ABSTRACT
Most Parisians live in shabbiness or real poverty though they may perform work of skill and power. What Bergson called morsellisation—an anatomizing of living event into affairs to be filed in compartments—has triumphed in Paris as it does in all commercial cultures. Nevertheless thousands of Americans remain in Paris. Apart from those who come because of a job with the government, private business, or one of the international organizations—for most of these Paris is an appendage to the working day—the largest group is still that of the Bohemes, the experts on eternal truth and irregular hours. What la vie de boheme and its partner in incest, the life of official art, imply is that the writer's self-consciousness is enough. Such artists may grant research its uses, a deliberate "experiencing"; they remain incapable of the sort of responsible participation in society which creates both persons and individuals.
