"Wear any uniform so long as it's not yours," advises Henry Miller, and the various uniforms of bum, stud, psychopomp, jeremiah, and saint he wears in his books never quite fit the forms and motions we see behind the garb and the gab. The protagonist of his books, name of Henry Miller, describes himself as being such-and-such, and this so-and-so varies from book to book, from passage to passage. But we do not see him as he sees himself. The figure we make out from passage to passage exposes only new lineaments of its eternal consistency. The "I" of his books does not know itself, and what it doesn't know remains pretty much the same. The shiftings of Proteus configure a Prometheus bound to his obsession but sure he is free.

So far, then, we have two Henry Millers, one a wardrobe of costumes, the other their inhabitant...