Chapter 7: The Interwar Years - Jazz, Exile, and Existentialism

World War I shattered the Belle Époque's optimism, but café culture adapted and evolved. The 1920s brought American jazz to Parisian cafés, along with a new generation of expatriate artists and writers. Hemingway wrote at the Closerie des Lilas, claiming the café's atmosphere was essential to his creative process. "It was a pleasant café, warm and clean and friendly," he wrote in "A Moveable Feast."

The rise of Surrealism transformed certain cafés into artistic laboratories. André Breton held court at Café de Flore, conducting Surrealist experiments and excommunicating members who violated the movement's principles. The café became a stage for artistic manifestos and intellectual combat.

As political darkness gathered in the 1930s, cafés provided refuge for exiles fleeing fascism. German and Austrian intellectuals recreated their coffee house culture in Parisian cafés, creating polyglot communities united by coffee and opposition to totalitarianism.