This is of course the late 1920s and Paris is full of exciting, talented expats. I would like to be able to embrace Hilaire’s advice, but unfortunately I’ve never been rich enough to be civilized. This leaves no time for gainful occupation, and such occupation in turn leaves insufficient time for any of the basic activities I have mentioned.”

A civilized man must be able to divide his energies between three pursuits-society, art, and sex. ”In the first place without any money at all you won’t be a free agent. His friend Sidney Schooner (in the book) who is actually the painter and nightclub owner Hiler Hilaire offered him some sage advice. John was having a bit too much fun in Europe and as the writing failed to materialize his father started cutting back his allowance. His father gives him a generous allowance in the beginning to pursue this dream of writing, but his father expected results or more likely expected him to come to his senses and abandon this wild dream of being a writer. Drink to excess, stay up all night, walk around hungry, write poetry, smoke, take drugs, indulge in all the varieties of youthful despair, but do not squander your vital forces in the arms of a woman.”Īt age 18 John Glassco became fed up with the strictures of higher education so he abandoned his studies and left for Paris with his friend Graeme Taylor. Here I should like to warn all young men against nymphomaniac women: these lovely succubi are still as dangerous as they were thought to be by the medieval clergy, their smiles will lure you to perdition, their loins will fit you for the bone-house within half a year. ”It was henceforth to be the arena of our love, the scene, in the words of Victor Hugo, of our sublime combats if I had known the toll they took of my strength and health, I might have made them less sublime.

Memoirs of montparnasse