BOOKS: FRANGLAIS SPOKEN HERE

In the '20s, Ernest Hemingway, Gertrude Stein and company may have picked over the freshest entrees. But Paris was still feast enough when a new migration of expatriates collected there after World War II--Irwin Shaw, James Baldwin, Allen Ginsberg, Gregory Corso and--with a palate educated by leftover meat loaf in Queens, New York--Art Buchwald.

One generation passeth away, a new generation cometh. Buchwald met Hemingway in the Ritz Bar. Buchwald was reverently awed. Hemingway looked up from his drink and said, "Kid, have you ever wrestled a bear?" The dumbstruck Buchwald answered, "What the hell?" He probably should have left the...