Alfred Perles

Eve Adams, a peripatetic bookseller in Montparnasse who had been deported from America, helped Henry Miller promote Tropic of Cancer to a general audience on the terrasses of popular expatriate cafes.

On his nightly trek through the Place de Clichy in the period of 1932-1934, Henry Miller’s attention would have naturally been drawn to the massive Gaumont Palace. The sleek Art Deco cinema with seating for 6,000 was then the largest film venue in the world.

I was recently directed to this great postcard from the 1930’s of avenue Anatole France in Clichy where Henry Miller and Alfred Perles shared an apartment.

The Chicago Tribune staff and taxi drivers were joined at Gillotte’s by other denizens of the Paris nightlife, notably the local prostitutes and their pimps. It was just the sort of setting, bringing together the Paris literati with the working class and demi-mondaine, all mixed with copious quantities of food and wine, at which Miller was in his element.

Miller’s ironic position as a proofreader of stock market quotations during the midst of The Great Depression afforded him a unique perspective. From his perch at the proofreaders desk he surveyed the collapsing world economy with the sense of detached amusement that permeates Tropic of Cancer...

Henry Miller and the Swiss astrologer Conrad Morican met weekly in Moricand’s room at the Hôtel Modial in to discuss astrology and other occult subjects…