Uncovered along with Crazy Cock in 1988 by Miller biographer Mary V. Dearborn, Moloch emerged from the misery of Miller's years at Western Union and from the squalor of his first marriage. Set in the rapidly changing New York City of the early twenties, its hero is the rough-and-tumble Dion Moloch, a man filled with anger and despair. Trapped in a demeaning job, oppressed by an acrimonious home life, Moloch escapes to the streets only to be assaulted by a world he despises even more — a Brooklyn transformed into a shrill medley of ethnic sights, sounds, and smells. The antagonized Moloch strikes out blindly at everything he hates, battling against a world whose hostility threatens to overwhelm and destroy him.
From Publishers Weekly
Dion Moloch, the hero of Miller's first extant, heretofore unpublished novel (written in 1927 and long thought to be the work of his wife June), is an anti-Semitic boor and vain intellectual snob who defends his wife-beating and crudely mocks a friend's death. A stand-in for the aspiring novelist himself, Moloch, who works for a New York telegraph company (modeled on Western Union, where Miller himself once worked) embodies the author's twisted Nietzschean image of himself as "an iconoclast who destroyed from a sheer superabundance of health and strength." As Miller biographer Dearborn notes in her introduction, Moloch's dominant theme is its protagonist's poisonous, obsessive hatred of Jews, which makes long stretches of this work offensive. Peppered with repellent slurs against women, gays, blacks and other ethnic groups, the novel nevertheless provides tantalizing flashes of Miller's mature, quasi-surreal, apocalyptic style and offers flavorful glimpses of 1920s Manhattan, Brooklyn's mean streets and Jazz Age Harlem. Moloch's relationship with his wife, Blanche (modeled on Miller's first wife), is one long, bitter quarrel, in which the two simmer with mutual resentment. The chief interest in this half-baked, awkwardly written self-portrait lies in watching Miller feel his way into the autobiographical adventure narrative, a mode he would bring to fruition in Tropic of Capricorn.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.
From the Back Cover
In this, his first extant novel, Henry Miller made his earliest full-fledged attempt at autobiographical fiction, a literary form he was later to perfect in Paris. Uncovered along with Crazy Cock in 1988 by Miller biographer Mary V. Dearborn, Moloch is based on Miller's years at Western Union and his first marriage. Set in the rapidly changing New York City of the early 1920s, the novel has as its hero the rough-and-tumble Dion Moloch, a man filled with anger and despair. Stuck in a demeaning job and an acrimonious homelife, Moloch escapes to the streets, only to be assaulted by a land that he despises - the transforming Brooklyn and its ever-increasing ethnic sights, sounds, and smells. Moloch strikes out at everything that he hates, battling against a world that threatens to overwhelm and then destroy him. Brutal and shocking, sometimes awkward and rambling, Moloch displays Miller's first steps toward the motif that he was to make his hallmark: the scathingly direct hero striving for an unflinchingly honest view of himself in a world created out of the writer's life. --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.
Henry Valentine Miller was born in New York City in 1891 and raised in Brooklyn. He lived in Europe, particularly Paris, Berlin, the south of France, and Greece; in New York; and in Beverly Glen, Big Sur, and Pacific Palisades, California where he died in 1980. He is also the author, among many other works, of "Tropic of Capricorn", the "Rosy Crucifixion" trilogy ("Sexus", "Plexus", "Nexus"), and "The Air-Conditioned Nightmare". --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.
From Library Journal
Like Crazy Cock ( LJ 9/15/91), Moloch , Miller's earliest novel, lay lost for most of its author's life. It draws on an even earlier series of sketches, "Clipped Wings," and in its turn provided grist for Tropic of Capricorn ( LJ 9/1/62). Miller's wife, June, passed the novel off as her own--with Miller's connivance--in a scheme to milk a rich "friend" who fancied himself a patron of the arts. The novelist's Bowery setting allows Miller to caricature a parade of down-and-outers--an approach he would later raise to an art. But as Miller biographer Mary V. Dearborn ( "The Happiest Man Alive": A Biography of Henry Miller , LJ 4/15/91) declares in her introduction, Moloch "leaves much to be desired." Miller's style here is literary in the worst sense, and his anti-Semitism is pronounced. For fans only. - Grove Koger, Boise P.L., Id.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.
Description:
Uncovered along with Crazy Cock in 1988 by Miller biographer Mary V. Dearborn, Moloch emerged from the misery of Miller's years at Western Union and from the squalor of his first marriage. Set in the rapidly changing New York City of the early twenties, its hero is the rough-and-tumble Dion Moloch, a man filled with anger and despair. Trapped in a demeaning job, oppressed by an acrimonious home life, Moloch escapes to the streets only to be assaulted by a world he despises even more — a Brooklyn transformed into a shrill medley of ethnic sights, sounds, and smells. The antagonized Moloch strikes out blindly at everything he hates, battling against a world whose hostility threatens to overwhelm and destroy him.
