I found this book in a box outside a house that I was passing by near Hamburg. I thought I might read it one day to train english comprehension. What a lucky break. This book helped me change my life. It's so full of life, of freedom and spirit that I treated it as a medicine rather than as a book.
Miller recapitulates his years in Paris somewhere in the 1930s. He chose to be a writer and to go to Paris after quitting his job in New York. What he chose was a life in poverty and hunger, but also in freedom and lust for life. Free of attachments, he was free to imagine everything there is. The book was illegal in the States for 30 years, because of several sexually explicit scenes. But that isn't the offending part in my eyes. Miller is constantly ranting against the people he hang out with, and is never in doubt about his own abilities, to become a great writer mostly.
He was living to the fullest, and reading his memoires reminded me of all the things I had let into my life, that were suppressing my freedom and my will to go where I wanted to go.
I can't say anything more than just recommend to get over the first 20 pages of this book. They are hard to get by, and that may be because you realize there is no story here. But maybe it's because you have to accept what Miller is about. He is not explaining it to you and he is not waiting for you. He doesn't need you. He became a true artist by starting to live to the fullest and never stopped believing in it. He is one of my heroes.