Americans have regarded the French capital as a spiritual home. However, multilingualism is discouraged in the United States, and Americans in Paris, despite occasional code-switching, usually have written in English. An exception is Benjamin Franklin, who dabbled in French during his diplomatic posting. Stuart Merrill joined the Symbolist movement, publishing his poetry in French. Writing four poems in French enabled T.S. Eliot to overcome writer’s block. Trilingual in German, French, and English, Eugène Jolas dreamt of a syncretic language that transcends all others. Among the most prominent translinguals, who write in a language other than their own, Julien Green grew up in Paris as the child of Americans and wrote most of his novels, even when set in the American South, in French. Natalie Clifford Barney, whose Paris salon hosted many American writers, regarded French as the language of passion; using it was another way she defied convention. Harry Mathews became the first American accepted into Oulipo, the French group devoted to literary experimentation. Jonathan Littell wrote Les Bienveillants, a publishing sensation in Paris though infected with Anglicisms. Americans writing in French have not achieved the success of translinguals such as Samuel Beckett, Joseph Conrad, and Vladimir Nabokov.