Breathless: An American Girl in Paris, by Nancy K. Miller
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Breathless: An American Girl in Paris, by Nancy K. Miller
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In the early 1960s, most middle-class American women in their twenties had their lives laid out for them: marriage, children, and life in the suburbs. Most, but not all.Breathless is the story of a girl who represents those who rebelled against conventional expectations. Paris was a magnet for those eager to resist domesticity, and like many young women of the decade, Nancy K. Miller was enamored of everything French—from perfume and Hermès scarves to the writing of Simone de Beauvoir and the New Wave films of Jeanne Moreau. After graduating from Barnard College in 1961, Miller set out for a year in Paris, with a plan to take classes at the Sorbonne and live out a great romantic life inspired by the movies.After a string of sexual misadventures, she gave up her short-lived freedom and married an American expatriate who promised her a lifetime of three-star meals and five-star hotels. But her husband wasn't who he said he was, and she eventually had to leave Paris and her dreams behind.This stunning memoir chronicles a young woman’s coming-of-age tale, and offers a glimpse into the intimate lives of girls before feminism.
Breathless: An American Girl in Paris, by Nancy K. Miller- Amazon Sales Rank: #190368 in eBooks
- Published on: 2013-11-05
- Released on: 2013-11-05
- Format: Kindle eBook
From Publishers Weekly In a graceful, aching memoir of her ingénue years in Paris, comparative literature professor and author Miller (What They Saved: Pieces of a Jewish Past) re-creates a time of fledgling sexual liberation and rueful homecoming. Breaking away from home with her intellectual, Jewish parents in Manhattan, where she had felt conned to live during her college years at Barnard, Miller blissfully took off for study at the Sorbonne in fall of 1961, resolved to be the Jean Seberg character in Jean-Luc Godard&'s Breathless and be adventurous and independent. In that pre-feminist era, she quickly learned that sleeping with men was effortless but achieving sexual satisfaction was not. In her naivety, as her time in Paris lengthened and she won a Fulbright teaching fellowship, she often confused sex with finding the right dream-companion á la Simone de Beauvoir, and was frequently disappointed, from falling for the leather-clad beatnik on the motorcycle, Leo; the earnest Tunisian student Bernard, who wanted to marry her; and the overbearing Irishman Jim Donovan, the head of a self-run language school, who hired her and married her. In her sweetly ironical, fondly forgiving look back at her youth, it actually took an affair with a humble German carpenter named Hans to help Miller escape her nice-Jewish-girl destiny and find her way home again. (Nov.)
From Booklist In the early 1960s, college students flocked to Europe, and Paris was the pinnacle of every trip. No wonder Miller finds herself drawn to the City of Lights for her first excursion away from the confines of her conservative, middle-class Jewish home. After graduation from Barnard College, she persuades her parents to let her study in France, where she promptly pushes aside American conservatism for more liberal sexual and intellectual mores. Miller’s memoir will resonate with women who, over the years, have been fascinated by Jean Seberg’s role as Patricia in the Godard film Breathless (1960). The movie is frequently cited for Patricia’s independence, self-assurance, and fearlessness—traits Miller seeks. Her look back is filled with vintage vignettes of garret apartments, matronly concierges, and the silk-lingerie splurges of a poor young student’s milieu. She considers marriage to a Tunisian man, suffers through an illegal abortion, and ends up with an American expatriate who is more con man than the connoisseur he pretends to be. Readers may wish for even more photographs as Miller’s memoir captures that influential era’s essence. --Laurie Borman
