Henry Miller's 'Friend of the Family'
KEENE, FRANCES
Henry Miller's 'Friend of the Family' A Devil in Paradise. By Henry Miller. Signet. 128 pp. $0.25. Reviewed by Frances Keene Free-lance writer and critic; instructor in English, New York...
...Not at all...
...Shall one then cease to befriend others because a single experience has proven a battle-to-the-death...
...This unsentimental point of view emerges as Miller assesses his man and slowly comes to realize that it was his own brief lapse into sentimentality that got him into the predicament in the first place...
...The plight of Moricand, a Swiss neutral who may have collaborated in France, is shown squarely as that of an afflicted but never piteous leech to whom no quarter was due in the first place...
...I am that much richer, that much wiser, that much happier, if I may say so, than if I had found through study or through discipline how to avoid the snares and pitfalls in my path...
...This is a theme which has been variously treated from The Man Who Came to Dinner to Guest in the House, Kind Lady and half-a-dozen more...
...instructor in English, New York University BY ARRANGEMENT with his publishers, New Directions, Henry Miller has released first in paperback form a part of his forthcoming large work, Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch...
...Perhaps feeling that he owes something to somebody for not having stayed in Europe during the debacle, he decides to invite this Lazarus to live out his days with him and his family in his California home...
...How deceptive to think that by means of a little self-sacrifice one can help another overcome his difficulties...
...The second interval includes Moricand's blow-by-blow account of his late-war escape to Switzerland, laden with two suitcases...
...According to his editors, the present excerpt is about one sixth of the complete work...
...Truth comes with surrender...
...Instead, Miller learns late that "Never, never again would I make the mistake of trying to solve someone's problems for him...
...Dodging between armies, the ferret-like zigzag goes on...
...The first is the long monologue in which author tries to get through to guest and present him with some part of his own experience of living: "I blame nobody but myself for my woes and afflictions, for mv shortcomings, for my transgressions...
...Moricand comes out into the open and winds up his tale, Miller asks him what was in the impossibly encumbering valises...
...Whatever certitude one possesses is beyond the realm of proof...
...Once the offer is made, the "ghost, the corpse, the cancer" takes over the life of the household, making existence all but impossible...
...What you believe I might have learned through a deeper knowledge of astrology I learned through experience of life...
...Miller writes from personal experience, and the tentacled Moricand, protagonist of A Devil in Paradise, comes as viscously alive to the reader as he must have been when he played the role of the author's incubus...
...Meanwhile...
...I made all the mistakes that it is possible for a man to make-and 1 paid the penalty...
...When, at the end of the maze...
...The element that distinguishes the present hook-aside from Millers direct style and totally unself-conseious summings up-is that, as usual, he has dared knock down a few shibboleths...
...How egotistical...
...Big Sur and the Oranges should appear in its entirety this winter...
...The healthy, thoughtful, vet joyous attitude which characterizes Millers acceptance of the traps as well as the bonanza of existence continues to be invigorating and deeply moving...
...And it's wordless...
...At Moricand's announcement that they contained his prized books and personal papers, his host howls with laughter-laughter of relief and despair over the useless jeopardy, the perpetual clutching of things to the heart instead of ones own expendable, irreplaceable life...
...A Devil in Paradise is worth queuing up for: Think of all the time it took Diogenes to find that honest man...
...But this, too, is a costly discipline...
...There are two superb passages, one as thoughtful as the best in Miller's often philosophical work and the other a wild burst of healing laughter...
...Briefly, Miller sought to befriend a prewar acquaintance who turned up safe if not sound in Switzerland after the war...
...What...
Vol. 39 • September 1956 • No. 38
