How nice it would to be able to say that Stanley Karnow and I are peas from the same pod.
We both worked as reporters based in Paris, we both formed close attachments with capital and country, devouring its food and wine with enthusiasm, and we both chose not just another country but another continent when we moved on.
Karnow, however, went on to gain international acclaim as a distiguished correspodnent for Time and Life magazines, covering the entire Vietnam war and winning a Pulitzer prize for his book In Our Image: America's Empire in the Philippines . In short, I didn't.
Salut! readers know by now that I observe no "best before" dates when referring to books that have caught my attention. I therefore offer no apology for catching up, a dozen years after its publication, with Karnow"s Paris in the Fifties. It is a book I commend with immense pleasure.
I came across it on shelves in the garage filled with books salvaged from the magnificent old Daily Telegraph flat-cum-office beside W H Smith's in the rue de Rivoli. The sort of people in charge when I was done away with, so to speak, had no great interest in retaining the abundantly stocked library that the flat contained. My instructions were simply to empty the premises for an orderly handover to the landlords.
What I had room for, I kept. That, I fear, left an awful lot of books for which no home could be found. They simply disappeared when the clearance men called; I hope some or all found their way into the hands of les bouquinistes on either side of the Seine, but they are as likely to have been dumped.
Among the books that I gratefully moved south were works on French politics of all colours, art, travel, history, culture and much more. I still have to look inside the book marking Johnny Hallyday's 50th birthday and another on the great catastrophes of Paris through the ages. But I am delighted to have stumbled upon Karnow's memories of joining the rush of Americans towards post-war Paris.
We learn about an uproariously bibulous trip to Beaujolais in the company of men of ox-like constitutions led by a Paris restaurateur needing to replenish his cellars.
There is a chapter on the heartwarming campaign by Abbé Pierre to nudge the not normally charitable French into an orgy of generosity, raising money and aid for the poor and homeless during a ferocious Parisian winter.
We suffer with him the sights and sounds of carnage at the Le Mans 24-hour motor race; we accompany him to the Maghreb as France's North African colonies begin to demand independence. And we meet the colourful characters with whom Karnow worked, drank and, in one or two cases, slept. Among interviewees, Hemingway comes across, in a manner bitterly disappointing to Salut!, as surly and objectionable; Audrey Hepburn held him spellbound.
Some of you will have read the book. A few may be tempted by my description to take a look for themselves. I would be fascinated to hear what any of those readers made/make of it.
Karnow, incidentally, chose the Hotel Crillon for everyday drinking, and would see many of the other British and American correspondents there, Sam White of the London Evening Standard treating the Crillon Bar as his office. Clearly, expense accounts were a little more generous in his day, though I was once taken for a very grand dinner there by Mireille Guiliano, author of French Women Don't Get Fat.
He is still alive and writing, though well into his 80s. Sadly, his wife, Annette (they met in Algiers where she was a US diplomat), whose delightful sketches illuminate the pages of Paris in the Fifties, died a few weeks ago.
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