Americans In Paris by Charles Glass

From The Week of May 15, 2011

I enjoy monographs. They offer their readers incomparable glimpses of the inner-workings of great events, forsaking the big-picture view for a narrower but deeper understanding of the forces that underpin them. The risk of the monograph is irrelevancy, the adoption of such a restricted view that the reader is left to question its importance. This, unfortunately, is a disease that afflicts Americans in Paris.

Mr. Glass' 540 page history of American expatriates in Nazi-occupied Paris (1940-1944) chronicles some fascinating figures who had their careers and their lives jeopardized by war. Chief among these are DR. Sumner Jackson and Sylvia Beach, the former the chief surgeon at the American Hospital, the latter the owner of the famous Shakespeare and Company bookstore. Initially, the expatriate community in Paris seems inclined to weather the storm, but as the crisis deepens and French resistance collapses, many withdraw from the city, leaving behind a hard core of as-yet neutral Americans in a city swiftly conquered and controlled by the Third Reich. While Beach kept her shop open, using it as a means to disseminate information through the American community and the French Resistance, Dr. Jackson took an even bolder role by treating wounded, French irregulars against the explicit instructions of the occupying Nazis. Eventually, Beach and Jackson, like many of their fellow Americans in the City of Light were interned, some under crippling conditions which proved, for some, to be fatal.

Though Beach and Jackson are incredible protagonists who deserve every page of attention paid to them, the rest of Mr. Glass' micro history fails to launch. There are some machinations here concerning the French Resistance and some secondary Americans who float in and out of the story, but these are poorly articulated sidebars that don't integrate well into the main narrative which is the plight of the key Americans. I'm left to conclude that Mr. Glass wanted to write about this period in occupied Paris, knew he had strong characters in Beach and Jackson, and so he did his best to weld his heroes onto a basic backdrop. Not only does the welding fail to take, the backdrop does not satisfy. I needed to know more about the French Resistance. I needed to have at least one German character to give me an impression of the Nazi view of these American expatriates. I needed someone, or something, to tie all this together. Americans in Paris delivers none of these. It's only the remarkable stories of Beach and Jackson that save this piece. (2/5 Stars)