Duhamel rented a house in Montparnasse, so that he, his friend Jacques Prévert (met on military service in Istanbul, who later wrote screenplays for him) and Tanguy could share it and “avoid misery.” Becoming one of the main bases of the surrealist movement, Queneau, fresh from military service, and Pérét also stayed there. In the 1950’s Duhamel persuaded Gallimard to publish the so-called Série noire, crime-writing, mostly American and in translation; he met Hemingway, Faulkner, Steinbeck and Caldwell through his publishing activities, and persuaded the hard-up Himes, whose work he’d already translated, to write crime fiction for him. (There is little online about Duhamel.)