Francis Carco

Born in Noumea, New Caledonia in 1886, FRANCIS CARCO arrived in Paris during the winter of his 24th year, in January 1910. Making a beeline for the soon-to-be legendary cabaret, Le Lapin Agile, he was quickly accepted into the inner circle of a Parisian bohemia. There, on La Butte Montmartre, he rubbed shoulders with the likes of Picasso, Modigliani, Utrillo, Max Jacob, Pierre Mac Orlan, Apollinaire, and many of the other leading lights of a Parisian avant-garde. As the author of over 100 books...See more

Born in Noumea, New Caledonia in 1886, FRANCIS CARCO arrived in Paris during the winter of his 24th year, in January 1910. Making a beeline for the soon-to-be legendary cabaret, Le Lapin Agile, he was quickly accepted into the inner circle of a Parisian bohemia. There, on La Butte Montmartre, he rubbed shoulders with the likes of Picasso, Modigliani, Utrillo, Max Jacob, Pierre Mac Orlan, Apollinaire, and many of the other leading lights of a Parisian avant-garde. As the author of over 100 books, Carco's talents were plentiful. He composed poetry, literary fiction, plays, and biography, and was even known as a witty and engaging chansonnier. But throughout each of these creative expressions his manner remains that of a poet: utilizing a personal vision to unravel and portray the spiritual enigmas that life presents. He was also possessed by a prescient perception and published the first critical essay on Modigliani, whose work he began to collect during a period when other French critics merely scoffed at the contributions of this modern master. Likewise, his early essays on Utrillo, forged by his personal interactions with the painter, remain modern classics filled with a unique perspective. But certainly, his most developed and enduring talent was that of a memoirist. In From Montmartre to the Latin Quarter he evokes the rich, hallucinatory marvels of Montmartre, Montparnasse, and the Latin Quarter during the 1910s and early Twenties. The work also serves as a poignant memorial to all those artists and writers who were sacrificed during the Great War, their young, promising lives nipped in the bud before they reached their highest potential. From Montmartre to the Latin Quarter is a record of deep friendship in which memory serves as the most potent talisman of the heart. This newly revised edition features an in-depth Introduction and over 300 annotations that serve to greatly expand the context of this lively chronicle. In 1922, Carco was awarded Le Grand Prix du Roman for his novel L'Homme traqué ("The Hunted Man"), and in 1937 he was elected to the Académie Goncourt. See less