Montparnasse
chez Fred Kann
The artist Frederick Kann was one of Miller’s closest friends and benefactors during his early years in Paris. In the fall of 1930, Miller spent several weeks living with Kann in his apartment on the rue Froidevaux overlooking the Montparnasse cemetery.
Le Dôme in Pictures: 1931
While perusing the online photo collection of the French Ministry of Culture, I stumbled upon a real gem: A set of ten photos of Le Dôme café taken in the winter of 1931-32. The pictures provide a unique glimpse of the café as Henry Miller would have known it.
Cinéma de Vanves
As he neared his hotel, Miller was stopped in his tracks by the visage of Olga Chekhova staring out from a large theater poster a workman was busy plastering above the Cinéma de Vanves. “I’d like to see that film,” Miller called up to the man, “but I don’t have a cent in my pocket.”
A Henry Miller Honeymoon
Paris in the winter had all the stark angles of bare sycamores and gray steeples, but we found it welcoming and friendly. So crucial to Miller during the Depression, food became our main preoccupation, being only a few blocks from the markets of Rue Montorgueil.
Bertha and Joseph Schrank
The Schranks, who are caricatured in Tropic of Cancer as Tania and Sylvester, provided Miller a free meal each Monday night. However, Miller’s principle interest in these visits was not food. Rather, he was smitten with Bertha …
Pension Orfila
Like August Strindberg, Henry Miller found himself alone in Paris, tormented by the disintegration of his marriage and despairing over his lack of friends or resources. As he recounts in Tropic of Cancer, Miller walked into the Orfila one day and asked to be shown Strindberg’s room…
Public Urinals
On this corner, where the Luxembourg Gardens join the rue d’Assas, once stood a public urinal that was a favorite stopping point for Henry Miller.
Musée Zadkine
Slip into a narrow alley on the rue d’Assas and you’ll discover a small museum which is the former home of Ossip Zadkine, better known to readers of Tropic of Cancer as Borowski…
chez Walter Lowenfels
Henry Miller’s friend Walter Lowenfels, the model for Cronstadt in Tropic of Cancer and Black Spring, was a surrealist poet and editor of several influential anthologies of American poetry.
La Closerie des Lilas
In an October 1931 column for the Chicago Tribune, Wambly Bald published a short biographical sketch of Miller which claimed that he occasionally spent the night sleeping on the bench outside the Closerie des Lilas…
