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                                                --ralph waldo emerson

Introduction to Henry Miller's Tropic of Cancer by Louise DeSalvo

Henry Miller arrived in Paris on March 4, 1930, to try to become a successful writer.1 He had ten dollars in his pocket (a loan from his old friend Emil Schnellock), a trunkful of suits (from his tailor father), which he knew he could pawn if he ran out of money, and carbon copies of two novels he had written in New York and hoped to revise -- Moloch (about his first marriage and his job at Western Union), and Crazy Cock (about his second marriage to June Miller and her lesbian love affair, which had tormented him).2 Though he had been writing seriously for six years, and had published a few small pieces, Miller hadn't yet published a novel, hadn't yet fulfilled his dream of becoming a "working-class Proust," the Proust of Brooklyn.3 His wife, June, had persuaded him that Paris might be where he could perfect his craft and become financially successful.

What really motivated June to urge her husband to leave New York, though, was that he had become a burden to her and she wanted him (temporarily) out of her life while she pursued another of her schemes to make money for both of them. She was involved in a relationship with an older, wealthy "sugar daddy," who makes a brief appearance in Tropic of Cancer as the "fetus with a cigar in its mouth" standing opposite Miller's apartment, watching him leave for Europe.

Though June had persuaded Miller to quit his job at Western Union to become a writer, and had supported him through a variety of jobs -- as a hostess, a waitress, and a prostitute -- she had lost confidence in him...

Миллер Валентин Генри   
«Tropic of Cancer»