Asheville boom was bust for Henry Miller

“[At age 34, Henry Miller] persuaded [his wife June] to accompany him  to Asheville, North Carolina, in the spring of 1926. He wanted to go there as a stopping-off place, to take advantage of its reputed real estate boom, and then continue on to Taos, New Mexico, to be near D. H. Lawrence, whose novels he had admired. He didn’t know Lawrence had already left and settled in Italy.

“The opportunities in real estate in Asheville were open only to insiders. June and Henry were once again flat broke, and although June concocted a scheme for beginning a fine hosiery business for ladies and touring the South with her wares, there was no practical solution to their financial straits.

“The formula for writing successful pulp fiction still eluded him, and his heart wasn’t in it, anyhow. They ran up debts for rent and food  in Asheville that they had no way of paying. At the end of summer, like stealthy thieves, they hitchhiked out of Asheville in the dark of night.”

— From “Passionate Lives: D.H. Lawrence, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Henry Miller, Dylan Thomas, Sylvia Plath … in love” by John Tytell (1995)