VARIETY
pull out in time? Is he going to
leave hickeys all over my lovely
white body? Should I remind him
I like a short and rapid rhythm?"
When he stops worrying and
abandons himself entirely to the
holy fire, as in
Lady Chatterlejs
Louer,
he doesn' t have much fun
(nor do we), he becomes a mess
of black and blue marks, and he
ends up having-- an abortion not
a
book.)
Miller's explosion-to describe it
in his own terms-is a horrendous
fart, a volcanic belch. Visceral,
noisy, aromatic, but neither visible
nor tangible. We hear it briefly,
smell it briefly, 'and then it is gone,
and gone
so
completely that one
wonders was it ever there at all?
It is gone, and with it has gone
the Henry Miller we were intro–
duced to---and who should we have
in his place?
Can it
be-?
But no!
Oh yes, it
is!
Duck, everyone, here he comes,
that diabolical little Mr. America,
straw hat on his head,
fishi~g
pole
in his hand, soft innocence be–
tween his legs, his bright freckled
face tripping Miller up, the same
way it always trips all of us up.
Who else, but the fiercest, the
most virulent of our enemies: Tom
Sawyer. The good clean boy in the
American soul is always there even
when we are acting and writing
like horrid dirty old men. He is
621
always lurking there, waItmg for
that moment of self-doubt, of in–
credulity at one's own violence-–
and then he comes ambling in,
cute as can be. His wholesome
blue eyes look up at you straight
and fine, and he says: "Revolu–
tion? What revolution?" And
while you end up painting the
fence for him, he shoots you in
the back.
R .I.P.
Tropic of Cancer
Infected by self-doubt. Mutilated
by Optimism. Destroyed by the
National Plague, Innocence. The
one known Doctor, Art, never
called to the bedside because
Father Miller believes in Natural
Healing.
Art was the only thing that could
have saved the book, but Father
Miller claims he is in scorn of
Art, says he wants to give it "a
gob of spit in the face. " And the
way he goes about it is by cutting
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