Volume 43, Number 1 · January 11, 1996
Brinksmanship
By Roger Shattuck
Portrait of Picasso as a Young Man: An Interpretive Biography
by Norman Mailer
Atlantic Monthly Press, 400 pp., $35.00
The twentieth century in Paris opened with a curious lull, almost a whimper. During the previous century, each generation had staged at least one political upheaval, culminating during the 1890s in a spate of anarchist bombings and the near revolution of the Dreyfus affair. By organizing their own exhibits, the Impressionist painters had found a detour around the Beaux Arts-Salon system. With their recently developed prose poetry, free verse, and stream-of-consciousness style, writers had abandoned the authority of the Académie Française in literature. But the seething activity designated by the loose term 'avantgarde' seemed to slow down as the new century opened.
Review, 4890 words
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