Paris Café: The Select Crowd - Paperback

Acclaimed author No l Riley Fitch, abetted by noted artist Rick Tulka, serves the dish on Select, the famous Montparnasse caf that for nearly nine decades has been so vital to Paris and its intellectual denizens: from Hemingway, Beauvoir, Picasso, James Baldwin, and George Plimpton to the writers and artists who continue to work quietly there in the back room or heatedly debate every topic imaginable into the night. The artists have their work on the walls; the novelists include the caf setting in their fiction. The quiet and drama of the S lect world illustrates the centrality of caf s -- particularly this one -- to Parisian social, cultural, and intellectual life. Blending pithy profiles and witty drawings of clientele and staff, the book is organized around a history of the caf , its daily and seasonal rhythms, particular colorful patrons, and even its typical caf /brasserie food (including a few recipes).