Amid the Alien Corn

The U.S. expatriates of the '20s clung to Paris as long as their money--or their parents' money--held out against the Depression. Today, in duffel coats and beards, a new generation of expatriates throngs Le Select and Les Deux Magots. But a sizable number of the U.S. exiles, and the most stable group among them, are seldom seen in the Left Bank cafes. They are Negro artists and writers.

The Negro intellectuals usually live separated from one another, and most have settled into French life in a way that is rare for their white compatriots. At moments of acute homesickness, an American Negro may stop at the Cafe le Tournon, a student bistro near the Luxembourg where he will find similarly afflicted friends, or--tempted by the thought of barbecued spare ribs, corn bread and deep-dish apple pie--he will drop into Leroy & Gabby's, near the Place Pigalle.

Voluntary Exiles. Some Negro artists have done impressively well. Writer Chester Himes, 49, from Jefferson City, Mo., last week won the Grand Prix de Litterature Policiere for his novel, La Reine des Pommes, a roman noir or dark-toned crime story that was hailed by Author Jean Giono as "the most extraordinary novel I have read in a long time," and praised by Jean Cocteau as "a prodigious masterpiece." Sculptor Harold Cousins, from Washington, D.C., has lived nine years in Paris, sold a sculpture last month to the Claude Bernard Gallery, and has been commissioned by Susse, the famed bronze caster, to do a mobile. Painter Beauford Delaunay, from Tennessee, lives in a small cottage in suburban Clamart and exhibits his work at the avant-garde Facchetti Gallery on the Left Bank.

Racial discrimination in the U.S. gave most of the Parisian Negroes the initial push toward self-exile, but they stay in France for other reasons. Chester Himes concedes that "in America you have this personal problem, of course. But that's not what I mean about France. I like France, and can work here because everybody, and I mean everybody--the concierge as well as the intellectual--respects creative work. They understand writers and help them."

Philadelphian William Gardner Smith, author of Last of the Conquerors, a study of Negro G.I.s in Germany, lives in a working-class quarter in Paris where Americans are seldom seen. He feels that in the U.S. "one wastes too much time being angry. Life here is more natural, more leisurely. In discussions with French people, they never say, 'How do you, a Negro, see this?' They simply ask, 'How do you see it?' In Paris you forget the color of your skin."

Painter Ollie Harrington, who earns his living as a cartoonist for the Pittsburgh Courier and other Negro newspapers, enjoys the freedom to travel. "I like to swim and ski and deep-sea fish, all strictly restricted in the U.S. Here I can step into my car and drive wherever I like, certain that at the end of the day I will find a good hotel and a good restaurant, and that I can sit down without attracting the slightest attention, or exciting curiosity. In Sweden, that's still another matter; they run after you there. I can do without that, too."

Richard (Native Son) Wright, the dean of Negro writers abroad, says bluntly: "I like to live in France because it is a free country. Then there are my daughters. They are receiving an excellent education in France." What of the danger of getting out of touch with U.S. life? Snaps Wright: "The Negro problem in America has not changed in 300 years." Other Negro writers are not so sure. William Gardner Smith confesses that "the biggest problem I have is missing my roots. I've no intention of writing about France, much as I like France. It's not my homeland. But if I'm going to be writing about the States, something may be wrong, little nuances. I'm very far from my country."

Welcome Home. Richard Gibson, in Manhattan from Paris for the publication of his new novel, A Mirror for Magistrates, points out that other Negro writers (Ralph Ellison, William Demby, Ben Johnson) have chosen Rome for their voluntary exile. He says: "All these people are in Europe because of social and political causes which everyone knows. The bright young white boys, after the end of their Fulbright scholarships, are able to return with reasonably light hearts to the dens of Madison Avenue or to the provincial Ph.D. factories. It is still impossible for an American Negro to return to the land of his birth in the same spirit."

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