Summer, 1942 Summary and Analysis

20. Summer, 1942

After starting on a book of poems at the press, Nin, Gonzalo and his wife Helba take a vacation from the stifling August heat of New York and return to Provincetown, Mass. She hopes that Gonzalo now has marketable skills that he can use to support himself, and reports that she has turned all profits from the press to him so that he will feel "independent" and soon earn enough to live on. She reprints two letters from Henry Miller in which he declares that life in New York has become "intolerable" for him. Despite the fact Miller has written 10 books, he still cannot support himself. The "underground success" of her novel continues despite the fact it is largely ignored by the mainstream press. A disappointed Nin writes that she had hopes the press would solve, rather than worsen, her...