and its fiction resonates with many of the realities that Fitzgerald faced during the 1920s. We continue to learn about Paris through an expatriate lens and are reacquainted with that lifestyle in retrospect. Furthermore, this story might offer some insight into Fitzgerald’s psyche as a successful writer, husband and father. At the same time, the series of events, observations and characters continuously serve to convey the inescapability of the past.

EIGHT HEMINGWAY

Pound, Paris

Hemingway indulges in nostalgia in a simply manner through penning A Moveable Feast. As a work of a non-fiction literature, he wins our favor through a humble voice of a young, budding writing. We encounter literary legends in this fractional memoir such as Gertrude Stein, Scott Fitzgerald and Ezra Pound. The first and the last act as mentors while the middle a peer and close friend. The unfortunate dissolution of his relationship with Stein accentuates the goodness of Ezra Pound whose character Hemingway leaves intact. In addition, he portrays Pound as a much more trustworthy and substantial literary judge.Furthermore, the placement of the chapters on Stein, Pound and Fitzgerald compels the reader to juxtapose the natures of the relationship of the three. 

EIGHT WALKING

Conversations in Passages

Trying to not sound like a pretentious prick, walking had always been a part of my creative process. Paris made it a mandatory activity as a mode of transport (which made it a little annoying, I like to do things on my own terms). She became my place of work two years ago. The saturated market for photographers accommodated my lenses. 

I recently read an article about the term expatriate and how it only applies to ‘whites’. Those of other ethnicities who work in a foreign country have a label that is somehow more negative in connotation— ‘immigrants’, even if they have no intention on becoming citizens. I wonder which will my hybrid status as a half Swedish half Vietnamese bestow me. Back in Sweden, I was always mistaken for a tourist. My own people spoke in English to me. Everyone speaks very good English because no one out of the Nordic lands is versed in a Scandinavian language.

SEVEN WALKING

Conversations in Passages

Trying to not sound like a pretentious prick, walking had always been a part of my creative process. Paris made it a mandatory activity as a mode of transport (which made it a little annoying, I like to do things on my own terms). She became my place of work two years ago. The saturated market for photographers accommodated my lenses. 

I recently read an article about the term expatriate and how it only applies to ‘whites’. Those of other ethnicities who work in a foreign country have a label that is somewhat more negative in connotation— ‘immigrants’, even if they have plans on returning home someday. I wonder which will my hybrid status as a half Swedish half Vietnamese bestow me. Back in Sweden, I was always mistaken for a tourist. My own people spoke in English to me. Everyone spoke very good English because no one else in the world speaks a Scandinavian language.

Due to my profession, I travel with a good weight of equipment, which also makes walking even more so a chore when I am forced to do so. It wasn’t like this in Stockholm. I cherished walking more, because the opportunity presented itself only on rare, warm occasions. 

In Paris, walks are mainly in the open, unlike Tokyo where I brisk walked  through underground passes, interlinked malls and enclosed bridges. Come to think of it, my walks in Paris constituted more like strolls in comparison.

SEVEN HEMINGWAY

Sin City

It is often easy to relate to ambiguity and misdirection as a youth abroad. While I can apprehend Miller’s feelings of Paris and his almost hedonistic philosophy when in Paris, there is a radical quality to them in which I cannot absolutely reconcile with. However, Pizer’s Sexual Geography provides grounds for the latter. 

SIX WALKING

Beauté

One cannot think about Paris without associating to art. The city is like her women — mysterious, alluring, effortless and beautiful. Her roads twist and turn like an enigma. Her sacred museums and galleries outnumber her already worshipped landmarks. While her landmarks each exhibit their distinctive features, the museums and galleries (which are often be landmarks at the same hide) shelter other aesthetic manifestations inside.

The promise of being struck with Stendhal syndrome drew many, including myself, to willingly be the next patient in the waiting room of a Parisian psychologist clinic (which is often remarkably well decorated).

I recall my pseudo-planned walk to Fondation Cartier pour l’Art Contemporain. It occurred on my exploration of the Montparnasse district and I had a craving for a contemporary interpretations of beauty. And no, I am not confused, I believe that true art, regardless of its aesthetic qualities, can allow us to experience beauty. Not beauty in the common sense, but beauty in a spiritual sense — an ineffable experience that one will contaminate with words like how good humor can be ruined with explanation.

SIX HEMINGWAY

An internal reality

Ford’s personality is embedded in the fictional reality he constructs in The Good Solder and his voice in A Paris Letter. The protagonist of Soldier, John Dowell, narrates the emotional dissolution of his marriage in an introspective manner. Dowell’s characterization evokes pity instead of sympathy for the protagonist. In relation to my personal experience, it reminds me of self-deception or self-denial in traumatic situations. In Dowell’s complaints, we detect a sense of inferiority underlying his superficially arrogant tone. Finally, with greater investigation we can observe how Ford’s Paris in Soldier connects to the one he interacted with in reality, which he presents in Letter, as Soldier brings to mind another aspect of Paris — the notorious promiscuity of Parisians.

FIVE WALKING

A Walk in the Parc

A park is mankind's thesis of nature — we want to sculpt nature to accommodate us. With ourselves as the center of the universe, we bend the environment to our will. I would like to speak for nature: we are wrong. Ourselves, the reality called “society” we invented, are merely a fragment of nature. However, we are so absorbed by our constructed world that we mistake it for a true representation of the world. It is not a fault of yours, but that of a selected few powerful ignorant ancestors who left us this legacy of thought.

FIVE HEMINGWAY

The Lost Generation 

What the Lost Generation, those typically born between 1883 to 1900, has is an allure that still haunts us today. To thoroughly understand its origins, charm and impact, I will review the meaning of “lost generation”, investigate its appeal to the audience of its time and subsequent periods. Finally, how this label of writers has influenced themselves as well as later literature. 

FOUR WALKING

Parcs and Recreation

Pretentious. 

That was the feeling that stirred my Sunday breakfast-filled stomach. I knew the walk in the park would take a while, given the size of it on Google maps. Yet there I was on the metro. I was taking mass public transport to go for walk. Even worse, it was for a walk in the park. An experience of nature.