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Intro
Henry Miller, a penniless aspiring writer from New York City, leaves the United States behind to lead a bohemian existence in 1930s Paris. He reflects frequently on the difference between the two cities, and between America and Europe more generally, almost always condemning the cleanliness and conformity of America in favor of the seedy but artistically fertile lifestyle he enjoys in France. Henry has a large circle of friends in Paris, many of whom are likewise intellectuals, aspiring writers, and American expatriates. They drift in and out of the novel as Henry at different times has affairs with them, collaborates with them on (hypothetical and far-flung) literary projects, and squeezes them for money, lodging, and food.
Henry is always hungry, and the daily struggle to find food without a steady stream of income consumes a large part of his time and energy. His physical hunger is rivaled by his voracious sexual appetite: Henry depicts Paris on the whole as a freewheeling den of sexual vice, in which he eagerly participates. He regularly and in graphic detail describes his constant sexual encounters, mostly with prostitutes, though often with friends or strangers, and on a few occasions with his estranged wife, Mona. Henry rarely mentions Mona, who stayed in New York when he left for Paris, but his occasional references suggest his heartsickness over her.
Henry spends most of his time walking around Paris and internally musing on aesthetics and savagely critiquing conventional society. He nevertheless takes up various odd jobs at different points, including being a kind of domestic servant to his disabled Indian friend, Nanantatee. His most lasting post, and the one he enjoys the most, is as a proofreader for a newspaper, where some friends of his work as well. Among Henry’s coworker friends is Van Norden, whose sexual voracity far outstrips even Henry’s. Henry accompanies him on various depraved misadventures.
Corporate downsizing eventually costs Henry his job at the paper, and he lives for a period off the kindness of the painter Kruger. When Kruger kicks him out, Henry takes up with Fillmore and Collins, two young Americans with family money. The three of them spend a debauched weekend in the port city of Le Havre. Later that year, Fillmore invites Henry to live at his apartment, initiating a period of relative comfort for Henry. A crazy Russian princess named Macha, whom Fillmore continually fails to sleep with, moves in with them as well.
When winter comes, Henry takes a job teaching English in the provincial city of Dijon. He hates it there and feels utterly alone, alienated from his surroundings and longing for the hedonistic life he lived in Paris. At the first opportunity he returns to Paris, where he discovers that in his absence, Fillmore has become entangled with a parasitic woman named Ginette. Henry convinces Fillmore to spontaneously flee his marriage and board a ship back to America. Flush with the cash Fillmore has left him with, Henry rides around Paris in ecstasy, musing on Mona and the United States and firmly deciding he will never return.