From Publishers Weekly
Dion Moloch, the hero of Miller's first extant, heretofore unpublished novel (written in 1927 and long thought to be the work of his wife June), is an anti-Semitic boor and vain intellectual snob who defends his wife-beating and crudely mocks a friend's death. A stand-in for the aspiring novelist himself, Moloch, who works for a New York telegraph company (modeled on Western Union, where Miller himself once worked) embodies the author's twisted Nietzschean image of himself as "an iconoclast who destroyed from a sheer superabundance of health and strength." As Miller biographer Dearborn notes in her introduction, Moloch's dominant theme is its protagonist's poisonous, obsessive hatred of Jews, which makes long stretches of this work offensive. Peppered with repellent slurs against women, gays, blacks and other ethnic groups, the novel nevertheless provides tantalizing flashes of Miller's mature, quasi-surreal, apocalyptic style and offers flavorful glimpses of 1920s Manhattan, Brooklyn's mean streets and Jazz Age Harlem. Moloch's relationship with his wife, Blanche (modeled on Miller's first wife), is one long, bitter quarrel, in which the two simmer with mutual resentment. The chief interest in this half-baked, awkwardly written self-portrait lies in watching Miller feel his way into the autobiographical adventure narrative, a mode he would bring to fruition in Tropic of Capricorn.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.
From the Back Cover
In this, his first extant novel, Henry Miller made his earliest full-fledged attempt at autobiographical fiction, a literary form he was later to perfect in Paris. Uncovered along with Crazy Cock in 1988 by Miller biographer Mary V. Dearborn, Moloch is based on Miller's years at Western Union and his first marriage. Set in the rapidly changing New York City of the early 1920s, the novel has as its hero the rough-and-tumble Dion Moloch, a man filled with anger and despair. Stuck in a demeaning job and an acrimonious homelife, Moloch escapes to the streets, only to be assaulted by a land that he despises - the transforming Brooklyn and its ever-increasing ethnic sights, sounds, and smells. Moloch strikes out at everything that he hates, battling against a world that threatens to overwhelm and then destroy him. Brutal and shocking, sometimes awkward and rambling, Moloch displays Miller's first steps toward the motif that he was to make his hallmark: the scathingly direct hero striving for an unflinchingly honest view of himself in a world created out of the writer's life. --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.
From Kirkus Reviews
Miller's lost first complete novel, which--along with the unfinished Crazy Cock (1991) that followed-- was unearthed in 1988. In her introduction, Mary V. Dearborn tells us: ``Moloch is intriguing as a piece of Miller juvenilia and as a first attempt at autobiographical fiction....But its prose is spotty and uneven, almost uniformly stilted and awkward, and the narrative voice is inconsistent and frequently obtrusive.'' The caveats made, this is still a pretty awful book by a wonderfully original writer finding his voice. Nobody in America in 1927 was writing even remotely like Miller does in Moloch, a novel that refuses to cut back on its vaulting ambition or to sweeten its sights with kindnesses to anyone. He writes in the third person about his days as a personnel manager for Western Union, called here The Great American Telegraph Company, and in Tropic of Capricorn The Cosmodemonic Telegraph Company. These office scenes are a run-through for the full frenetically unbuttoned experience in Capricorn, but their humor is mildly sardonic and laced with ethnic slurs appropriate to the characters. The sex here, mild by Miller's later standards, was unquestionably outspoken for its day when no man ever touched a woman's breast in fiction. Meanwhile, despite its gargantuan flaws and thick prose, something striking arises on every page, gleaming like turquoise shards in an empty lot. The story, such as it is, more or less focuses on Dion Moloch's job, his associates, and his playing free and loose while wife Blanche and daughter Edda wait at home. Then Moloch comes to terms with Blanche, after she leaves him. A period piece, often boring, filled with likable grotesques and gritty street-sights in Manhattan and Brooklyn. -- Copyright ©1992, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.
About the Author
Henry Valentine Miller was born in New York City in 1891 and raised in Brooklyn. He lived in Europe, particularly Paris, Berlin, the south of France, and Greece; in New York; and in Beverly Glen, Big Sur, and Pacific Palisades, California where he died in 1980. He is also the author, among many other works, of "Tropic of Capricorn", the "Rosy Crucifixion" trilogy ("Sexus", "Plexus", "Nexus"), and "The Air-Conditioned Nightmare". --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.
From Library Journal
Like Crazy Cock ( LJ 9/15/91), Moloch , Miller's earliest novel, lay lost for most of its author's life. It draws on an even earlier series of sketches, "Clipped Wings," and in its turn provided grist for Tropic of Capricorn ( LJ 9/1/62). Miller's wife, June, passed the novel off as her own--with Miller's connivance--in a scheme to milk a rich "friend" who fancied himself a patron of the arts. The novelist's Bowery setting allows Miller to caricature a parade of down-and-outers--an approach he would later raise to an art. But as Miller biographer Mary V. Dearborn ( "The Happiest Man Alive": A Biography of Henry Miller , LJ 4/15/91) declares in her introduction, Moloch "leaves much to be desired." Miller's style here is literary in the worst sense, and his anti-Semitism is pronounced. For fans only.
- Grove Koger, Boise P.L., Id.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.