Review "A coming-of-age tale covering the author's 20s in Paris, where she studied, worked, lived on her own for the first time, fell in and out of love, and found solid ground beneath her feet . . . Articulate, keen and satisfying."--Kirkus Reviews "Miller's highly personal memoir is at the same time a vivid portrait of a city and an era as youth culture begins to take hold -- to the bewilderment of parents and, more often than they'll admit, of the young people themselves." --Joanna scutts, Biographile"In the early 1960s, most middle-class American women in their twenties had their lives laid out for them: marriage, children, and life in the suburbs. Most, but not all. Breathless is the story of a girl who represents those who rebelled against conventional expectations."--Meg Rynott, The Whynott Blog "With all the melancholy detachment of the French movies that brought her to Paris in the first place, Miller has created an artful portrait of her younger self, one which doesn't shy away from her flaws, but displays them proudly." --Emma Cueto, Bustle"Nancy's misadventures make for an exciting read and just may inspire you to take risks in your own life."--Emily Laurence, Metro USBittersweet tale of author Nancy K. Miller's "escape" to Paris in the early 1960s. She hopes to sample Paris breathlessly à la Jean Seberg, but finds more disappointment than romance...A very funny, cautionary memoir by the feminist and literary professor.--Cara Magazine “A real-life Dud Avocado, this memoir is a provocative account of a feminist scholar’s sexual awakening set amid the backdrop of 1960s Paris.”—Library Journal“Miller’s memoir will resonate with women who, over the years, have been fascinated by Jean Seberg’s role as Patricia in the Godard film Breathless (1960) . . . Her look back is filled with vintage vignettes of garret apartments, matronly concierges, and the silk-lingerie splurges of a poor young student’s milieu.”—Booklist“Breathless, a deliriously satisfying account of erotic awakening and disillusionment, unfolds as a chain of tightly crafted, riveting vignettes, each episode as mesmerizing as the city enshrined at the book’s center. Simone de Beauvoir would have loved this story. Jean-Paul Sartre, too. But Nancy K. Miller is more entertaining than both of them put together. Her book offers a beautifully distilled parable about the difficulties of finding a direct path to happiness.”—Wayne Koestenbaum, author of Andy Warhol"This cautionary memoir of a girl's fantasy adventure in Paris gone awry reads like a witty novel. Its vivid scenes are frequently hilarious, sometimes sad, and always engrossing. That it really happened only makes it better."—Alix Kates Shulman, author of To Love What Is"A steamy portrait of the jeune fille before she became a feminist. A wonderful reminder of what it meant to be a good daughter determined to become a bad girl in the roiling sixties. I loved every chapter of this American’s sex-obsessed quest for identity in Paris."—Susan Gubar, author of Memoir of a Debulked Woman"Witty, wise, poignant, and funny, Breathless is an extraordinary memoir about a young woman’s adventures and misadventures in Paris, a city that was for her as much an idea as a place. Miller’s vividly told memories, keen intelligence, gentle irony, and striking gift for narrative pacing held me captive from beginning to end."—Siri Hustvedt, author of What I Loved and The Summer Without Men"Surprising, daring, funny, wise, and profound."—Elaine Showalter, author of A Jury of Her Peers“Breathless, Nancy Miller's wry and wonderful new memoir about a romantic (and chastening) student sojourn she spent in Paris in the early 1960s, is a delicious, picaresque, often hilarious female 'coming of age' story—full of zest and pathos and more than a few glints of Proustian profondeur. . . . [Miller] offers a story at once salutary, intelligent, deeply humorous, and ineluctably bittersweet: the souvenir of a magical mise-en-scène, from a brilliant young woman who paid attention to it all.”—Terry Castle, author of The Professor and Other Writings"An artful portrait of youthful indiscretion in a bygone time."—Bustle
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7 of 8 people found the following review helpful. Breathless for Paris: a beautiful memoir of loves past By Mitzi Hol I loved Breathless--An American Girl in Paris. It is a wonderful memoir. In particular, I would recommend this book to those (like me) who, at some point or other, freely chose to leave their homes and try life abroad... for a while or for good. This book will speak to them quite personally. It is the story of a young woman's life in the 1960s seen through the one lens that more than any other shapes and frames the life of girls, especially at the earliest stages: Love. It is a book of love stories; it illustrates how our sentimental past determines who we are or intend to be. Love in this book is not a trivial, side, empty-calorie snack: it is the main course (served à la française--with elegance and irony). Most of the action takes place in France, where the author moved as soon as she finished Barnard College and her first serious relationship in New York. Her love for Paris and for the classics (films and novels) had led her to believe that there could be a better