If The Paris Metro magazine were still around today – if such a magazine could exist today – I can imagine every English-speaking writer in the city would be lining up around the block for a job. And I’d be right there with them if it meant getting a taste of that roguish school of journalism in pre-digital Paris. Though briefly sitting down with Joel Stratte McClure, one of three American reporters who launched the publication in 1976, might just be the next best thing. As I learned firsthand while co-hosting one of my recent Paris Writer’s & Readers Club meetings with him, Joel brims with stories about those three short years during which The Paris Metro found its footing, ascended to the cusp of cult status, and just as swiftly vanished. But just as we credit Gertrude Stein’s influence on the Paris literary scene, The Paris Metro deserves a more prominent place in the ‘American in Paris’ narrative. I’d even argue that as print media becomes an increasingly distant memory, the magazine’s legacy is at risk of slipping down the back of history’s cultural sofa — and I’m hoping we can fix that.
The Paris Metro was kind of a big deal, and not just to the Americans living in Paris, but the French too. As a recent retrospective in The Paris Review puts it, “The Metro itself would become a fashion accessory—people who didn’t even read English bought the magazine, to see and be seen with le magazine hot.” The first issue interviewed the American actress and icon of French New Wave, Jean Seberg (star of Breathless), they also shot Karl Lagerfeld for the “Disco Fever Paris” cover and in 1976, the issue “Sex in Paris” investigated the best gay bars, wife swapping and orgy orchestration. Aspects of its clever editorial curation and style such as a regular feature called “What’s In and What’s Out in Paris” would be borrowed by other publications in the US magazine market, setting the trend for ‘hot-or-not’ columns.
In its three-year run, the fortnightly magazine danced on the razor’s edge of French tolerance for foreign scrutiny. Leafing through its pages, you’re struck by the fearless headlines and the witty illustrations that telegraph the magazine’s dual identity: an appreciative outsider’s view of Paris’s cultural quirks, and a dedicated insider’s willingness to call out municipal failings. But energetic creative experiments have a way of burning hot and fast. By 1973, as printing costs ballooned, funds dried up and debt mounted, The Paris Metro found itself in a familiar bind for independent press: beloved by its core readers but ultimately unable to keep its head above water.
That The Paris Metro is not widely remembered today is less a testament to its quality than to the ephemeral nature of the ‘American in Paris’ narrative, whose time in the city seems to always run out eventually (visa or financial issues are never any help either). The magazine’s legacy still finds traction though in the recollections of longtime expatriates, and in the battered bible of clippings McClure brought to our meeting as proof that it once existed.
Joel walked into my shop last summer just a few days after the Cabinet’s opening and introduced himself. I’d recently come across scans of his old magazine on the internet, amused and intrigued by its covers, but even then, I didn’t quite get the importance of it in the context of my own editorial efforts since founding my Paris-based blog in 2011. To put it plainly, Joel, his American co-founders and their editorial team, were the original “Paris bloggers” living abroad, providing a boisterous, boundary-pushing English-language magazine championing overlooked corners of Parisian life, so much of which is still so relevant.
In recalling The Paris Metro at our salon, we found ourselves lamenting its short run but celebrating its wit, verve, and the improbable claim it staked on a city that belongs, at least nominally, to the French. And when I learned that the magazine’s name and masthead was ‘stolen’ from my local café, the Paris Metro café around the corner from Messy Nessy’s Cabinet, I could have cried.
While the Paris Writers & Readers Club (which can be attended in person or remotely via Zoom) is normally a closed member-only meeting, I wanted to invite you all into our little salon in Paris on this occasion to sit with Joel. Below, you’ll find a recording of our February Act 5 salon:
Such is the way of ephemeral bohemias. If you blink, you might miss them. But if you pay attention, you might just find yourself, years later, telling stories of a certain magazine that once floated effortlessly between French and English, between serious reportage and downright cheekiness—and that refused, against all odds, to play it safe. This summer when McClure, in an impish postscript to a life spent chasing stories, decided to take an anniversary pre-Olympic dip in the “E.coli-infested Seine”, exactly 48 years after he swam in it for a cover story, he’s not just reviving a daredevil whim — he’s reminding us that history’s most resonant episodes often arise from bold acts of immersion. Whether diving into a dubious river or launching a scrappy publication that challenges the city’s status quo, it’s the spirit of jumping in —risk and all— that lingers in memory. In this digital age, when our voices and our creative output can feel like they’re constantly at the mercy of an algorithm, perhaps there an opening for the next Paris Metro lurking just around the riverbend, waiting for someone with the nerve—and maybe even a stash of emergency francs—to dive in.
Short of discovering a dusty vintage copy of the magazine in a well-worn bookstore in the Latin Quarter (in which case you should absolutely purchase and treasure it), you can buy a copy of The Paris Metro 40th Anniversary Issue which includes scores of illustrations and extracts plucked from past issues. Joel’s most recent book, The Idiot and the Odyssey III: Twenty Years Walking the Mediterranean is available to purchase from Amazon.
You can join our future meetings of the Paris Writers and Readers Club here. Signing up costs less than a glass of wine and also comes with a Keyholder membership to our many online resources, which among other things, includes your own personal travel concierge.
