Moloch: or, This Gentile World

by Henry Miller

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.

Genres: Fiction, Collections, Novels

288 pages, Paperback

First published April 22, 1993

About the author

Henry Valentine Miller was an American novelist, short story writer and essayist. He broke with existing literary forms and developed a new type of semi-autobiographical novel that blended character study, social criticism, philosophical reflection, stream of consciousness, explicit language, sex, surrealist free association, and mysticism. His most characteristic works of this kind are Tropic of Cancer, Black Spring, Tropic of Capricorn, and the trilogy The Rosy Crucifixion, which are based on his experiences in New York City and Paris (all of which were banned in the United States until 1961). He also wrote travel memoirs and literary criticism, and painted watercolors.

Reviews

[Edita · Rating 3 out of 5]

One can bear so many things if only there is one in the world to call a friend.

[Noleian · Rating 2 out of 5]

I didn't even know this title existed until I found it in the sale section of a local bookstore. Turns out there's a good reason for that. Only read this if you feel that you must read everything by Miller. If you are forming an opinion of Miller avoid this one. It's simply not that good.

[Amy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I just like Miller's use of words. This is an early (very early) work and is disturbingly anti-Semitic among other things. It rambles along though as Miller does, trails off, loses it way and somehow gets through. Much like life.

[Danny · Rating 2 out of 5]

enkel als je echt alles van Miller wil lezen....in diens niet gemakkelijk Brooklyniaans jargon, vol anti-semitisme en kwalitatief(veel) minder dan zijn later werk.

[Gregory · Rating 4 out of 5]

Moloch, Or This Gentile World (Henry Miller, Grove Press, N.Y., 1992)

I read through a couple of reviews here on Goodreads about this book. I agree with them both, even though one reviewer says it is not a good book and one reviewer gave it four stars. Me? I gave it 4 stars, but if I could have, I would have given it a 3.5 rating (my love of Miller’s writing made me go higher, though, rather than lower…)

Let me explain how I can agree with both.

What I want to say is this: I was unaware of this publication. I knew about “Crazy Cock”, it being an unpublished m.s. found in his archive after his death and published in ‘92. I read it, even though I was uneasy with the tale as I ploughed through it.

“Moloch” was different, though.

There are many passages that gave me pause, but when I finished I decided it was definitely worth the read, even though it contained biases, prejudices, misogynistic asides (ohh! they are legion!), and borderline racist comments that were hard to bear. I say “borderline” because the novel is about Brooklyn, New York.

Miller’s Brooklyn, yes, in the late ‘20s or early 30s. The 14th Ward. Miller wrote the novel when Brooklyn was home to a vast population of Eastern European immigrants: Poles, Romanians, Ukranians, Russians, Turks, Armenians, to name a few.

Now Europeans, from what I have read about attitudes and biases, speak of themselves the way neighbours in a tight-knit community speak of themselves: they, on occasion, make sweeping unkind statements about each other - sometimes nasty generalizations; they create crude monikers and dismissives bordering on - there’s that word again - prejudice and, oft times, outright bigotry: The Greeks (not all) disparage (not all) the Turks (and vice-versa). Living here in Canada - a country composed of immigrants - I have gotten to know many: Greeks and Turks and Russian Jews and Ethiopian Jews, Muslum Croates and Christian Serbs as well as Muslum Serbs and Christian Croates- befriended them, even - as well as Armenians and Syrians, Spaniards and Algerians, and cannot and will not echo the aspersions and slurs that many of them cast about disparaging this or that religion/ethnicity/culture. Yes, I have heard the Brits dismiss the French, the Irish insult the Brits; the French ridicule the Italians AND the Belgians, AND the Alsatians, and so on and so forth - the vernacular is as coarse and demeaning as anything I have heard in my 70 years roaming this big round world. On Ellis Island in the 20s and 30s, overwhelmed as it was with the poor and huddled masses, ears of every ethnicity would have heard it all. Such effrontery was common among groups of ethnic Europeans.

So, in Miller’s book there is that.

