——Read Hu Liuming Read, I couldn’t help laughing while reading, it’s really interesting to write, the French contemporary writer Dan Frank’s writing is leisurely and casual, humorous and funny, he spent several years consulting a lot of relevant documents , wrote this long documentary biographical essay, one of the most typical "light reading" readers, but the depth of thought and high artistic taste in it can only be carefully read and pondered after reading and thinking. comprehend it.A smart author blends profound insights with witty writing, and the beautiful writing is enough to make many people, including myself, who write for a living, feel inferior.

At the turn of the 19th century and the 20th century, traditional culture, traditional ideas, and traditional literature and art have been stable for centuries, and the process of world history has developed into a new period that urgently needs to be transformed—first of all, the era of large-scale industry in the economic field Then came the development of mechanical and electrical technology in the field of science, followed by the philosophical revolution pioneered by Nietzsche in the field of thought and culture.As a result, a great world revolution involving literature and art in all directions began, a group of anti-traditional modernist literary and artistic schools were born, and a large number of the greatest literati and artists of the 20th century were born. A specific place has performed a historical drama that has been passed down through the ages and is full of sorrow and joy. These are the characters and stories involved in our book.

At the beginning of the 20th century, in Paris, France, a group of artists and a group of "great lunatics" just came from their hometown to this most beautiful and romantic city in Europe, including painters, sculptors, writers, poets, and dancers—— They are empty-handed, poor, ragged, and hungry, and their only wealth is their natural talent.In Montmartre on the right bank of the Seine and Montparnasse on the left bank of the Seine, in the lowest slums of Paris, in the simplest and poorest wooden rental houses like "laundry boats" and "beehive houses", they started The original artistic pursuit.They are great men and mortals, artists and vagrants, thieves, drunkards, knights, righteous men, liars, gentlemen, fighting heroes or cowards who escaped military service. Whoring prostitutes, gang fights, taking drugs, and even stealing;

The book adopts the writing method of biography and record, vividly describes the celebrity anecdotes in Paris at that time, "a vivid and colorful map of stars", describes this group of artists, writers and poets, their models, their Mistresses, art dealers, publishers, news owners, hotel owners, hotel owners, bookstore owners, gallery owners, police officers and other ordinary people, jointly construct a bitter, romantic and bumpy experience. On the eve of this group of "genius lunatics" being accepted by the world, they carried out their common ideals and beliefs with their actions, that is freedom - freedom of thought, freedom of speech and freedom of behavior.They hated the system and norms, hypocritical moral concepts and class hierarchy concepts of the bourgeois upper-class society that had formed a system at that time.Therefore, they counterattacked comprehensively and thoroughly with their own unique unconventional and unethical thoughts, behaviors and artistic methods.They are the gravediggers of traditional ideology and culture at the end of the 19th century, and the callers and founders of the new era of ideology and culture at the beginning of the 20th century.Although they have the same weaknesses, shortcomings and faults as ordinary people, their contributions to our era are great, unparalleled, and no one can slander them—this is what this book says. The essence of the book is also the purpose of the author's writing.In the world around us, there are really too many rational and mediocre people. Compared with the "genius lunatics", they are just a group of mediocre ants under the big tree.

Whether it is the Cubism headed by Picasso, the Fauvism headed by Matisse, the Dadaist Literary Society headed by Tristan Chara, or the Transcendentalism headed by André Breton. Regardless of the realist literature and art system, Paris - the center of world culture and art, the original place where they realize their ideals and dreams, is soil, sunshine, air and water - a crazy era, a group of crazy geniuses, a paradise for crazy geniuses .The debauched Paris, the beautiful Paris, the eternal Paris, let us look back and linger, because everything in the book has disappeared, that era has passed, that generation of geniuses has passed away, although Paris remains the same, it is already history Old traces.Science, philosophy, literature, art, the era of renewal and change has passed. When another new century comes, the rest of our generation can only taste the fruits of the predecessors and live in the magnificent art built by the previous generation. palace, we have no development, no development is possible, the flower of the creative mind has withered, we mourn because that one mad time and space is no more, the mad genius is no more, close the pages, we Can only sigh.