Quiet Days in Clichy (novel)
First edition cover, Paris, 1956
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| Author | Henry Miller |
|---|---|
| Country | France |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Autobiographical novel |
| Publisher |
Olympia Press Grove Press |
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Publication date
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1956 |
| Media type | |
| Pages | 154 |
| Preceded by | Plexus |
| Followed by | Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch |
Quiet Days in Clichy is a novella written by Henry Miller. It is based on his experience as a Parisian expatriate in the early 1930s, when he and Alfred Perlès shared a small apartment in suburban Clichy as struggling writers (at 4 Avenue Anatole-France). It takes place around the time Miller was writing Black Spring. According to his photographer friend George Brassaï, Miller admitted the title is “completely misleading.”
The plot follows Joey, an American expatriate in and around Place Clichy. The book is divided in two parts. In the first, Joey and his equally destitute roommate Carl search for food and navigate relationships with various women. Chiefly, Joey with Nys, a prostitute he meets at the Café Wepler near Montmartre, and Carl with Colette, a fifteen-year-old runaway who moves in with them before eventually being retrieved by her parents.
The second half, “Mara-Marignon,” describes Carl’s volatile love affair with the married Eliane, and Joey’s relationship with Mara, a prostitute he meets on the Champs-Élysées. Mara reminds Joey of a previous lover, the married Christine, who he regrets not marrying himself. This leads to a recollection of an evening he and Carl spent at their home with an acrobat named Corinne and a Danish woman, named Christine. The four of them have a spontaneous orgy, which upsets Christine, who is laughed at by the other three.
The thin volume was initially written in New York shortly after Miller’s return from Paris in 1940, and revised in Big Sur in 1956, while he was working on Nexus. The book was first published in France by Olympia Press in 1956. Following Miller’s victory in the obscenity trial for Tropic of Cancer, Quiet Days in Clichy was finally published in the United States by Grove Press in 1965.
The novella has twice been made into a feature film. The 1970 version was a Danish production, written and directed by Jens Jørgen Thorsen, and featuring a soundtrack by Country Joe McDonald.
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