Evening star., 1961-06-18

AAC Acs (bAlCA 4OPC4AAAAB VI 1Du
whose introduction contains
discerning) include God,
with him. suffers no inter-
mediary; his footsteps are all
over Mount Sinai: Henry is
no Plato, no Lao-TZu, no
Spinoza, no Nietzsche. no
Freud he is better, he is
himself -; His writing has
often been criticized, even by
his closest associates and
friends, but that is quib-
bling" Such puffs didn't
make me swoon, and I never
had a hankefing to read a
book by Miller; fortunately, I
just have read one, and it has
been a pleasure.
The Miller reputation has
by no means been exclusively
an affair Of a clique, however.
T. S. Eliot, Horace Gregory,
Sir Herbert Read. and Ed
mund Wilson are among the
catholic critics who think
Miller one of the major
writers of our time. "Tropic
of Cancer" Miller's first book,
was published in Paris in
1884. 1t is widely regarded
as one Of its authors best
works.
Henry Miller (the name is
the same, and there is no
reason to doubt that the
autobiography is essentially
gsnuine) is an expatriate
artist in the Paris of the
1920s. Paris, the magnet of
so many other young men
like him-Joyce. and Fitz-
gerald, and Hemingway, and
Synge, and a hundred others
-, has seldom been so
poignantly and lovingly
evoked in written words.
Every street, every square is
an almost tangible expert
ence for Henry, every bar,
every bridge across the Seine,
every time of day, every sea-
son of the year. Miller has
written that he has been as
much influenced by places as
by persons, and if it were so
for nothing more, "Tropic of
Cancer" would be a fine book
for its homage of total re-
capture of physical Paris.
Naturally, like all young
artists who are eScapist and
penniless, Henry is always
hungry. But he is unique in
that he makes a real fetish
of food-a fine meal is a
genuine deSidirdtum. Imagine
Raskolnikov, wrapped up in
himself and the world. TAX
ing an interest in anything
more than a cup of tea;
imagine Stephen Dedalus,
memorizing the lyric poetry
of Ben Jonson in the Biblio-
teque Rationale, thinking
Of food as anything more
than a hard necessity!
Though lust is the appetite
for which "Tropic of Can
GER" will forever be famous,
it should not be overlooked
that the satisfaction of the
appetite for food plays an
extraordinarily large part in
the life of its her7. One of
the characteristics of the
book is that Henry, hot to
embrace life, turns to sex
and to food with equal
abandon; most impoverished
young inrellectuals vibrate
between sex and art.
It should not be supposed,
however, that Henry is ascetic
any page of the book that
is devoid of lechery is pre-
ceded and followed by two
that are not. While it would
be a slight exaggeration to
say that every female in the
book is a tart, it is true that
virgins bear a numerical one
to-one relationship to uni
corns. AS I shall attempt to
show, Miller in ,"Tropic of
Cancer" takes the sexual act
very seriously. but he also
smiles at the comedy in what
he is writing. The amatory
exploits of Casanova are to
those Of our Henry what the
logging prowess Of a Weyer-
hauser lumber-jack is to that
Of Paul Bunyan and his blue
OK. "Tropic of Cancer" isn't
clinical, it's epical. AS for
dirty words. the book is full
of them; whether it is porno-
graphic, I can't say. It's a
matter of opinion. For me,
it's not.
The sexual act is the fabric
of the book. Miller's attempt
is reasonable and provoca-
tive, but in my opinion it is
a failure. In "Moby Dick,
whale hunting is lifted out
of the category of a fishing
trade and made the back
drop against which all of
life and all of living is
projected, the whale is the
world in little. In Don
Quixote", classic chivalry, of
only antiquarian interest in
itself, is made the basis, the
cdntus tirmuS, of a story Of
unsurpassed scope and depth.
In "Tropic of Cancer, Miller
does not write about sex as
an incident or a salacious
adornment, he tries to make
the sexual act the artificial
artistic contrivance, like the
whale hunt or chivalry, of
everything the hero does,
thinks, believes or strives for.
The trouble is, unlike the
whale hunt. or chivalry, sex
is not remote enough, not
impersonal enough. The
reader is unable to accept
Miller's hypothesis, for love-
making is not a framework
but an act, and to read of a
hundred encounters in a sin