The Tribe - Softcover

Mension, Jean-Michel; Nicholson-Smith, Donald

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0872863921 ISBN 13: 9780872863927

Publisher: City Lights Publishers, 2001

Synopsis

Between 1952 and 1954, Jean-Michel Mension haunted Saint-Germain-des-Prés as a member of the legendary Letterist International, direct progenitor of the Situationist International. In a series of conversations, Mension recounts this very particular vie de bohème whiled away with Guy Debord and a rogue's 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. A rare, vivid tour of a moment and milieu barely noticed at the time by the tourists flocking to Saint-Germain for a glimpse of Sartre & Co.

"The Tribe relates the Parisian wanderings of a heterogeneous group of individuals who cultivated laziness and revolt, alcohol and talk, drift and chance, creative hopes and encounters . . . in quest of a Rimbaldian derangement of all the senses, of détournement of art and daily life in the defiance of order, by vandalism, by deliquency, but also by an altogether contemporary quest for a supersession of Marxism."—Le Monde libertaire

"In his oral memoir The Tribe, Jean-Michel Mension provides a useful context for [Guy] Debord's particular estrangement from postwar modernity. Mension reveals a multicultural dimension that is rarely explored in the burgeoning literature on this group . . . "—McKenzie Wark, Bookforum

"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."—Publishers Weekly

Jean-Michel Mension (1934 - 2006) misspent his youth in Saint-Germain-des-Prés 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 published his second in 2001: Le Temps gage: aventures politiques et artistique d'un irrégulier à Paris.

About this title

About the Author:

Jean-Michel Mension, after his vie errante in the Latin Quarter, served in the French Army in Algeria, joined the Communist Party, and then became a militant in the Ligue Communiste. The Tribe is his first book.

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: City Lights Publishers
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 0872863921
• ISBN 13: 9780872863927
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 145