Smile at the Foot of the Ladder

Rating:
Summary: Smiles from start to finish.
Review: A German acquaintance loaned me her copy of this 1958 novel. "Read this," she said. "It's one of my all-time favorite books."

The "everyday world will one day become ours," Henry Miller (1891-1980) writes in the Epilogue to his truly sublime fable. "It is ours now, in fact, only we are too impoverished to claim it for our own" (p. 50). Miller's forty-page novel begins and ends with his clown protagonist, Auguste, smiling (pp. 3; 40), and it will leave you smiling on every page in between. Auguste cavorts through Miller's tale "like a crazy goat" (p. 24), aspiring to "endow his spectators with a joy which would prove imperishable" (p. 5). On his hero's journey, he discovers a very important lesson: "To be yourself, just yourself, is a great thing" (p. 22). This is the central theme of Miller's short, but deeply profound novel. Miller's clown is a "poet in action," an emancipated being "untouched, unsullied, by the common grief" of the world (pp. 46-7). Drifting "unknown" and "unrecognized" among the millions he taught to laugh (p. 6), Auguste lives "in the moment, fully" with the radiance of a "perpetual song of joy" (p. 48).

G. Merritt

Rating:
Summary: Smiles from start to finish.
Review: A German acquaintance loaned me her copy of this 1958 novel. "Read this," she said. "It's one of my all-time favorite books."

The "everyday world will one day become ours," Henry Miller (1891-1980) writes in the Epilogue to his truly sublime fable. "It is ours now, in fact, only we are too impoverished to claim it for our own" (p. 50). Miller's forty-page novel begins and ends with his clown protagonist, Auguste, smiling (pp. 3; 40), and it will leave you smiling on every page in between. Auguste cavorts through Miller's tale "like a crazy goat" (p. 24), aspiring to "endow his spectators with a joy which would prove imperishable" (p. 5). On his hero's journey, he discovers a very important lesson: "To be yourself, just yourself, is a great thing" (p. 22). This is the central theme of Miller's short, but deeply profound novel. Miller's clown is a "poet in action," an emancipated being "untouched, unsullied, by the common grief" of the world (pp. 46-7). Drifting "unknown" and "unrecognized" among the millions he taught to laugh (p. 6), Auguste lives "in the moment, fully" with the radiance of a "perpetual song of joy" (p. 48).

G. Merritt

Rating:
Summary: The Best Book in the World.
Review: I give everyone a copy of this I meet. Henry Miller does more in a few pages than most authors can do in a lifetime. I'm not even going to attempt to write down my thoughts on what all the symbolism means to me. I will just say this. Get 10 dollars out of your wallet and buy a classic. Whenever I am down I read Smile, when I'm really happy I read Smile. The blood trickling down his face.............

Rating:
Summary: WHAT ARE YOU STARING AT??
Review: Like all writers who are ultra-realistic, Henry Miller definitely had a bent of surrealism and magic lying underneath his style. Check out such books as The Cosmological Eye to see that part of him in action. Unfortunately, most writers like Miller are never able to effectively embrace this part of themselves. They are too busy trying to get to the "truth" of human life and thereby do not want to be "unrealistic".

The Smile at the Foot of the Ladder is an example of Miller trying to get to realistic truth through unrealistic means. It was originally written as a story to be placed in a collection of circus and clown drawings by the artist Fernand Leger. It was later rejected by Leger, so Miller decided to publish it himself with his own crude but perfectly suited water paint illustrations.

The story is about a famous clown named Auguste who has become a prisoner of his own celebrity. Unlike most entertainers, he wishes not only to delight his audiences, but to bring them to an inner peace hitherto only realizable through God. He is a master of his trade but one day as he is sitting in front of his mirror, he realizes that he has no life outside of his career. This triggers an attempt to flee himself by wandering through the country anonymously, searching for the meaning of life.

While an admirable try, this short fable on the question of identity and purpose is not very effective. Its very brevity defeats Miller's usually rambling and wayward prose. If he had wished he could probably have made a Don Quixote type novel out of this story but Miller probably got frightened from making something so removed from his own experience and the inborn romanticism of its plot. He should have given it a try. This is a minor work. Seek out his Rosy Crucifixion to get Miller at his zenith.

Rating:
Summary: Henry Miller - lifenotes
Review: This is a very short read but so intriguing that you will lust for the last few words so you may complete the mission. Henry Miller nurtures a childhood fantasy of becoming a clown and uses this vehicle to convey a perspective on life that you will find invaluable. Though short and full of entertaining imagery, the complexity and the symbolism (along with the epilogue) will blow your mind. Godspeed, Mr. Miller!