,.
VARIETY
action. But on a lousy dressmaker
Art does not smile. And all the
bragging and swaggering and
screaming isn't going to do a bit
of good, because Art will merely
avert her cruel eyes when Tom
Sawyer rises full blown out of the
unconscious with
his
trusty little
weapon in his hand. Bang! Bang!
Down, as I have said above, down
comes
Cancer,
dead upon the read–
er's spirit. And where is the human
being ocnducting himself
in
the
stratosphere of ideas, in the grip
of delirium? Where
is
that marvel–
ous pre-Socratic man? I know
where. He's buried
in
that deliri–
ous, stratospheric, pre-and-post
Socratic cesspool that lies between
intention and achievement. And
the person Miller gives us as a
hero is a little pipsqueak whose
six phoney inches of revolutionary
posturing cannot deeply be felt by
our world full of aching size-queens
in desperate need of philosophic
stallions, bulls, rams, etc.
The life Miller demonstrates is
not a life that merits violence.
Practically everything in his book
turns out all right. Everyone ulti–
mately gets fed, gets drunk, gets
laid, escapes or overcomes his trou–
bles. It is too trivial a world to
warrant revolution; hatred of this
world
is
as ridiculous as John Os–
borne's rage about the queen of
England. And Miller senses his
failure. Toward the end, he throws
his book away and talks at length
about the world he has not re-
623
created, the world he really hates.
He talks about the book he would
have written. It would have been,
in spite of all its comedy, tragic,
with MAN as the hero, with all
the horror and muck of life there
on the pages for the reader to live
through, not merely to
be
told
about in a few paragraphs:
'On a damp winter's night it is not
necessary to look at the map to
discover the latitude of Paris. It is
a northern city, an outpost erected
over a swamp filled in with skulls
and bones . . . Blocks and blocks
of jagged tenements, every win–
dow closed tight, every shopfront
barred and bolted. Miles and miles
of stone prisons without the faint–
est glow of warmth; the dogs and
the cats are all inside with the
canary birds. The cockroaches and
bedbugs too are safely incarcerat–
ed.
If
you haven't a sou, why just
take a few old newspapers and
make yourself a bed on the steps
of the cathedral. The doors are
well bolted and there will be no
draughts to disturb you. Better
still is to sleep outside the Metro
doors; there you will have com–
pany. Look at them on a rainy
night, lying there stiff as mattreses
-men, women, lice, all huddled
together and protected by the
newspapers against spittle and the
vermin that walks without legs.
Look at them under the bridges or
under the market sheds. How vile
they look in comparison with the
clean, bright vegetables stacked up
like jewels. Even the dead horses
and the cows and sheep hanging
from the greasy hooks look more
inviting. At least we will eat to–
morrow and even the intestines
