Honors Reading Response: Novel Three

The Crazy Years: Paris In the Twenties....By: William Wiser

After reading two books already that focused on Earnest Hemingway’s time in Paris in the 1920’s, I wanted to read a novel that had a more broad focus that described the other well-known icons from the era and their time spent in Paris.

The Crazy Years, Paris In the Twenties by William Wiser is a fountain of knowledge about Paris and it’s icons during the 1920’s. It achieves the goal of giving the reader a broad, in depth understanding of what life was like living in Paris, France in the twenties while still providing important facts about members of the “lost generation, and maintaining a story line for the reader to enjoy.

The Crazy Years touched on the subject of bisexuality and lesbianism during the Paris 1920s as well. Because of France’s Napoleonic Code, which did not “criminalize homosexual practices” when they were private, licensed this way of life. This and the fact that Paris was a populous city with everything to do was what formed Paris in the 1920’s into being a place for bisexuality and lesbianism to flourish.

There were historical images dispersed throughout this novel. This was very useful to me as I was reading because it added yet another element to describing vividly what Paris was like during the time period. The photos were sometimes of famous pieces of art that were relevant or were first created during the time, and sometimes the photos were of relevant people or places in Paris as well.

While this book by itself was extremely informative and useful, I felt that virtually all the tales of alcoholism and artistic squabbles that were in the book, I had read before in the other two books so the new information I was gaining was not very much. However I would recommend this book to someone who was maybe looking for his or her first 1920’s Paris-focused book to read.