life, more interesting and exciting, than the one her parents were not-so subtly hoping to mastermind for their daughter in America. France is where she will become the heroine of her own book. But Paris awaits her with an unexpected amount of both love and its opposite (loneliness, despair, insecurity, fragility, abuse). From light-hearted love (one-night flings) to heavy-hearted relationships (destructive marriage), Miller follows her passion for places and people with relentless curiosity and courage. If the girl's arrival in Paris could fittingly be accompanied by Gershwin's tune "An American in Paris," the end of Breathless could be better scored by Ravel's "Pavane pour une infante défunte." In going to Paris, had the young woman's subconscious dream been to vindicate all the Emma-Bovary of the world? Must Emma Bovary necessarily die? Or is there life after the fall? And could the fall itself be the only healthy expression of life, a form of action, experimentation, revolution--an antidote to passivity, homogenization, spiritual coma...?One of the most interesting aspects of this story is the way in which Miller's re-telling of "her" life as a young woman makes us aware of the fact that our lives are never quite only our own. The force of her parents' influence in her decisions, and in her way of looking at herself and the world around her, has a huge responsibility in the course the events will take in this story. After all, first and foremost, this heroine's escape had been more "from somewhere" rather than simply "to somewhere" else--as all escapes are. She was attempting to run as far as possible from her parents, NYC, and the zeitgeist they embodied: the stifling, bourgeois, 1950s American family, with its snobbery and hypocrisy, its complexes of inferiority (vis à vis their origins not exactly Mayflowerish) and their arrogant entitlement (due to their all-too-new richesse).In subtle yet complex patterns, Breathless waves the story of one American Jewish girl in Paris with the angst, inner and outer turmoil of an entire generation. A generation of girls that was just then learning to say a resounding "No!" to family, husband, children, god and nation.I will give Breathless as a present to many of my (expatriate and ex-expatriate) friends, and I am sure it would make for a great discussion book in any book-club.
6 of 7 people found the following review helpful. Georgous writing. Refreshingly honest. And saucy! By Marci Alboher From the moment I picked it up, I was transported to Paris in 1961, and to the mind of our ingenue who is both a particular product of her place in time and a stand-in for every woman tasting the world for the first time. Gorgeous writing. Refreshingly honest. And as riveting as a well-crafted diary you feel you shouldn't be reading. Have been recommending this book to anyone who will listen.
5 of 6 people found the following review helpful. Couldn't put it down!! By Kate Trebuss Couldn't put this down. Set in Paris in the 1960's, Miller's story of navigating the choppy waters of self-invention, love, and family during her 20's feels astonishingly "of the moment." Miller writes eloquently and sardonically of her quest to live her own Great Story modeled after the lives of the audacious, non-conforming heroines of the novels and films of her "Good Jewish" girlhood in Manhattan. And while Miller's experiences don't ultimately read quite like those of the plots she admires most (she is simply too smart, too obsessively self-conscious, and too wry ever to become one of the languid Hollywood heroines she idolizes), hers is the "truer," more textured story of what it means to be a woman who both longs for and balks at the part of protagonist in her own romance narrative.Writing about a moment before the "invention" of second wave feminism in the 1970s, Breathless gets at a profound tension that many educated young women continue to feel today as they take stock of their wants and needs and ambitions in the years after college and try to figure out who they are and what they want -- and, tougher still in some ways, how these desires relate to what everyone else around them says they should want.Miller is a powerful, funny, intensely self-reflective writer who manages to capture much of what it feels like to be engulfed by contradictory desires during one's 20's, while weaving her own story into the incredible landscape of 1960's Paris and providing the reader with a rare glimpse into the ways in which seemingly distant world events and cultural memory are messily entwined with our most personal experiences of day to day life. LOVED THIS BOOK!!
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