The Tribe Contributions to the History of the Situationist International and Its Time - Softcover

Donald Mension, Jean-Michel; Nicholson-Smith

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1859843948 ISBN 13: 9781859843949

Publisher: Gardners Books, 2002

Synopsis

Between 1952 and 1954, Jean-Michel Mension haunted Saint- Germain-des-Pres as a member of the legendary Lettrist International, direct progenitor of the Situationist International. In a series of conversations, Mension recounts this very particular vie de boheme whiled away with Guy Debord and a rogues' gallery of hard drinkers and thinkers. The Tribe is a rare, vivid tour of a moment and milieu barely noticed at the time by the tourists who flocked to the Left Bank for a glimpse of Sartre & Co. The rich iconography includes many of Ed van der Elsken's celebrated photographs of "the tribe" and a trove of Letterist leaflets and posters.

About this title

About the Author:

Jean-Michel Mension (b. 1934) misspent his youth in Saint- Germain-des-Pres in the early 1950s before joining the Communist Party in 1962 and the Ligue Communiste in 1968. The Tribe is Mension's first book; he recently published his second, Le Temps gage: aventures politiques et artistiques d'un irregular a Paris.

From Publishers Weekly:

Inveterate 1950s-style Parisian slacker Jean-Michel Mension's first book, The Tribe: Conversations with Gerard Berreby and Francesco Milo (volume 1 of Contributions to the History of the Situationist International and Its Time), arrives in this country translated by Donald Nicholson-Smith. Published in France in 1998, the lengthy interview concerns Paris's Saint-Germain-des-Pres neighborhood in the years 1952-1954, when the members of Letterist International and then of Situationist International, an even more Boho crowd than Sartre et al., were hanging around at Moineau's bar and, frequently, behind bars. Mension, who began submitting writing to the Letterist journal at 18, recounts life in this fascinating, emphatically improvident, quasi-anarchist subculture, delivering vivid anecdotes and a still-fresh scoff-law sensibility. B&w photos.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Gardners Books
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 1859843948
• ISBN 13: 9781859843949
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 138