As for the anti-semitic passages, there are many slurs uttered by the main character Dion Moloch (how close that first name is to “Damian”, a moniker of Satan’s, as is “Moloch”, one of Milton’s devils). Jews were in Miller’s early years - and still are as we know from today’s headlines relating to the Trump contingent in the U.S. - disparaged. But not just here in North America. In countries throughout Europe., as well. William S. himself has mentioned that such prejudices existed in Merry Old Stratford-on-Avon in several of his works - and many a Tomas, Ricardo, and Harold (both King and Childe) from every country ending in “stan” to every country where English, Spanish, or French is the lingua franca has demeaned that noble race. It seems everyone has something horrible to say about them, no matter the century, which is wrong and unfair no matter the era, but like the vernacular of the deep south in pre-and post-Civil War U.S. of A., such language was as common as the patches on the clothes of the poor after the crash of ‘29.

Miller’s heritage is German emmigre, and so he heard all of these comments and sobriquets throughout his childhood - including the “n” word. That word, as well as “Jew” and all of the insulting adjectives that can precede it was as common in New York as it was under the klansmen’s peaked hoods south of the Mason-Dixon line in the 20s and 30s. Coming across these insults in the dialogue I had to cringe each time I stumbled upon them in this, Miller’s second excursion into novel writing. It is shocking and hard to bear, I admit. But at the same time, when I was a boy of nine reading Huckleberry Finn, I was somewhat shocked, but realized even then that I was reading about another time, another place, and Huck’s love and respect for Jim informed me that the use of that word by the worst characters in the book was wrong - and I wept for Jim, even then.

It is difficult to say how much of the anti-semitism is Miller’s and how much is Moloch’s. I know that in books like
”Sexus” Miller actually praises the Jewish race as often as he crticizes it. Kronski, for example, in “Tropic of Capricorn” is shown great respect for his intelligence, his knowledge of medicine, and his admiration of Dostoyevski, among other things. Miller also praises his taste in art, his manners, the way he expresses himself with words. At the same time he ridicules Hymie, his co-worker, and assigns to him the worst Jewish sterotypes he can think of.

But, because I am a fan of Miller’s writing style (just as I am in awe of Shakespeare’s works) and his development of the autobiographical novel (to the point of inclusion of his work as modern classic literature) I found that the rest of the writing in the novel redeemed his ignorant use of such descriptions. Some of the writing, though, seemed sophomoric at times, in the sense that he was flexing his creative compositional muscles the way a student in a first year creative writing class might.

I have no doubt that Miller had reservations about the quality of the writing of this novel. I think he read the finished manuscript and then shook his head dismissively, uttering (under his breath) “Nope, not good enough”, and flung it into the bottom drawer of his desk. However, later (and this I truly believe) after returning to America from Paris with the Obelisk publication of “Tropic of Cancer” under his arm, he dug that m.s. out of its bottom drawer dungeon, took another look at it, hmmmed and hawwwed and decided to use it as a blueprint for “Tropic of Capricorn”, proceeding to bang that masterpiece out on his three bank Underwood portable sitting at the kitchen table. And this is why I think this book is worth an open-minded perusal. It is a kind of academic study (for myself, at any rate) of the hits-and-misses of the burgeoning writer (who never was nominated for what he affectionately referred to as “The Noble Prize”) Henry Valentine Miller.

Now that I got that out of the way, let me turn to the work itself with a justification of his “under his breath toss into the bottom desk drawer” reasoning.

First of all, upon re-reading Capricorn, I notice he is far less esoteric with his use of vocabulary than he is in “Moloch”. One can sense his driven desire to be a writer when, with his love of language inspiring him to pore over archaic words and the lexicon of psychiatry and metallurgy, the jargon of oenology, the slang of the stevedore and lumberjack, one can imagine him obsessively flipping through the pages of The Complete Oxford Unabridged Dictionary (Volume I and II - with magnifying glass) doing gleeful research into the etymology of words like “desuetude” and “malapert” before banging them out in his angry-as-a-young-man-can-be exhuberance on that three-bank portable. For that reason alone one ought to crack this tome open and enjoy the early attempts at the two-fingered rat-a-tat-tatting of one of the master story tellers of the 20th Century.

Secondly, all of the characters in “Capricorn” are sketched out beautifully in “Moloch”: Valenska, his assistant at the Cosmodemonic Telegraph Company - so fullsome and interesting that Miller wrote her into “Capricorn” unfiltered; Prigozi, a student in “Moloch”, is akin to his friend Kronski in “Capricorn” and - well, Good Heavens, there are numerous parallels, too many to mention, that make this a work which any novice writer (like myself) should study so he/she will sense what not to do when attempting to write “The Last Great Canadian Novel - Ever”, and that is why this attempt by Miller (as a young man of 29, perhaps?) is so fascinating for me.

