GENIUS AND LUST

In 1959, Mailer notes, Lawrence Durrell put together an anthology of his friend Henry Miller's "least obscene writings." Mailer's choices know no such bounds. Under topical headings—"Genius," "Crazy Cock," "Surrealism," "Domestic Misery"he presents much of the first half of Tropic of Cancer, extended selections from Tropic of Capricorn, Sexus and other novels, and parts of the non-fictions, with The Colossus of Maroussi and The Air-Conditioned Nightmare predominating. "Literary criticism has left a space around Henry Miller," Mailer observes, and whether or not his extravagant praise and specific reservations qualify as criticism, he is interesting on Miller vs. Hemingway, for instance, and his interspersed remarks give the excerpts a biographical setting that facilitates judgment. Appropriately, a Miller chronology is appended.