Expatriates

Paree.

At certain times during the 1920s the centers of American literature, music, and art appeared to be located in the Montparnasse and Latin Quarter sections of Paris on the Left Bank of the Seine. There are ample explanations for this reverse migration. World War I had introduced Americans to France ("How Ya Gonna Keep 'em Down on the Farm After They've Seen Paree?"); transatlantic travel was cheap; the exchange rate (twenty francs to the dollar) enabled Americans to live better in France than at home; there was Prohibition and puritanism in America; there were opportunities for Americans to get published in Paris; everybody else was going there. Although there were pockets of Americans in Germany, England, and Italy, Paris was the preferred venue for creative figures, especially those serving their apprenticeships. There was also an American colony on the Riviera, about which F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote that "whatever...

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