As for its quality: well, as I got deeper into the book I realized it is not for everyone - it has that “first draft” essence about it, and it really is, as one of the reviewers wrote here on Goodreads, not for first-time-around Miller readers, but rather for Miller afficionados (and perhaps the curious with a few spare hours on their hands).

So there you have it. Why this is such a good read and why it should be left on the seller’s shelf. My review, I hope, will be helpful and provide the reader everything he/she/they need to know before that long walk to the Sacred Store of Knowledge to either borrow it or pass it by or, purse or wallet in hand, make their way to the Blessed Church of Scribblers’ Hopes to buy it.

Amen and Fin…

[Milan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Bushwacking, bilious and brazen, this pin-cushion of a book overflowing with words that range from typoed brooklyn slang two centuries past to mouthfuls of esoteric loans is self-indulgent and frolickly meandering with an abandon too zealous even by Henry Miller's standards, but it is precisely this unhinged channeling of diaristic urges that makes it equally abundant in moments of the purest form of life's authenticity pressed, stabbed, clawed in on the paper. Thus the distancing artificiality of the text is rather than an obstacle, a stepping stone from which to plunge even deeper into the author's world. Forget the narrator.

[Rupert Owen · Rating 3 out of 5]

I imagine it is quite a challenge to write a despicable and deplorable character in the third person when inspiration is drawn from the first person. Moloch Dion isn’t without redeeming or hopeful aspects to his nature, I wouldn’t say he’s complex but he is certainly contradictory and nuanced like any well rounded human being. The problem with looking at this book through any kind of presupposed lens is like never having done something appalling compared to having done something appalling and being either ashamed or enlightened by it. The former will get you nowhere with this book, the latter will allow empathy and objectiveness to guide you through the narrative. I’m a stickler for the idea that writing allows expressive freedom that would otherwise be reprimanded in “real life”. I don’t think literature ought to be a parable and I don’t think it needs to apply a Disney moral clause to its arc. Bastards can be victorious, nastiness and excesses in human nature can be exploited, and decorum done away with ... on the page (without apologies, annotations, or parenthesis necessarily needed, implied or otherwise).

Moloch, or This Gentile World slums the reader through a rambling vignette, a “turquoise gigue of thought”, in a particular place at a particular time of life inhabited by Dion Moloch, recruitment chief for the American Telegraph Company. By all accounts, Dion is a xenophobe and chauvinist, much so, mostly in sentiment. He contradicts this, at times, by proving otherwise through his actions and sometimes his thoughts. There is a conflict of interest between Dion’s friends and Dion’s bigotry. Through him, the reader can see society is struggling with its own sense of righteousness with its diverse multicultural and spiritual mix. This is apparent to me because of the last few chapters. Dion is analogous to the society he belongs to, “This soul of his suddenly began to take on apostolic dimensions. It required attention, like a plant.” At the beginning of Chapter Fifteen, Miller abruptly breaks the convention of his narrative by introducing the first person authorial voice of “we and our” and then finally caps it off by speaking directly with the reader with the second person “you”. He's telling us the story of Dion Moloch, undoubtedly, with a peppering of himself and perhaps allowing for a bit of closeted personal dogmatism to have free range on the page.

Dion is forever chasing the next stimulant while painfully trying to resolve within himself a turbulent and suggestively violent relationship, and at the same time propping his hopes, against a backdrop of literary influences, in becoming a writer. This is the blatant authorial voice coming through the character. To be honest, for me it didn’t quite fit Dion’s landscape and lifestyle. I felt Henry used it a bit too much as a beacon of redemption for Moloch. I’ve always found this with Miller’s writing and, to a great degree, it is what partly makes the reading experience so alive. Another addition to these kind of ballooned narrative devices he inflates when needed is the inclusion of a child who seems to come and go whenever the story calls for it. There were times when I thought, where is the child?

