SCENE PAREE

Elizabeth Venant perfectly captured the all-form-and-no-content style of the Paris “literary” scene in “The Third Wave: Paris’ Expatriate Literary Scene” (Sept. 21).

There are certainly some serious writers in Paris, but few of them hang out with the self-consciously picturesque crowd that Venant so aptly described.

During the three years I lived in Paris--where I worked as an English teacher--Jim Haynes’ was known less as a “salon” than as a place to get a cheap meal (I see his prices have gone up), and other personalities mentioned were famous mostly for prowling Shakespeare & Co. to pick up young women newly arrived in town.

Until the Paris scene produces another Henry Miller or Anais Nin, Venant’s got it down.

HEIDI YORKSHIRE

Beverly Hills