The cobblestones of the rue Vavin glisten in the rain that has been tickling Paris since morning. Evening has fallen and Parisians throng from the Jardin du Luxembourg to the crossroads that Henry Miller will soon call the ‘navel of the world’, at the junction of boulevard Raspail. The lost generation of American writers floods Paris during these ‘Années Folles’; Francis Scott Fitzgerald seems to be a focal point among them, always fragile, as on the day when he has his manuscript of The Great Gatsby read through by a young journalist who downs one cocktail after another in La Closerie des Lilas at no.171 boulevard du Montparnasse.
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