JAY MARTIN
an accord ion. or a guitar. The essenti al thing is to
wan t
to si ng. This
then is a song. I am singing.
623
Song, food, words, physical sensa tions of sex and many o ther kinds, the
lun acy of acceptance, th ese bubble to th e surface of th e narra tive even
a~
Miller recounts hi s dark days-of hunger, decay, pain, cold, and the
sense of personal extin ction. The sto ry he is tell ing, of course, is
fundamentally an ex pl ana ti on o f th e book in which the story is told .
How did such a boo k come to be wrillen?-a book tha t is "a gob of spit
in the face of Art, a ki ck in th e pants to God, Man , Destin y, Time,
Love, Bea uty"? Such a book, he impli es, could have been accompli shed
onl y through the death o f the conventiona l a rti st and his res urrection
into a man who sees with new eyes and tell s hi s ta le in accordance with
a new compact with the world. At the time of hi s writing. the ma in
character of the book and Miller were no t a t a ll identi cal. He had come
\
out o f hi s desperation in order to ""rite-but he wrote from the point o f
\·iew ga ined through hi s ha rrow ing expe ri ences.
This, then. is no t an auto bi ograph y in the usua l sense, though it is
filled with chunks of th e actua l.
It
is an autobi ograph y of Mill er's
present perspecti ve on hi s past experience, which he changes freely to
su it hi s present mood. The most brilliantl y achi eved in stance of thi s
kind o f autobi ographi c tran smuta tion occurs in the closing scen e.
Here, H enry Mill er tell s of how Va l Mill er saved Osbo rn (Fillmore)
from the clutches o f hi s French fian cee. In fact, Henry had delivered
most of the francs left by O sbo rn
to
the g irl. But in the autobiographi c
romance of
T ropic of Cancer
he pockets a ll the dough , sin ce tha t is
what such an arti st as he now sees himself
to
be would do. And the
money turns into a radi ant symbol , a warm comfo rtin g bulge in hi s
pocket. Under the spe ll of hi s money, he understands fo r the first time
how joyous Pa ri s is. He sits by the Seine and feels the river swelling and
fl owing through him with its burst o f new freedom : " In the wonderful
peace th a t fell over me it seemed as if I had climbed to the top of a high
mo unta in ; fo r a littl e while I wou ld be a bl e to look a round me, to take
in the meaning o f the landscape." Hi s first look, o f course, will be th e
geograph y of hi s life in Pa ri s. At the end of the book the character who
can write the book is born.
Although he had not quite compl eted
Tropic of Cancer,
Mill er
was a lread y trying to find a publi sher fo r it. Mi chael Fraenkel had
openly asserted hi s beli ef tha t Henry was "doing something g rea ter
th an
Ulysses."
and he proposed to have the type set in Bruges and iss ue
th e book under hi s own Carrefour imprint. But Michael was in a bad
