John Thomas

The upper Bohemia, the Right Bank of Paris in the 1920s, is the setting of this important social document. Dry Martini, Thomas’s only published novel, epitomizes the Right Bank of Paris in the early 1920s. The principal characters are American. Mr. Quimby, a man of wealth, devoted to women, com­fort, and dry martinis, has his life upset by the appearance of his twenty-two-year-old daughter by his former wife. Feeling he must “take care” of her, he contem­plates the need to reform himself. Fortu­nately, he is saved by the appearance of a young man who marries his daughter, and Mr. Quimby returns to his normal life, his mistress, and his dry martinis. Thomas was fresh out of Yale when he arrived in Paris in 1922 headed for a literary career. His novel gives a picture of Right Bank life, the haunt of Fitz­gerald, Louis Bromfield, and, later, Hem­ingway. Thomas spent three years in Paris, returning to New York in 1925. He died in the Tuscany Hotel on 39th Street on March 12, 1932, of acute chronic alcoholism.

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