624
PARTISAN REVIEW
state emotionally. Arguments with Lowenfels and domestic problems
had rendered him almost as ineffectua l as Osbo rn ; a ll day long he sat in
a cold room too broken and helpless to be able even to make up his
mind to go out. Henry hesita ted to entrust th e book to him; he made up
a list of other " littl e presses." First, however, Ana'is encouraged him to
try for commercial publication . She as ked her friend Dr. Krans
(through whom Henry had been placed a t the Lycec Carnot) to
recommend Mill er to a Paris litera ry agent named William Aspenwall
Bradley. Wambly Bald had mentioned Bradl ey in the same column in
which he reviewed Henry 's first published sto ry, "Mademoisell e
Claude," asserting that Bradley " h as encouraged and assisted more
buds than any other angel we know ." Soon , Henry received a co rdi al
letter in whi ch the agent requ es ted tha t he brin g his books around to
his office on the rue Saint-Louis in the lI e de la Cite.
Henry left the manuscripts of
Crazy Cock
and
T ropic of Cancer
and waited-not too patientl y. Bradl ey answered within a week: " I
have been through both the books now, and should like very much to
talk them over with you-especially the
Tropic of Cancer,
which is
magnifi cent. " Could Henry come to ee him by the end o f th e week? he
inquired. In their first talk, Bradl ey was discouragin g about
Crazy
Cock,
but he softened his criticism by persuading Henry tha t the novel
suffered terribly through comparison with the la ter, ri cher book: he
dismissed
Crazy Cock
in about two minutes. But what would Henry
think of seeing
Tropi c of Cancer
publi shed in a limited ed iti on of 500
.copies at 500 francs apiece by th e Obelisk Press? Mill er's first reaction
was revealing. Though Anals was with him, he cri ed out:
" If
o nl y Jun e
could have been here to enjoy this with me. To think th a t a ll we
dreamed of is happening and she doesn 't even know abo ut it. " His
second reaction was also curious-a kind of backpedalling loss of
confidence exactly at the moment o f his triumph . Out of some deep–
seated need for self-justification , Henry wanted to force
Crazy Cock
down their throats.
Tropic of Cancer
was not the book he want ed
to
write, he crazily asserted, not th e story he rea ll y wanted to tell. He had
promised himself in 1927 that h e would dedi ca te himself to writing the
story of his life with June. And like a pilgrim of littl e fa ith who se ttl es
for the first shrine he sees, he had merely written a book recounting hi s
own miserabl e history.
Crazy Cock
was th e story he wanted to tell.
If
they wanted
Tropi c ?f Can cer
they must take
Crazy Cock
too!
Just when this mood was full y upon him, Henry received a letter
from Samuel Putnam, who was in New Yo rk . On beha lf of Covici–
Friede, Publishers, he inquired if Henry had an y work to submit;