I don’t know how faithfully Miller would have channeled his own relationship into this novel, considering June was supposed to be "author" as far as the publisher was concerned. I imagine she would have read the chapters as they were written before handing them over. I’m sure there were a few digs here and there. The best way for me to sum up the character of Blanche is through one of Miller’s sentences. “Blanche slipped off quietly to clasp her dreams.” There’s really not much more to say than that. Her pains and dilemmas belong in another story. Their explosive relationship is not unlike any other relationship that has become ground down and teetering on the edge of separation. What makes it different from a narrative point of view is that we don’t experience much of them confronting their issues together until the very end. Everything is circumstantial. It isn’t until the end that Moloch reviews his behaviour privately and the relationship takes centre stage. Throughout the novel, we view the abhorrence of the relationship as expressed by Moloch’s friends when they witness it personally or are confided in by Dion. There were many lead-ups in this book but only one claimed the ending.

I enjoyed the casualness of this work. I was satisfied it lacked the raunch of his other prominent works that were to grow from this book. The reason for this is because I found the language he employs to be invigorating. As an aside, there are quite a few spelling mistakes and grammatical errors. Not off-putting, but interesting from a writers point of view when considering substance over syntax from an established literary author.

There is one chapter that breaks from the book’s typical vernacular. At one point Dion has a dream where he finds himself equipped with a bow and arrows in a feudal landscape replete with a medieval castle. Miller briefly casts open a fantasy world that would prove him, had he applied himself to that genre, a very capable fantasy writer. “Here nothing of plant or vegetable life could be seen. Petrified limbs of gigantic proportions, carbuncled with glistening mineral crustations (sic), sprawled supinely in this brackish void.”

All in all I found, "It was a funambulesque exhibition sans parasol."

[Andrew · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not a bad book unless you compare it to Miller's better works. I didn't particularly enjoy this one.

[Eddie Hitler · Rating 3 out of 5]

Hints at the greatness to come.

[Alan Shaw · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is very definitely a beginner's work. The start of the novel is paricularly turgid and dreary and it is only at Chapter 5 that I began to hear HM's voice ... at least a third of the whole thing could (and perhaps) would have been discarded if it had ever gotten near being published in his lifetime. The chapters that revolve around his work at the telegraph company are prolix and a drag on the rest. However when he gets involved with some of his marvellous archetypal characters such as Prigozi and Dave and Valeska his writing takes fire. There are also some fine chapters full of exuberant flights of fancy - the Harlem nightclub episode and that with Dave and the girls in Greenpoint are good examples.

No newcomer to HM should start here. The genius is to be found at white heat in The Tropics and Rosy Crucifixion ... but here there is at let some kindling.

[Brendan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Miller hasn’t really got a full grasp on his writing ability in this early, unpublished in his lifetime novel, and the virulent antisemitism definitely distracts from the narrative. There are still sparks, however, of the talent that would emerge in Tropic of Cancer. Like Crazy Cock, this is really something for Miller diehards only.

[Jacob Frank · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a Henry Miller book. Although quite racist throughout, the racism is, I think, an authentic record of how a German-American Brooklynite might have felt in the 1920's. It is the same story told in 'Tropic of Capricorn,' 'Sexus,' and probably others, but the feelings are rawer and more urgent.

[Shad Terry · Rating 2 out of 5]

I would avoid this one. I'm not going to be harsh because this was Miller's first novel.

[E. Nicholas · Rating 1 out of 5]

This is interesting for the biggest of Henry Miller fans (as I am), but let's face it, taken by itself as it is, it sucks. It was his every-author's-first-book-sucks book.

[Adam · Rating 4 out of 5]

The forward and all reviews prepared me for a bad story, but i liked this one. It’s interesting that this was actually written under the guise of being written by his wife. Which is incorporated into the plot in ‘Plexus’ which i had read a few months earlier. The book switches tones a few more times than would allow it to be considered cohesive, but it’s got an aliveness to it that made it easier to get through than the numerous dense sections in ‘Plexus’. It is also not without a few beautiful passages. Mostly in the final chapters.

[Tracy · Rating 1 out of 5]

I love Tropic of Cancer and I had to give up on this.

[Taylor · Rating 2 out of 5]

Around chapter 15 the writing got better and the story became a little more interesting, but all in all I had a really hard time getting through it. It was like pulling teeth. I would read Miller again - judging by other reviews I think I picked the wrong book of his to start with.

This...just wasn’t very good. For a lot of reasons. Most of all it was dull and the characters were uninteresting.