EPILOGUE

The following is an affidavit filed by Milton Luboviski at the United States Embassy in Paris on March 10, 1983 affirming the circumstances under which he commissioned Henry Miller to write Opus Pistorum:

In the summer of 1940, I was a partner in the Larry Edmunds Bookshop at 1603 North Chuenga Boulevard in Hollywood, California. In September of that year, Henry Miller arrived at the bookshop on a Sunday afternoon when the shop was closed. He knocked on the door, introduced himself and I admitted him to the shop. That began a friendship which lasted some thirty-five years or so. At that time, Henry had little or no money and knew very few people in California. I befriended him, helping him with money from time to time, introducing him to people and, at one point, finding him a place to live.

On September 1, 1941 Larry Edmunds died and I became sole owner of the bookshop. In those days the shop was not doing well and I supplemented our income by selling various items of pornography whenever it was possible to obtain them. My customers were mainly studio producers, writers and directors such as Joseph Mankiewicz, Julian Johnson, Daniele Amfitheatrof, Billy Wilder, Frederick Hollander, Henry Blanke, and others.

Henry, being in need of money, offered to write material for me that I would be able to sell. I offered to pay him one dollar per page in return for all rights to the material he would write for me. Shortly thereafter he began to bring in several pages at a time and I paid him in cash at the agreed rate. Within a few months the pages had accumulated into a complete book which he entitled Opus Pistorum.

When he gave me the last pages, around the middle of 1942, I recall his saying

"Here is the end of the book. I hope you make a few months' rent from it."

I retyped the entire manuscript, making four carbon copies. I then had all five copies bound by a book binder and, thereafter, sold copies to Julian Johnson, Daniele Amfitheatrof and Frederick Hollander. A few years later, I gave a copy to my friend, Robert Light, and kept the original for myself.