560
WILLIAM PHILLIPS
of omnipotence and with fits of frustration. This is not an uncommon
fantasy, even though it borders on the psychotic in its utter self–
indulgence; but somewhere at the center is the little boy's fear - quite
normal- that he might not make it. This fear, one might say, ties
the novel to the more acceptable versions of our common experience.
If
one can talk of the subject of
An American Dream,
it might be
said to be a fantasy of abnormal desire grounded by normal fear.
Like Mailer, Henry Miller has 'had to contend with literary and
moral conventions. Yet, despite Miller's wild reputation, his perversity
seems to be integrated into a fairly orthodox brand of bohemianism.
One notes again and again in works like
Sexus
and
Tropic of Cancer
how Miller slides from sex into observations about literature, or
society or existence in general. The elusiveness of sex is entangled
in the religion of art. Somehow the footlooseness and the alienation
of the young writer is associated with an avant-garde casualness and
freedom in bouncing from one woman to another. The perversity,
however, is almost always just below the surface, expressing itself
in such things as the failure to connect with women, the lack of
genuine pleasure, the intimation of voyeurism and exhibitionism in
sexual relations involving groups of people and the insatiable appetite
for whores, whom Miller
is
always trying to convert to women in his
mind and to machines in bed.
If
one is to make any kind of judgment,
though, it is not that Henry Miller's sexual happenings strain our
capacity for novelty. On the contrary, his prowlings and frustrations
seem almost commonplace and they succeed only in giving Miller the
air of a middle-aged schoolboy, Far from being shocking, Miller's
sexual bohemianism appears dated today.
To assimilate Norman Mailer or Henry Miller one simply has to
face oneself. To assimilate writers like Genet and Burroughs one
might have to redefine one's relation to an alien experience or to an
alien idea of experience as well
~
to oneself. For Genet's hero, in his
fiction, is a portrait of the underground man as a homosexual and a
criminal; while Burroughs has created a homosexual spaceman who
lives in a permanent nightmare of fornication, hallucination and
destruction.
Of the two, I
think
Genet is a much more impressive figure than
Burroughs. In my opinion, Genet's plays - particularly
The Balcony
