From its opening in 1925 when sex, drugs, alcohol and art defined Les Années Folles Le Sélect was a favorite of Hemingway, Kiki, Foujita, Hart Crane, Henry Miller and F. Scott Fitzgerald.
Except for the regulars not much has changed in 82 years –tan walls, brown banquettes and old-fashioned globe lamps.
It is the least touristy of the great Montparnasse cafés and the owners intend to keep it that way!
I have begun to hang my ‘hat” there for a few reasonably priced glasses of Cotes du Rhone before heading out for an evening of jazz. Packed with regulars it feels like home.
One of those regulars is Rick Tulka, for twenty years an illustrator for MAD Magazine and for thirteen years a sketcher of quotidian life at Le Sélect. His lively Hirschfeld-inspired illustrations reinforce Noel Riley Fitch’s prose in their delightful collaboration, Paris Café: The Sélect Crowd.
An internationally recognized biographer and historian of expatriate Paris in the first four decades of the 19th century, Noel has written biographies of Sylvia Beach, Anais Nin and Julia Child as well as several books about Ernest Hemingway’s Paris.
Paris Café: The Sélect Crowd sparkles with wit and humor and makes an ideal gift for your Paris-bound friends.
The Ball is a psychologically acute account of the relationship between a narcissistic
French mother—married to her former boss, a
rich German Jew—and their enraged
adolescent daughter, Antoinette; the similarly
brief Snow in Autumn is a tender portrait of an
old, devoted Russian nanny who cannot
adjust to life as an émigré in Paris.
“These short early novels reveal her
clear-eyed view into the deeply compromised human heart.”
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