Henry Miller

version

Well-known member
... just picked up a copy of The Colossus of Maroussi the other day and read Tropic of Capricorn a while back. I found the latter a bit hit and miss. He's clearly capable of brilliance, but it didn't always come through for me in that one. He definitely has it though. Whatever "it" is.

Henry-Miller-010.jpg
 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
I read 'Tropic of Capricorn' at that impressionable age I keep banging on about. Needless to say I was totally into it. It made me want to be a 'bohemian' in Paris, rolling around in the glamorous dirt, liaising with pustulant parisian prostitutes, etc.

I have on idea if it was a good book now, though.
 

version

Well-known member
He's never coming back. He's abandoned us. The medicine man's licked one too many toads and wandered off into the mountains.
 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
No never been. I've actually been jonesing to go while on this lockdown. Go and see all the paintings.

I've always been put off by reports of Parisians being rude as fuck, especially to the English, but I think that might just be an old wive's tale.
 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
I figure it's worth it, anyway, to get to go to the Louvre and the Musee D'Orsay, etc.

It's pretty inexcusable not to have visited Paris at least once, when you live just across the pond.
 

catalog

Well-known member
It's interesting how Paris is not really a significant European capital city anymore. Has been superseded by Berlin, Lisbon even, in the cultural bohemian imagination
 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
Probably too expensive for artists to live there now?

That's part of the reason Berlin became so cool, because you could live there on not much money. Not sure if that's true now, though.

See also 'It happened to new york it could happen to London' thread...
 

woops

is not like other people
That's part of the reason Berlin became so cool, because you could live there on not much money. Not sure if that's true now, though.
That's the whole reason isn't it?! Before Berlin, Barcelona. Now Lisbon
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
To weigh in on behalf of Paris... I think it's still a fantastic (and beautiful) city, I haven't been for a while but around (I think) 2012 my friend used to book me to dj there every month and I would go across and meet his friends, get fucked up for days on end and just have an amazing time. He is this insane character, almost a street urchin originally. who robbed to get by as a kid and was living in a kinda grotty cupboard in La Marais which was smaller than my bathroom in London, but it was in the right place. This guy always lands on his feet and keeps climbing the slippery ladders (I guess I mentioned before, part time catwalk model). Somehow he earned the patronage of Agnes B and I remember going to her office, helping ourselves to the champagne and steak they kept in the fridge for a normal working day, we just went partying all the time... lots of drugs and stuff, but also this guy is such a student of Parisien history he would always know the one restaurant that was left over from the old days and which was cheap and traditional and cool. We never went to clubs but we had fun for four days straight every time I went. Oh yeah he had a street stall and we would go to the Banlieu's on this weird bike he had with a trailer and buy stuff from second hand shops and then he would sell shoes he bought for one euro for 100 euros in La Marais, we sat there all day by the "shop" drinking coffee and playing chess against all comers while he ripped off hipsters. Messy times... sadly/luckily he's moved to LA now and is trying to write screenplays.
I definitely felt like you could still go and have a Miller experience there. It's massive, it's beautiful, it's all mixed, it has all these nooks and crannies and so on, it's like London basically. Maybe it's changed in the last few years.... but so has London.
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
He is this insane character, almost a street urchin originally. who robbed to get by as a kid and was living in a kinda grotty cupboard in La Marais which was smaller than my bathroom in London, but it was in the right place. This guy always lands on his feet and keeps climbing the slippery ladders (I guess I mentioned before, part time catwalk model). Somehow he earned the patronage of Agnes B and I remember going to her office, helping ourselves to the champagne and steak they kept in the fridge for a normal working day, we just went partying all the time... lots of drugs and stuff, but also this guy is such a student of Parisien history he would always know the one restaurant that was left over from the old days and which was cheap and traditional and cool. We never went to clubs but we had fun for four days straight every time I went. Oh yeah he had a street stall and we would go to the Banlieu's on this weird bike he had with a trailer and buy stuff from second hand shops and then he would sell shoes he bought for one euro for 100 euros in La Marais, we sat there all day by the "shop" drinking coffee and playing chess against all comers while he ripped off hipsters. Messy times... sadly/luckily he's moved to LA now and is trying to write screenplays.
It's descriptions of lives like this that make you feel like you want to firebomb your workplace and run off to join the Russian navy or a Mexican biker gang or Hezbollah or something, and then you immediately think to yourself "Shut up, you fucking idiot."
 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
Probably helps if you have the looks to be a catwalk model.

But yeah, what a boring life most of us lead.

Still, boring is better than awful.
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
Still, boring is better than awful.

True. Many people have had an 'exciting' or 'adventurous' life because they're Syrian refugees or child trafficking survivors or whatever.

I quite enjoyed Tropic of Cancer years ago but I'm not sure it would necessarily reward a second reading.
 
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