willfully extravagant, on the magnificent, the hyperbolic, the overblown, and the outre.
It is the liberation of this voice and its boundless energy that are Miller’s most significant artistic achievements. In an epiphany described near the end of Moloch , he gives us a glimpse of what is to come:
“This world is my world, my stamping-ground. I must run free, mad-hearted, bellowing with pain and ecstasy, charging with lowered horns, ripping up the barricades that hem me in and stifle me. I must have room to expand … vast, silent spaces to charge in so that my voice may be heard to the outermost limits and shake the unseen walls of this cruel universe.”
Whatever one thinks of Miller’s later work, we can agree with a line from Dion Moloch: “It was written in the first person spectacular. Some of it was in high fettle.”
—Mary V. Dearborn
Publisher's Note
PUBLISHER’S NOTE
THE PUBLISHING OF POSTHUMOUS FICTION NATURALLY presents special problems, and the reader is entitled to know what, if any, editing has taken place. We have earnestly sought to present this novel in as untrammeled a form as possible, correcting only misspellings, obvious inconsistencies, and verb disagreements where no rewriting was entailed. With these minor exceptions, this first publication of this Henry Miller novel is exactly as he wrote it.
Chapter 01
1
DION MOLOCH WALKED WITH THE DREAMY STRIDE OF A noctambulo among the apparitions on the Bowery. I say “apparitions” because, as every sophisticated New Yorker knows, the Bowery is a thoroughfare where blasted souls are repaired for the price of a free lunch.
Dion Moloch was a modest, sensitive soul attired in a suit of Bedford whipcord and pale blue shirt, the collars and cuffs of which were disgracefully frayed.
Though he was in the service of the Great American Telegraph Company he did not suffer from megalomania, dementia prae-cox, or any of the fashionable nervous and mental disorders of the twentieth century. It was often said of him that he was anti-Semitic, but then this is a prejudice and not a disease.
At any rate, he was not like a certain character out of Gogol who had to be informed when to blow his nose. He was, in short, an American of three generations. He was definitely not Russian.
His grandparents had fought in the Civil War—on both sides. He had fought in no wars. In point of fact, he was, or had been, a draft dodger. Not that he was a coward, nor a man of high principles, for that matter, like—shall we say Woodrow Wilson? No, it was rather that he was an enigma (to himself) … that everything was an enigma.
Two years after the war was over he had arrived at the conclusion that the Germans were right, but it was too late then, of course, to enlist in a cause that had already been lost.
When America entered the war Dion Moloch took it into his head to get married. To be sure, thousands of Americans were similarly moved by the call to arms. This is a phenomenon, however, that chiefly concerns the sociologist.
Despite the fact that the war had been raging on a dozen fronts for several years, and that millions of his fellow creatures, for the sake of a few empty phrases, were being cheerfully converted into so much cannon fodder, Dion Moloch remained the victim of a habit which had begun at an early age. It may seem extraordinary to mention such a detail in connection with the life of this individual when the entire world was convulsed by a holocaust. Nevertheless, this singular detail, trivial as it may seem beside the annals of a great war, had a most important bearing on Dion Moloch’s future career.
To put it tersely, our hero could never get up when the alarm went off in the morning.
During the Argonne Drive he had become enamored of a young pianiste who was giving concerts to help make the world safe for democracy. The young lady had a most unpatriotic desire to play the rhapsodies of Liszt, since she had been brought up on that diet in a
It is the liberation of this voice and its boundless energy that are Miller’s most significant artistic achievements. In an epiphany described near the end of Moloch , he gives us a glimpse of what is to come:
“This world is my world, my stamping-ground. I must run free, mad-hearted, bellowing with pain and ecstasy, charging with lowered horns, ripping up the barricades that hem me in and stifle me. I must have room to expand … vast, silent spaces to charge in so that my voice may be heard to the outermost limits and shake the unseen walls of this cruel universe.”
Whatever one thinks of Miller’s later work, we can agree with a line from Dion Moloch: “It was written in the first person spectacular. Some of it was in high fettle.”
—Mary V. Dearborn
Publisher's Note
PUBLISHER’S NOTE
THE PUBLISHING OF POSTHUMOUS FICTION NATURALLY presents special problems, and the reader is entitled to know what, if any, editing has taken place. We have earnestly sought to present this novel in as untrammeled a form as possible, correcting only misspellings, obvious inconsistencies, and verb disagreements where no rewriting was entailed. With these minor exceptions, this first publication of this Henry Miller novel is exactly as he wrote it.
Chapter 01
1
DION MOLOCH WALKED WITH THE DREAMY STRIDE OF A noctambulo among the apparitions on the Bowery. I say “apparitions” because, as every sophisticated New Yorker knows, the Bowery is a thoroughfare where blasted souls are repaired for the price of a free lunch.
Dion Moloch was a modest, sensitive soul attired in a suit of Bedford whipcord and pale blue shirt, the collars and cuffs of which were disgracefully frayed.
Though he was in the service of the Great American Telegraph Company he did not suffer from megalomania, dementia prae-cox, or any of the fashionable nervous and mental disorders of the twentieth century. It was often said of him that he was anti-Semitic, but then this is a prejudice and not a disease.
At any rate, he was not like a certain character out of Gogol who had to be informed when to blow his nose. He was, in short, an American of three generations. He was definitely not Russian.
His grandparents had fought in the Civil War—on both sides. He had fought in no wars. In point of fact, he was, or had been, a draft dodger. Not that he was a coward, nor a man of high principles, for that matter, like—shall we say Woodrow Wilson? No, it was rather that he was an enigma (to himself) … that everything was an enigma.
Two years after the war was over he had arrived at the conclusion that the Germans were right, but it was too late then, of course, to enlist in a cause that had already been lost.
When America entered the war Dion Moloch took it into his head to get married. To be sure, thousands of Americans were similarly moved by the call to arms. This is a phenomenon, however, that chiefly concerns the sociologist.
Despite the fact that the war had been raging on a dozen fronts for several years, and that millions of his fellow creatures, for the sake of a few empty phrases, were being cheerfully converted into so much cannon fodder, Dion Moloch remained the victim of a habit which had begun at an early age. It may seem extraordinary to mention such a detail in connection with the life of this individual when the entire world was convulsed by a holocaust. Nevertheless, this singular detail, trivial as it may seem beside the annals of a great war, had a most important bearing on Dion Moloch’s future career.
To put it tersely, our hero could never get up when the alarm went off in the morning.
During the Argonne Drive he had become enamored of a young pianiste who was giving concerts to help make the world safe for democracy. The young lady had a most unpatriotic desire to play the rhapsodies of Liszt, since she had been brought up on that diet in a
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