While I want to place this book on the shelf of Great Bar Literature (cf. Mitchell's McSorley's Wonderful Saloon), "Jimmie the Barman"'s book is not that. What it is, though, is a gossipy romp through Lost Generation Paris by an expat British barkeep who tended to all sorts of lost souls. His dishing fluctuates between mild and mean; one of his more memorable lines is about Hemingway's THE SUN ALSO RISES, The Sun Also Rises, which Jimmie calls "six characters in search of an author--each with a gun". Jimmie is playing on the title of the Pirandello play (1921) Six Characters in Search of an Author and Other Plays but also on the open secret that Hemingway had stolen details from all his friends' lives to create the book. Then again, Jimmie himself may have stolen the Pirandello line from a book reviewer, Cleveland Chase (these names!).

It's up to you to decide who has the last laugh, Hemingway or Jimmie -- the latter somehow convinced the former to write a foreword for the book, which he did, not having read a word of it, a fact Hemingway proudly boasts of in the foreword itself. In short, take all this with a grain of salt, or the shot of your choice.