Before long, however, Miller can no longer stand the bug-infested mattress, and he leaves.īack in Paris, Miller worms some money out of an acquaintance named Peckover, then slips away into the night. Serge puts Miller up in exchange for English lessons. Out of the Villa Borghese, Miller meets a Russian man named Serge, who lives in an artists’ colony in Suresnes. We learn that Tania and Sylvester are departing for Russia. Tania wants comfort from Miller, but he doesn’t offer much. Sylvester talks constantly, even when he’s undressing he seems to want to put a fence around Tania. When Miller has his last dinner at Sylvester’s home, he finds Tania withering under the strain of her relationship with the playwright. Miller describes walking down the Champs-Elysees with “ideas pouring from like sweat.” He is in good spirits these days, while his friend and fellow expatriate and writer Carl can’t stop complaining. He got a five-franc room with her, and was immediately struck by her way of moving, her way of touching herself: “There was something about her eloquence at that moment and the way she thrust that rosebush under my nose which remains unforgettable…” He met her when drifting down a boulevard, some change his wife (who was back in the States) had sent him in his pocket. Miller remembers Germaine, a former lover and prostitute. He feels deeply in love with her upon seeing her again, and he sleeps with her that night in a cheap hotel. We learn that Mona has been away for some time and is returning to Paris. Unfortunately, with the little amount of “wiggle” room available, he was unable to do so. One night, tucked away in the vestibule of a dance hall, while Mona and Borowski were waiting for him on the floor, Miller tried to have sex with a nameless American girl. He thinks back to a year ago, when he used to wander the city with a woman named Mona, a friend of Borowski’s. Miller declares that the only thing that currently interests him in any vital way is writing. Most of the gang lives in Montparnasse, where many of the American expatriates in Paris make their home. In quick succession we meet or learn of some of Miller’s friends and companions in Paris: Borowski, the Cronstandts, Moldorf, and Lucille. This is libel, slander, defamation of character.” He calls the novel a “song” and writes: “It is to you, Tania, that I am singing.” (Tania is a Jewish woman who carries on an affair with Miller while living with her playwright beau, Sylvester.) Miller introduces his book by writing: "This is not a book. It is the fall of his second year in Paris. When the novel opens, Miller is living at the Villa Borghese with his friend Boris.
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