I forgot I didn't care all that much for Henry Miller's autobiographical novel that described his rage over his second wife's live-in lesbian lover. Why? Because Tony Bring, who is the author, calls himself in the book a writer bewildered by his independent wife, Hildred, and the sordid world of Greenwich Village in the 1920s, he depicts Tony as a sensitive soul in a rotten world but Tony is really a misogynistic bully. Tony's bourgeois upbringing and inclinations are shaken when Hildred (the morbid enchantress who was modeled after his unbalanced wife, June Mansfield Smith) announces that her dear friend Vanya (painter-poet Vanya (based on Jean Kronski), with an invented past as the bastard Romanoff princess, and men’s clothes), is coming to live with them. As Tony learns the truth—that Hildred and Vanya are indeed lovers—the tale descends into their sexual souls. Hildred comes across as a pseudo-bohemian and her lover, Vanya, cuts a pathetic figure.So, here the three of them are, in a world swirling with violence, sex, and passion, they struggle with their desires, and inching ever nearer to insanity, each unable to break away from the dangerous and consuming love triangle. This was the raw, human part of the novel that I loved...so very Miller.I found it excessively sentimental...mawkish. Then there was his anti-Semitic remarks, his overheated, hand-me-down surrealism, his purple prose, and his self-conscious decadence prefiguring the adolescent egomania you can find in so much of Miller's works later in his life. But, hey...this is only my opinion.
Para quem já leu Trópico de Câncer e de Capricórnio, ou mesmo Tempo dos Assassinos, esse livro parece ser uma obra de menor porte. Mas creio que esta seja uma impressão errônea. Crazy Cock é um livro do início da carreira da Miller e mostra com clareza o percurso de um autor descobrindo a própria linguagem. Diferente dos outros, este é escrito na terceira pessoa, com linguagem menos fluida e muito adjetivada. No caso específico de Miller, que teve o primeiro livro publicado apenas com 40 anos e uma vida bastante conturbada/intensa, a procura pela linguagem, por escrever aquilo que se sabe e se vive, fica evidente no conjunto da obra. Somente por isso já é um livro que vale ser lido, mas para além, também é possível encontrar trechos sublimes, que causam abalos de que poucos autores são capazes.
What do You think about Crazy Cock (1994)?
Most of the other comments on this book seem pretty on point. Covers material that feature in his later works but in a sort of transitional style (The gold guard, rosewood neck of modern American literature...) Flashes of the later Miller brilliance are there, but the 3rd person narrative is laborious in comparison to the brilliantly serpentine 1st person used in the "tropic" books. The last 3 or 4 pages (post hemorrhoids :-) ) are purely epic, as wonderful, manic and perverse as anything he ever wrote.
—Zac
The Foreword by Erica Jong and the Introduction by Mary V. Dearborn I found just as interesting as the book itself. Henry Miller actually mentored Erica Jong in the 1970s, and she spoke about that experience in the Foreword. I want to read Miller's other books now because this one was supposed to be "a dry run" of his classics and his writing is supposed to have "matured"; I would like to see what those two concepts look like in the next books. Crazy Cock is an autobiographical account of Miller's married life to Jean. Miller was not a productive writer, and his wife supported both him and her female lover. I think he may have been an alcoholic and his wife, from what I can tell from this book, was most likely a borderline personality or bipolar, suffering from very severe mental illness that today could be helped with medicine. Her "work" involved scams, cons, and various ways of prostituting herself; much of that behavior goes along with mental illness. I really felt for their suffering and also for the loss that we readers incurred because Miller was unable to finish so many of his writing projects and ideas. Recommended to writers and also to readers who enjoy gritty memoirs.
—Phyllis
An early work of Miller, in which he somewhat fails to write in the third person, and shows some of the qualities that we all grew to love in his later works. I got a kick out his use of words like "faggots" and "kikes", disappointed that there wasn't a single "cunt" in there though. Good old Henry. Good to see that he started off in a place where he wasn't perfect as a writer, and was kind of bigot that needed some cleaning up too. Worth reading if you've already read the Tropics and the Crucifixions, first.
—Chris Hearn
