Henry Miller was a leading example of a special kind of writer who is essentially seer and prophet, whose immediate ancestor was Rimbaud, and whose leading exponent was D. H. Lawrence. This kind of writer is characterized by his vulnerability to experiences. He exposes himself to them all in a propitiatory frenzy. He relives all the incarnations of the hero, which he calls, in his more modest language, his masks. Miller was fascinated by the names Rimbaud used for himself in A Season in Hell (1873): "acrobat, beggar, artist, bandit, priest."

Beginning with Tropic of Cancer in 1934, and continuing in all of his subsequent writings, Henry Miller wrote his autobiography and at the same time the history of our age. "And always am I hungry," he wrote in Wisdom of the Heart (1941). Alimentary and sexual hungers are one kind, and spiritual hunger is another. Both are centrally analyzed in...