Why a Booktrail?
1940s/1950s: Simone de Beauvoir meets novelist Nelson Algren. And the rest is history
Noon in Paris, Eight in Chicago
What you need to know before your trail
On a freezing February night, France’s feminist icon Simone de Beauvoir calls up radical resident novelist Nelson Algren, asking him to show her around. After a whirlwind tour of dive bars, cabarets and the police lockup, the pair return to his apartment on Wabansia Avenue. Here, a passion is sparked that will last for the next two decades.
Their relationship intensifies during intoxicating months spent together in Paris and Chicago. But in between are long, anguished periods apart filled with competing desires lovers old and new, writing, politics, gambling which ultimately expose the fragility of their unconventional marriage and put their devotion to the test.
Travel Guide
The ‘real’ Chicago.
What a tour this turns out to be. There’s the bars where the shadows take over and where the only sign of life and light are the rays from the juke box or the glowing embers of the cigarettes butts.
“Go get your coat, and I’ll take you someplace real’. She smiled
She hadn’t noticed the sneer in the way he said ‘real’.”
His apartment on Wabansia Avenue is where the love affair begins. This is the city where he lives and works and where he ultimately breathes.
Paris
Simone is the star of her homeland. The presence of Sartre is a constant in her life much to the chagrin of Nelson. There’s is a long distance love affair – not easy in the 1940s and 1950s. But the pull of Paris and Sartre is in Simone’s blood.
Travels in Mexico and Guatemala
A much lesser part of the story but an essential one all the same. They enjoy travelling off the beaten track and do things that your regular tourist doesn’t know about. They don’t try to blend in but want to feel superior and spend time widening each other’s worlds.
Booktrail Boarding Pass Information: Noon in Paris, Eight in Chicago
Author/Guide: Douglas Cowie Destination: Chicago, Guatemala, Mexico, Paris Departure Time: 1940s, 1950s
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