Two Pal Joeys
MY FRIEND HENRY MILLER —Alfred Perles—John Day .
This book will be read devoutly by the thin cult of aging Americans forwhom Henry Miller was the big name in a bohemian pantheon of goofygodlets. For others it has interest as the life record of a literaryanarchist of boundless charm and talent but limited good sense, theloosest member of the Lost Generation, who, now 64. has lived thesetwelve years past as a sage emeritus in an arty enclave at Big Sur,Calif.
Miller's fame rests on Tropic of Cancer and Tropic of Capricorn,jubilantly riotous narratives whose sometimes hilarious smut made themcontraband barracks-bag souvenirs of France for countless G.I.s. Tropicof Cancer went off like a time bomb in the literary world of 1934. Ageneration wearied of polite fiction was offered great gobs ofsomething called Life. Just as history seemed to be jostling Europe toa new war, the author of Tropic offered to abolish history. The bookdisplayed life as a perpetual riot of gabble and rut in which NarratorMiller kept a bouncer's hard eye for anyone likely to break up theparty. Its explosion was timely, but the shock wave passed quickly. NowMiller seems as drably dated as one of his favorite writers, H. Rider Haggard, another man who "wrote at the top of his voice."
The King & I. Unfortunately, the same lack of inhibition that lent thegusto of irresponsibility to a natural raconteur has made nonsense ofthe notion that Miller is a philosopher and a sage. Not to all,however. There are those to whom state ments such as "In America, theartist is ever an outcast, a pariah" do not read like somethingmisprinted on a card given out in a gypsy tearoom. Indeed, there arethose—and Alfred Perles. is determined not to be the least—to whomsuch words, from Miller's larynx, "make one think of cathedral bells."
In this manner, Perles, a Vienna-born writer, makes his bid to be anofficial court jester and chronologer to the King of Bohemia; he spentfive months in his prize panjandrum's presence at Big Sur to putfinishing touches to the only autobiography of Henry Miller not writtenby Henry Miller.
Perles was working for the Paris edition of the Chicago Tribune when theconjunction took place. With all the avuncular patronage of Dr. Johnsonbeing kind for once to Boswell, Miller says kind things of the firstmeeting with "my good friend Alf." But like Boswell's initialconfrontation with Johnson, it was not a success. "There was no click,"Perles confesses sadly. Yet, "was I already under the spell of thatpersonality which was later to manifest itself in his epoch-makingbooks?" Two years later the question was answered. He was—even thoughMiller "talked through his hat, like an inspired lunatic."
By then Miller was "already a past master in the art of living by hiswits." At the Dome and Coupole, Montparnasse haunts of the U.S.expatriate, he talked about death and Dostoevsky and was alreadyveering toward the sort of grandiloquent occultism that today qualifiesMiller for a career as a Los Angeles swami, should he tire of Big Sur.Perles lovingly records every drink.
Lost in an Igloo. They made an odd pair. They called each other"Joey"—the Australian word for an infant kangaroo—but there was neverdoubt as to who was in whose pouch. Perles used to put his name toMiller's early essays for the feature page of the ChicagoTribune—possibly the strangest newspaper collaboration since Marx usedto sign Engels' pieces for the New York Tribune. Perles set Miller upto meals and a hotel room, and thus, Perles announces grandly, "thestage was set for the Tropic of Cancer"
Funniest episode: the two Pal Joeys get hold of a magazine called TheBooster from a trusting U.S. businessman. Under Perles and Miller, thesheet's literary editors included William Saroyan, and it boasted aDepartment of Metaphysics and Metempsychosis. The new Booster's secondand last issue contained a story of a man who completely vanishedinside a beautiful girl in an igloo.
Despite Booster Perles' overpraise. Miller comes through the recital ofhis preposterous pilgrimage as a lovable figure of intellectual fun.
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