JAY MARTIN
625
Covici had read and liked "Mademoi sell e Claude." low, stubbornl y,
Henry was enraged th a t interes t should be taken in such a "weak"
story, a
jeu d'esprit
done with hi s left hand.
It
was humili a ting, he
decided, to be admired by such buggers. In lelters
to
Lowenfels, Ana'is,
Putnam and Emil he ranted and raved.
If
Americans wanted a book by
him now, they would have to ta ke
Crazy Cock.
He wanted it to be a big
success in th e United States, he sa id, so tha t he could take down hi s
pants and show hi s ass
to
hi s countrymen and say: ''I'm crapping on it,
disowning il. So much fo r you , America, of thee I sing! That's just the
kind of shit you 've been ea ting [o r the las t fifteen years!" Hav ing said
a ll o f Ihi s, he went on o utrageously to propose tha t either Lowenfels or
Putnam shou ld undertake th e publication o f
Crazy Cock.
Wouldn 't it
be an ap t ges ture of th e New In stin ctivi sm fo r him to brin g o ut a book
whi ch il s autho r would publically cas ti ga te just as the public began to
praise il? To Henry's surpri se Putnam actu a ll y read the manuscript
and sa id he beli eved it to be "a Covici-Friede book." (" I think he's
crazy," Mill er to ld Schnellock-but he did send th e book to the Covi ci–
Friede ed itors.) Typed on the titl e page was a one-sentence fo reword
("Apo logies to Michael Fraenkel") and a preface onl y sli ghtl y longer
("Good- bye to Ihe novel, sanit y, and good hea lth. Hello angels!"). It
was ano ther man, he to ld Emil, who had written
Crazy Cock,
a man
whom Henry now saw as an imposter; and he was defecating on that
man too. the h o ll ow American puppet he had left behind.
lli s fury over American interes t in hi s writing a lso worked its way
in to
Tropic of Cancer,
which he expanded now tha t its publi ca ti on by
Obelisk Press seemed guaranteed. At around the same time
Crazy Cock
was being considered by Covici-Friede, Henry was excising everything
but the " fire and dynamite" from
Trop ic of Cancer.
Determin ed to
affront readers and to make hi s book completely un accepta bl e to the
public tas te, he added severa l new secti ons whose frankness would be
a lmoS I certain to o ffend . He a lso added a contenti o us preface in which
he conn ected hi s own world-view o f contempo rary disease with the
surrea li st savagery o f Lui s Bunuel and with Duh amel's violent attack
upon American values in
Salavin.
Such a prefa tory criti ca l
tour de
force,
he felt . would throw the criti cs overboard or sink their ship. He
ruthlessly followed Fraenkel's log ic, signed hi s book " Henry Miller,
Pseudonym ," and then went one step furth er and typed a new titl e
page: "'Tropic of Cancer' by Anonymous." Last he vowed that, the fact
of publication bein g merely an incidenta l occasion in his express ion of
himse lf, he would no t rev ise in o rder to please the public, mollify the
censors, o r perfect hi s a rt. Onl y hi s own integrity , he decided, mattered
