Under the Roofs of Paris
Product Details | Similar Products | Customer Reviews | Author: Henry Miller List Price: $14.00 Our Price: $11.90 You Save: $2.10 (15%) Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours  |
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 | Product Details: Paperback 272 pages Release Date: 18 January 1994 Publisher: Grove Press ISBN: 0802131832 Rating:   Sales Rank: 616117 | | Look for similar books by subject:
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| | Customer Reviews: two stars for eroticism, 0 for story (21 March 2008)This can't be Henry Miller, or if it is in any way, he merely embellished on its original incarnation. Like another reviewer said, if you don't get turned on reading this, maybe you're dead. It does give explicit descriptions of sexual exploits. However if you've read the Rosy Crucifixion trilogy (Sexus, Plexus, Nexus) or Tropic of Cancer and Tropic of Capricorn and enjoyed those remarkable works of literature, I'm afraid you'll be disappointed in this. Under the Roofs of Paris is not so much a story, but someone whom you'd think did this and that with their lifes (purely secondary), but primarily probed and licked the various women of his neighborhood. It gets a little boring after while. If Henry Miller conveniently took credit for having written this to make a little quick cash, then it figures because that seems right up his alley as I often have thought Henry Miller was a true opportunist who would live off whoever would be willing to let him. But to his credit, his style of writing is much more imaginary that what this amounts to. If there was such thing as a school for masturbators, this would be required reading. This is not appropriate for train reading. (25 February 2004)This is like straight-up porn, for your imagination of course. There is virtually no story. If there is, it certainly gets overshadowed by all the sex. It took me long to read this, and it's because I couldn't get over what was going on. There'd be single paragraphs which I'd read over and over... I guess I couldn't believe my eyes. To think up these things is one thing, but to see it written out, is another entirely. This was one of my train-reading books... while I was commuting to work, I'd read on the train. I read THIS book on the train. I'm a lady. I could never divulge the sort of things I had to do before heading to jobs after reading parts of this book. You can physically feel the things that are going on. It's sick, in a good way. If you're up for any of the things mentioned in here, I'd say this book might make a GREAT gift as well. I highly recommend it. Caresse Crosby is the actual author. (31 December 2003)Mary Jacob Phelps, the inventor of the modern brassiere, re-christened herself Caresse Crosby when she moved to Paris after WWI. She and her husband founded Black Sun Press, which published the work of a number of literary giants. In Paris during 1933, Caresse met Henry Miller. When he returned to the U.S. in 1940, he confessed to Caresse his lack of success in getting his work published. Miller's autobiographical book Tropic of Cancer was banned as pornographic, and he could get no other work published. She invited him to take a room in her New York apartment where she infrequently lived, which he accepted, though she did not provide him with money. Miller fell to churning out pornography on commission for an Oklahoma oil baron, but after two 100-page stories that brought him $200, he could do no more. Now he wanted to tour the United States by car and write about it. He had a $750 advance, and persuaded the oil man's agent to advance him another $200. He was preparing to leave on the trip but still have not provided the work promised. He thought then of Caresse Crosby. She was already pitching in ideas and pieces of writing to Anaïs Nin's New York City smut club for fun, not money. Caresse was facile and clever, wrote easily and quickly, with little effort. Caresse accepted Henry's proposal. She wrote the title given her by Henry Miller "Opus Pistorum" at the top, and started right in. Henry left for his car tour of America. Caresse churned out 200 pages and the collector's agent asked for more. Caresse's smut was just what the oil man wanted-no literary aspirations-just plain sex. In Caresse the agent had found the basic pornographic Henry Miller. Whenver asked afterwards, Miller strongly denied being the author. Some have mistakenly attributed authorship to Anaïs Nin. But it as Caresse who churned out another 200 pages, spending her time writing while her husband, Bert Young, fell into a drunken stupor every night. In her diary, Anaïs Nin observed that everyone who wrote pornography with her wrote out of a self that was opposite to her or his identity, but identical with his desire. Caresse experienced years of social constraints imposed by her upper-class association in New York. Polly or Caresse had a doomed and troublesome romanticism with her second husband Harry Crosby before he spectacularly committed suicide/murder with his mistress on December 10, 1929. She participated in a decade or more of intellectual lovers in Paris during the 1920s. Perhaps it was a release for Caresse just to take love as casual lust and let it go at that. So if you like written smut direct and without literary pretensions or adornments, this is apparently the book for you. Miller's name lends it seeming credibility when in reality it has none, either from its substance or its origins. | |
