Cozy crime set in set in SANTA BARBARA, California
Talking Location With Daniel S Chertoff – PARIS
18th August 2026
#TalkingLocationWith …. Daniel S Chertoff, author of Resonance (with Michael S Tobin) – PARIS
Why there? Why then? Paris in the 1920s
By Daniel S Chertoff
Working briefly at Shakespeare and Company in 1972 introduced me to the amazing world of 1920s Paris. I learned about Sylvia Beach opening the original store in 1919, the convergence of many of the great authors of the period, including Joyce, Hemingway, Fitzgerald, and others, at the store, and the complex, competitive yet fertile relationships among them. I was 18 and fantasized about what it must have been like to be there then.
This lifelong interest fueled numerous visits to Paris and graduate study in literature. Yet the questions remained. Why did the arts experience such a broad and dramatic flowering specifically in Paris and specifically in the 1920s? What was it about Paris that drew creative people from around the world? How did Paris become the crucible of modernism?
The answer is an almost mystical convergence of historical trauma, economic conditions, cultural openness, and institutional support, which together created the most fertile artistic environment in modern history. These factors are particular to Paris itself and also a function of the broader upheavals of the early twentieth century.
The first and most immediate catalyst was the psychological aftermath of World War I. The war shattered long-standing assumptions about progress, reason and the stability of Western civilization. Millions were dead; empires had collapsed, and the old moral certainties seemed hollow. For artists and writers, traditional forms of representation—realist novels, academic painting, conventional tonality in music—felt inadequate to express a world that had revealed itself as fractured and absurd. This crisis of meaning became the emotional engine of modernism. Fragmentation, irony, experimentation, and a rejection of inherited forms were not merely stylistic choices but attempts to grapple with a reality that no longer made sense.
Paris was uniquely positioned to incubate and amplify this energy. Long before the 1920s it was already well established as Europe’s cultural capital. The legacy of nineteenth-century movements—Impressionism, Symbolism, and Post-Impressionism—had already made the city synonymous with artistic innovation. By the time the war ended, Paris had an infrastructure that supported creative work: academies, galleries, publishers, salons, and cafés that served as informal intellectual laboratories. The city had experience nurturing the avant-garde and had developed a tolerance—even an appetite—for experimentation.
Paradoxically, the city’s deep historical and cultural heritage made it an ideal place to rebel against that very heritage. Artists could engage directly with the masterpieces of the past—seen in museums like the Louvre—while attempting to overturn their assumptions. This tension between reverence and rebellion is at the heart of modernism. The past was not ignored; it was fragmented, reinterpreted, and reconstituted into entirely new forms. An excellent example is Joyce’s novel Ulysses, which, anchored in Homer’s tale, uses stream of consciousness and experimental kaleidoscopic shifts in style, tone, and perspective to celebrate the heroism of the common man.
LOUVRE
The economic situation was especially important. In the early 1920s, the French franc was relatively weak compared with the American dollar and the British pound. This made Paris remarkably affordable for foreign artists and writers, particularly Americans, many of whom had been young soldiers sent overseas for the first time. Young expatriates could live modestly yet comfortably while devoting their time to creative work. Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald were no doubt drawn to Paris by the city’s reputation and by its practical advantages: cheap rent, inexpensive yet delicious food, and an abundance of cafés where one could write for hours over a single drink.
But perhaps the most important thing Paris offered was freedom. Compared with the more conservative social climates of the United States and Britain, Paris in the 1920s was scandalously permissive. Artists could explore sexuality, identity, and unconventional lifestyles with relatively little interference. American writer and art collector Gertrude Stein, for example, found in Paris a space where she could live openly with her lesbian partner, Alice B. Toklas, and cultivate a salon that became a hub for avant-garde writers, artists, and thinkers. There was also relatively little racial discrimination. In stark contrast to their status in America, black artists and writers were welcome and even celebrated in Paris.
Stein’s salon illustrates another key feature of the Parisian scene: its intensely social and collaborative nature. Modernism and other artistic movements were not the work of isolated geniuses but of interconnected communities. Painters, writers, musicians, and intellectuals mingled constantly, exchanging ideas and influencing one another. For example, Pablo Picasso, whose development of Cubism fundamentally altered the language of visual art, exemplified this collaborative spirit. By breaking objects into fragmented, multiple perspectives, Picasso and his collaborators challenged the very notion of representation. The boundaries between disciplines were porous. Writers William Faulkner and Wallace Stevens, for example, both incorporated aspects of Cubism into their work. Similarly, a painter might respond to developments in literature or philosophy. This cross-pollination accelerated innovation and encouraged risk-taking.
In this way, Paris in the 1920s was profoundly cosmopolitan. Artists arrived from Spain, Italy, the United States, and beyond, bringing diverse perspectives and traditions. Some, like the Jewish artists of “The Paris School,” were largely refugees from the Pale of Settlement in Eastern Europe. This diversity enriched the creative environment and gave one the sense of participating in a global conversation. It encouraged bold experimentation and the breaking of conventions.
Institutions also played a vital role. Independent galleries and progressive patrons were willing to support work that might have been rejected elsewhere. Publishing houses took risks on unconventional manuscripts. Dozens of small magazines provided platforms for experimental writing. Sylvia Beach and Adrienne Monier, the proprietor of the French-language bookstore La Maison des Amis des Livres, supported several such periodicals. Cafés like La Rotonde, Les Deux Magots, and Le Dôme were not merely places to eat and drink; they were arenas for debate, performance, and collaboration.
Finally, there was a sense of a historical moment—a feeling that something fundamentally new was emerging. The generation that came of age during or just after the war felt both disillusioned and liberated. The collapse of old certainties created space for new possibilities. Paris, with its openness, infrastructure, and international community, became the place where these possibilities could be explored most fully.
Unfortunately, the magic did not last. By the end of the decade, the Great Depression brought a total and catastrophic end. Many writers and artists returned to their native countries. Sylvia Beach describes Shakespeare and Company as hanging by a thread, dependent on help from others until 1940, when she herself cut the thread as the Nazis marched into Paris. But for a brief period, Paris achieved a unique synthesis: a city where trauma and hope, tradition and innovation, and local and global influences intersected to produce a remarkable burst of creativity.
My fascination with this period led my writing partner, Michael Tobin, and me to write a novel set in Paris during that time, centered on Shakespeare and Company. Resonance: A Novel (Amplify, September 2026) is our love letter to Paris in which we vicariously experience Anna’s entry into that world and her emergence as a great sculptor and a fighter against the Nazis. What better way to experience a period than to inhabit it?
Daniel S Chertoff
Daniel S Chertoff worked in various aspects of the investment industry but retired early to pursue doctoral studies in English literature. He has published academic articles and serves as an associate editor for an academic journal. Daniel’s first book, Palestine Posts: An Eyewitness Account of the Birth of Israel (Toby Press, 2019), grew out of a series of extraordinary letters written by his father during Israel’s War of Independence. Together with Michael S. Tobin, Daniel is the author of Resonance: A Novel (Amplify, September 2026). Perhaps most importantly, in the summer of 1972, Daniel was a “tumbleweed” at Shakespeare and Company in Paris — where Resonance begins.
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