Rufus Hickok

The Paris Bureau Rufus Hickok

The Paris Bureau tells the story of the storytellers. Drawing on the lively dispatches of a forgotten American correspondent and his family in Paris between the wars, it illuminates the expatriate "writing colony," the wild adventures of a foreign journalist, the cultural revolutions of the Jazz Age, the rise of fascism, the birth of Modernism, and the ways that writers made sense of it all for their readers at home. It also brings to life the correspondent's close friendship with a young "cub" journalist, Ernest Hemingway, then struggling to find his own way of writing fiction, and their eccentric mutual friend, the poet Ezra Pound. With this cast of characters, we tour the cabarets and bullfights, battlefields and back alleys, peace conferences and Nazi rallies. And through it all, we see how truth overlaps with fiction, and how writers find their voice and make their way in the world through their friendships, community, family, and by their own words.