My first order of business in Paris back in 1974 was to find the Villa Borghese, Miller’s Italian-sounding residence, named in the jauntily apocalyptic, intentionally repellent, opening lines of Tropic of Cancer: Naturally, we male college students of the past weren’t concerned with the book’s incorrectness or offensiveness to women we were just envious that Miller had had it so easy. Every time Miller wandered out of his apartment in Montparnasse, it seemed that there was a beautiful young mademoiselle ready to hop into bed with him. Still, for a nineteen-year-old college boy in 1970, it was a vision of earthly delights. With its rollicking sex scenes, myriad profane language, and its unrestrained male gaze, Tropic of Cancerwas about as politically incorrect a book as you could find. I didn’t find very many, even though I had my copy of Tropic of Cancerwith me, and marched for miles every day up and down dozens of streets in dreary, obscure neighborhoods in Paris.Īt this point, I might as well admit that every male college student of the 1960s and ’70s owned Tropic of Cancer. Thirty years earlier, in the 1970s, I had spent a week in Paris on a Henry Miller pilgrimage, trying to track down Miller’s old haunts. I walked around in circles for a few minutes then realized I’d better start looking for a place to stay. “No thanks, “I said, “but Monsieur, you must, you must. Someone offered to sell me tickets to a music festival in Normandy or Germany or somewhere.

I descended at Gare Montparnasse and trundled my suitcase across the Place Montparnasse, filled with a swirling noontime crowd.

The unmistakable roof lines, facades, and sidewalks unreeled before me like a movie. This was the bus ride from Charles de Gaulle airport into Paris and, after a nine-hour flight in coach, I was composed of little more than grogginess, jet lag, and panic.Įventually, the bus entered the center of Paris – finally, were buildings that I remembered, street names I recognized: Boulevard St. Best not to look at the scenery: eight lanes of traffic, roaring motorcycles, flashing billboards, and steel-and-glass office buildings as hideous as those beside any freeway in Houston or Atlanta – overall, a depressing introduction to France.

Henry miller's tropic of cancer