Press · Faubourg-Montmartre (9th) · 9e arrondissement

5 rue Lamartine

The buildingStill standing

Getting inOutside only

What's there nowSomeone else

The Paris edition of the Chicago Tribune is long gone. The building stands; the newspaper does not.

The Paris offices of the Chicago Tribune, where Henry Miller worked as a proofreader in 1931 — the only steady paid work of his Paris decade, taken on the night shift while he wrote Tropic of Cancer.

Address: 5 rue Lamartine, 75009 Paris
Years: Miller worked here as a proofreader in 1931

The place, briefly

The Chicago Tribune ran a Paris edition through the 1920s and 30s, staffed largely by young Americans in the city — a well-known berth for expatriates who needed money, and a newsroom several of them passed through.

Henry Miller worked here as a proofreader in 1931, on the night desk. It is worth stating plainly because it cuts against the legend: the Miller of the Paris books is a man who does not work, who cadges meals and borrows rooms and treats employment as a defeat. For a stretch of 1931 he had a job, on a shift, at an address in the ninth arrondissement.

Proofreading suits the picture better than it first appears. It is night work, mechanical, done on other people's sentences, and it leaves the day free. He was writing Tropic of Cancer in that period, and the newspaper paid for the room he wrote it in.

The rue Lamartine is a long way from Montparnasse, up behind the Grands Boulevards. Miller's real Paris geography keeps turning out to be wider and more ordinary than the myth: a bank employee's flat in the fifteenth, a hotel in the fourteenth, a newsroom in the ninth.

The Tribune's Paris edition is long gone and there is nothing to see but the building.

Key facts

What it was: The Paris offices of the Chicago Tribune
Miller's job: Proofreader, on the night desk, in 1931
Why it matters: The only steady paid work of his Paris decade — against the legend of the man who never worked
What it paid for: The room in which he was writing Tropic of Cancer
Where: The 9th, behind the Grands Boulevards — a long way from Montparnasse
Today: The newspaper is gone; the building stands

Timeline

1930
Miller arrives in Paris with nothing published.
1931
He works as a night-shift proofreader at the Chicago Tribune's Paris edition on the rue Lamartine.
1934
Tropic of Cancer is published in Paris.

On the map

Questions before you go

Did Henry Miller have a job in Paris?

Yes, for a stretch of 1931 — as a night-shift proofreader at the Paris edition of the Chicago Tribune, at 5 rue Lamartine in the 9th. It was the only steady paid work of his Paris decade, and it cuts against the legend of a man who never worked.

Why does proofreading fit him?

It is night work, mechanical, done on other people's sentences, and it leaves the day free. He was writing Tropic of Cancer at the time, and the newspaper effectively paid for the room he wrote it in.

Is the Chicago Tribune office still there?

No. The Paris edition is long gone and only the building remains. It sits in the 9th behind the Grands Boulevards, well away from the Montparnasse cafés Miller is usually associated with.

Writers who knew this place

Henry Miller

American · The Brooklyn dropout who arrived in Paris broke at thirty-eight and wrote the exuberant, banned books that ended American censorship.

Worked here · 1931

Miller worked as a night-shift proofreader at the Paris edition of the Chicago Tribune in 1931 — the only steady paid work of his Paris decade, and what paid for the room in which he was writing Tropic of Cancer.

— Henry Miller: Born To Be Wild

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