NONFICTION - July 9, 1995

EXILED IN PARIS: Richard Wright, James Baldwin, Samuel Beckett and Others on the Left Bank by James Campbell (Scribner’s: $25; 271 pp.) Maybe it happened like this: James Campbell, having published “Talking at the Gates,” a top-drawer biography of James Baldwin, in 1991, had reams of notes left over. Focusing on Baldwin’s more fruitful years--mainly the 1950s--on the south side of the Seine, Campbell’s indices embrace as iridescent a gathering of incipient (and accomplished) literary talent as ever ran a tab at the corner cafe. Each left his mark on Paris, and Baldwin, and, of course, vice versa. More to the point, each found his way into Campbell’s notebook. And what wasn’t consumed by the Baldwin bio was still USDA Choice for the most part, a literary doggy bag deluxe. Why not rinse it off, add a few fresh ingredients and call it macaroni? If, of course, it happened that way. . . . Maybe, but there are still a few smudges. Like the title. “Exiled in Paris”? There’s an original motif! Further, not every expatriate subscribed to the “exile” harmonic. Baldwin said: “I didn’t go to Paris. I left New York.” Miles Davis found that American musicians “seemed to lose . . . an edge that living in the States gave them.”

Otherwise, Campbell illuminates some corners too-long obscured: Vernon Sullivan, black novelist whose “I Will Spit on Your Graves” was France’s top seller until the author was revealed as Boris Vian, white trumpet player; the “little magazines” of the ‘50s; Burroughs’ “bid for total unpublishability.” Best is Campbell’s take on Maurice Girodias, legendary if seedy publisher of porn who wrote under such luscious noms de plume as Marcos Van Heller and Count Palmiro Vicarian. A supporter of the little mags as a smoke-screen, Girodias’ Olympia Press finally struck it rich with “Lolita,” only to bog down for years in what the Times Literary Supplement called “lolitigation.” Best reaction to the whole silly affair was Groucho Marx’s: “I’ve put off reading ‘Lolita’ for six years, until she’s 18.”