Henry Miller's Par(ad)is

One of America's greatest 20th-century writers would never have been born without coming to Paris. He would probably have died like a million fetuses, leaving no trace or name worth remembering. And he would never have written his autobiographical masterpiece: Tropic of Cancer.

His first visit was a honeymoon with his wife, June, in 1928. He saw enough of Montparnasse artist life, the stunning beauty of the Luxembourg garden, and the stench of pissotiers and guiltless sex, to get a taste of birth and becoming. The stock market had crashed and it was easier to have fun in gai Paree. Additionally, the French felt grateful towards the Americans who'd helped them chase the Germans out of their trenches at Verdun. American troops had brought jazz and the croque monsieur.

Paris was buzzing with artists and writers. It was the end of the roaring twenties; Art Nouveau, Art Deco, Surrealism were dans l'air du temps. Life was ebullient. There were 10 times more cafés and bistros than today, and drinks were cheap.

Sex in public places-during the bal des beaux arts, women of easy virtues standing at street corners smoking a cigarette waiting for a man, - vitalized one's libido. Paris was the arts and literature capital of the world. In Paris Henry Miller discovered freedom in a womb vast enough to labor his birth as a writer of genius.

Back in New York he planned his escape from America and everything that made him miserable là  bas - for ever. He organized his trip to freedom like a man staging a jail break. After complicated sentimental negotiations, June scraped up enough money for a ticket on the boat, and he borrowed 10 dollars from his artist buddy Emil as pocket money. June would eventually follow, and promised to wire money to the American Express office at 11 rue Scribe.

The thrill of arriving in Paris in March of 1930 overwhelmed him - he was content. He wrote to Emil from his-fifth-floor-peeling-wallpaper-carpetless-500-francs-a-month-room at the Hotel Saint Germain des Prés on rue Bonaparte, "...god-damn it, it's wonderful. I feel so good that when I finish this I'm going down and take my first Pernod."

Exploring the trottoir feverishly jotting down exotic street names, Miller witnessed "humanity in the raw." Soon, however, his daily walk to the American Express turned into frustration. June didn't come through with the money as promised.

At La Coupole on boulevard Montparnasse he begged for handouts and unsuccessfully tried hawking his watch to the waiter to pay the consommation. He was saved by an Austrian exile and writer working at the Herald Tribune, Alfred "Joey" Perles, who became his side kick, midwife and pal. They shared a single bed in the Hôtel Central on avenue du Maine, a hotel that still exists today - except for the lice.

Joey worked the night shift at the Herald Tribune and Miller slept. During the day Joey slept and Miller walked the streets on an empty stomach. "Walking on an empty stomach," he confessed to me before his death, "makes you take a different look at the world."

He ate it all up through eyes, ears and nose. Begging for hand-outs at La Coupole, Le Dôme or Le Sélect on boulevard Montparnasse where Americans hung out became a daily performance enabling Miller to create a network of guardian angels and friends. Miller was an easy talker with a warm Brooklyn accent and mesmerizing throaty voice, a fantastic spinner of tales, a word-smith with a sense of Rabelaisian humor who turned the most dramatic or tragic circumstances into burlesque events. He was a stand-up comedian with unlimited imagination and extravagant energy. He ended his phrases with a thoughtful "dont-cha-know," and a deep thought with "hmmm" that endeared him to expatriates.

He found an easy public who paid for a drink or meal, or put him up; he was born under a lucky star as he liked to say. Besides, he'd written a book, Crazy Cock. The title and voluminous manuscript attracted attention, but not enough to get published, even in Paris.

The Hôtel Central bed-swapping episode with Joey didn't last. Their friendship strained when Henry hawked Joey's golden cuff links. Seemingly unperturbed, Miller slept anywhere, in cinemas, on stranger's couches, or in flop houses where you paid a sou or two to sit on a bench with a row of bums and fold your arms over a horizontally strung rope to lean your head. Early morning the guardian unhinged the rope - dropping falling bodies into a rude awakening.

"The French can be so cruel and so kind," Miller recalled. Things started looking up again when Miller got a job as proofreader at the Herald Tribune financial section. That position lasted until he couldn't renew his papers, but allowed him to share a small two bedroom apartment with Joey on avenue Anatole France in Clichy. This pied-à -terre in a quiet proletarian neighborhood started Miller on his most important work, the flint stone of his production, Tropic of Cancer.

"This is not a book. This is libel, slander, defamation of character. This is not a book in the ordinary sense of the word. No, this is a prolonged insult, a gob of spit in the face of Art, a kick in the pants to God, Man, Destiny, Time, Love, Beauty...."

Meeting Anaïs Nin in 1931 at her country home of Louveciennes where she lived with her husband Hugo changed Henry Miller's existence. It was his turning point. "When he first stepped out of the car and walked towards the door where I stood waiting, I saw a man I liked." she wrote in her diary. "He's a man whom life makes drunk, I thought. He is like me."

Their literary love affair ran deep; their illicit passion inspired Henry to write over 40 pages a day, most of his extraordinary tales of Paris including Quiet Days in Clichy (published later), and he was able to complete Tropic of Cancer. When June suddenly showed up, they had a brief menage-à - trois that from time's distance appears like a way of exploring the boundaries of passion.

Yet it was a power play and June exits the stage demolished. Anaïs replaced June as Henry's only muse and benefactress. Her cocu husband Hugo, working a day-time job at a bank on Place Vendôme, provided the cash for secret debaucheries he never knew of until later, but forgave, when he did.

In 1934, the day the revolutionary Tropic of Cancer was published by Obelisk Press, Anais installed her lover Henry in a comfortable studio on villa Seurat, a quiet impasse in the 14th arrondissement, where Dali and Soutine were neighbors. One of his early fans was the 22 year old English writer Lawrence Durrell who brought a new zest of energy and life from Greece. His downstairs neighbor was a young American painter and art student, Betty Ryan who remembered Miller standing up at the end of a long meal, raising his glass, laughing and crying: "Nous faisons de l'histoire!"

Literary history was shaped in the close presence of Henry Miller, yet the History of the World suddenly ended this idyll. Anticipating the German invasion, Miller moved south, then to Greece, where he visited Larry. He returned to the US in 1940.

Tropic of Cancer was banned and any copy entering the country was confiscated by US Customs. Finally, in 1964 the Supreme Court ruled Tropic of Cancer "is entitled to the protection of the First Amendment and cannot be held to be obscene." Tropic of Cancer was the last chapter of an autobiographical testament that actually begins with Tropic of Capricorn, Sexus, Nexus, Plexus, all of which were written later. It was the testament of a man seeking freedom and finding it in Paris. His rewards are his friends and fans worldwide and the literal resting place he deserves - au Par(ad)is.

A nice biography by Wendy Moss!