Moonlight Over Paris (29 page)

Musée du Luxembourg:
Paris's first museum of contemporary art, it was later superseded by other museums, among them the Musée d'Orsay and the Musée Nationale d'Art Moderne. Today it functions as a display space for traveling exhibitions.

mutilé de guerre
:
a person left wounded or scarred by war; literally, “mutilated by war”

Orteig Prize:
a $25,000 award for the first aviator who successfully flew non-stop between New York and Paris, it was first offered in 1919 but not won until 1927, when Charles Lindbergh crossed the Atlantic in his Spirit of St. Louis

pagaille
:
a terrible mess

Palais de Bois:
an exposition space near Porte Maillot on the western fringes of central Paris; it has since been replaced by the Palais de Congrès

Paris Edition:
the colloquial name for the European Edition of the
Chicago Tribune

pédé
:
a derogatory and highly offensive term for a gay man

la peinture à l'huile
:
oil painting

petit bleu
:
a pneumatic message, so named for the blue color of the original message cards; literally, “little blue”

Le Petit Journal:
large daily French-language paper that occupied most of the building in which the offices of the Paris Edition were located

Pigalle:
a district in central Paris known for its nightlife and cabarets, among them the Moulin Rouge

pissoir
:
a public urinal

pointillism:
an artistic technique in which tiny, distinct dots of color are used to create an image. The most famous practitioner of pointillism was Georges Seurat, who is best known for “La Grande Jatte.”

Printemps:
one of the great Parisian department stores, its competitors in this period included Le Bon Marché, La Samaritaine, and Galeries Lafayette

ravissante
:
gorgeous or beautiful; literally “ravishing”

rewrite desk:
the area of a newspaper where editors (deskmen) reworked truncated cables into full-length pieces

Rive Gauche:
the “left bank” of the Seine in Paris

Sainte Chapelle:
thirteenth-century chapel located on the Île-de-la-Cité in Paris

Salon des Indépendants:
the annual art exhibition of the members of the Société des Artists Indépendants. It was first held in 1884 and had the guiding motto of “no jury, no recompense.”

saucisson
:
dried pork sausage

Shakespeare and Company:
Sylvia Beach's renowned English-language bookshop, it opened in 1919 and closed in 1940. The current shop by that name first opened at a different location and under different management in the 1950s.

sou
:
coin of little value; term was unconnected to any specific unit of currency in France at that time

SS
Minnewaska
:
a luxury ocean liner with the Atlantic Transport Line, she sailed the London–New York route between 1924 and 1931

St.-Cloud:
a well-to-do commune, or suburb, located on the western fringes of Paris. Sara and Gerald Murphy lived here for part of each year in the early 1920s.

St.-Germain-des-Prés:
neighborhood on the Left Bank of Paris that was the center of French intellectual life for much of the twentieth century

St. Peter's Eaton Square:
church in the Belgravia district of London

Studio for Portrait Masks:
the American Red Cross Studio for Portrait Masks, which was active from late 1917 to early 1919, was established and run by Anna Coleman Ladd, an American sculptor. The studio provided customized face masks for French and American soldiers and officers with facial deformities as a result of war wounds.

tartine
:
slice of baguette, typically day-old, that is toasted and spread with preserves or butter

The Falstaff:
a café in Montparnasse, still in existence, that was decorated to resemble a traditional English public house

Théâtre de la Cigale:
a theater in the Pigalle district of Paris with a long-standing connection to avant-garde culture

Third Republic:
government of France from the collapse of the Second Empire in 1870 to the Occupation of France in 1940

toi aussi
:
you, too

Le Train Bleu:
see Blue Train, above

vendeuse
:
saleswoman

vernissage
:
opening of an art exhibition; literally, “the varnishing”

An explanatory note on currency:

In the years following the First World War, the value of the French franc all but collapsed, though its currency did not experience the same dramatic devaluation as the Reichsmark of the Weimar Republic, for instance. In 1925 one American dollar could buy 20 French francs, while a pound sterling could buy 50 French francs. This meant that expatriate Americans were particularly well-off in a city where a decent meal could be had for one franc, a room in a hotel could be let for 200 francs a month, and a journalist like Sam Howard was paid $60 a month, which equaled roughly 1,200 francs. This happy state of affairs only lasted until October 1929, when the beginning of the Depression prompted many American expatriates to return home.

   
1.
      
Other cities in Europe—for instance Rome, Venice, Barcelona, Vienna, or London—are arguably just as beautiful and historic as Paris. Why, then, are we so drawn to the City of Lights? And what is it about Paris in the 1920s that we find so particularly fascinating?

   
2.
      
Did you enjoy encountering real-life figures in the pages of
Moonlight Over Paris
? Is it possible to portray such iconic figures as F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway with any degree of accuracy? Or has their fame obscured the real men behind the legends?

   
3.
      
This novel is set six years after the end of World War I, but even still the characters and Paris itself are affected by those years. How do we see this with our characters? What do we see of this in the city itself?

   
4.
      
Would a year in Paris, with all the freedom that Helena enjoys, have been possible for most women in that era? Or was it the case that her family's wealth and status made it more easily achievable for her?

   
5.
      
If you were able to read the story of one of the other fictional characters in the book, whose would it be? Étienne's? Aunt Agnes's? Another of the secondary figures?

   
6.
      
Music, visual art, and the written word play a big role in this story. Why do you think that Paris became such an epicenter for artistic expression during this time? Do you think the aftermath of the war played any part in this?

   
7.
      
How does the character of Helena change and evolve over the course of the novel?

   
8.
      
In what ways is Sam a typical man of his time? Are there ways in which he transcends the conventions and expectations of his era?

   
9.
      
Do you think Helena ends up fulfilling the promise she makes to herself at the beginning of the book?