Aerial footage of “Miller’s Paris,” replete with his former residencies, haunts, and the like!

OK, so yesterday we looked, quite literally, at Henry Miller’s LA abode.  Creepy.

Now we’ve gotten some Tweets* asking for aerial footage of his house in Big Sur, which is about 8 mile south of us. Sorry but that’s off-limits!

However, as a compromise, today we’ll look at all of Henry’s haunts in Paris.  Seems particularly appropriate given the Henry Miller Library’s upcoming Aller Retour Paris festival, celebrating Henry in the heart of the city, from May 4-12, 2014.

And it seems doubly-appropriate since Aller Retour Paris will also feature a super-cool literary walk of the city with Paris expert and Library pal Thirza Vallois on May 6th.

The goods come from the nifty blog Polis, a self-described “collaborative blog about cities around the world.” In this post we see a satellite image of “Miller’s Paris,” based on Brassai’s Henry Miller: The Paris Years, with blue dots signifying dwellings and key places of interest.

map

Better yet, the author checks out specific spots on foot.  For example, we learn that:5832750006_d965f4231a_z

“Henry also explored the intersection between Place de Clichy and Porte de Clichy called ‘La Fourche.’ La Fourche! A prophetic name if ever there was one!

Destiny itself must have placed it in the path of the author of the Tropics, and it must have been for his benefit alone that Avenue Clichy branched off from Avenue Saint-Ouen, like two widening thighs.”

Well, here’s how the street corner looks today (right.)

It’s a scintillating read – I felt like I was there, smelling the McDonald’s hamburger smell wafting into the Parisian air (indeed, the Metro shop has a distinct McDonald’s smell to it.  Henry’s turning over in his grave.)

Speaking of which – and perhaps most importantly – the author asks an important question that never actually occurred to us: Why the heck wasn’t Miller in Woody Allen’s “Midnight in Paris?”

* Blog-speak for “actually no one actually Tweeted that.”

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.