Biographies of Alfred Jarry, Henri Rousseau, Erik Satie, & Guillaume Apollinaire - all creative people in Paris active from 1885 to 'WWI'. I LOVED this bk. I had just turned 22 when I read it. I was substantially familiar w/ all the characters & was engrossed by them. Satie & Jarry were both esp important to me. Rousseau & Apollinaire not so much so but still of interest. Shattuck clearly knows & loves the subject & writes about it well. The intertwining of these personalities creates a meta-personality for Parisian culture that's god-like in its crazed creativity.

Shattuck does a great job of establishing the lasting significance of these people. It's reassuring to know that even the most obscure person can have a long-term impact just b/c of what keeps them in obscurity while they're alive: their full-blown 'inaccessible' inventiveness.

If someone were to pick 4 such people in Pittsburgh (or any other city) now, who wd they pick? I'd like to read a bk that gradually expands out from "The Banquet Years" - these 4, then 12 more, then 16 to the 16th - eventually describing in detail everyone alive in the city during those 3 decades. Is that too much to ask? ( )

This is an outstandingly good work on the immediate origins of early 20th-century artistic movements/. A chapter of biography of one of the four figures--Rousseau le Douanier, Satie, Apollinaire, Jarry-- is followed by an evaluation of his work, but the book is so smoothly written that one scarcely notices the scheme of it.The lives are of course rivetingly interesting. Shattuck conveys the pathos in each one depressingly well but his joy in their works almost dispels the melancholy strain.

Despite its being a serious study the book is far from dry, and there's a good balance between the evocative and the informative. I only wish I had read this as a teenager, before I began to delve into writings and art of the following decades; I would have been spared a good deal of puzzlement. If ever you've failed to 'get' early 20th-century art, the last two chapters in particular are an excellent introduction.

Rousseau, Satie, Jarry, Apollinaire ( )