The Air-Conditioned Nightmare by Henry Miller

Author:Henry Miller
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
ISBN: 978-0-8112-2138-2
Publisher: A New Directions Book
Published: 1945-09-22T04:00:00+00:00

LETTER TO LAFAYETTE

I DON’T suppose I’d ever have used an automobile if it hadn’t been for Dudley and Flo of Kenosha. Dudley is one of the geniuses I promised to talk about earlier in this book. Dudley and Lafe, because if it hadn’t been for Lafe, Dudley might have died in the womb and The Letter to Lafayette never been written.

Dudley says it starts with the rowing machine: “I dream an empire,” etc. But for me it starts in the deep South, just prior to the arrival of Salvador Dali and his Caligari cabinet. No, it starts even a little before that—with Generation, a still-birth that ushered in a great friendship. It was like this, to be specific…. About four in the morning a friend of mine received a telephone call from Kenosha, or maybe it was from Des Moines. A young man named Dudley (not to be confused with Joe Dudley, the drummer) and another young man named Lafayette Young, both of good parentage, sound in wind and limb, somewhat exalted and somewhat befuddled, telephoned to ask if Henry Miller was in town and could they meet him. About a month later they arrived in a broken-down Ford with a little black trunk, phonograph records and other necessities. To make it brief we became friends immediately. They had with them their embryo, Generation. I think it was late winter at the time, or early spring. Behind Generation was a then non-existent book to be called Letter to Lafayette, Lafayette being none other than little Lafe, Lafe Young of Des Moines. In a few weeks Generation had been killed. But the Letter to Lafayette survived the ordeal. In fact, it began to sprout like a liverwort. By summer we found ourselves thrown together under the same roof on a great Southern estate. That is, Dudley, little Flo, his wife, and myself. Lafe was off in limbo, but promising to arrive any day. Then one night, towards three in the morning, a visitor arrived unexpectedly and we all fled precipitately. That’s another story, one that I may have to write posthumously, so to speak, because it involves libel and slander.

Our next meeting took place in Kenosha, at the home of Dudley and Flo. Lafe was then in Des Moines, sucking his big toe. To my great delight Dudley had begun the Letter to Lafayette. He was writing it with a stub of a pencil in a microscopic scrawl in a big ledger. It was no longer a dream but a fat, stubborn actuality. I had just seen the rowing machine upstairs in the attic where the contents of the mysterious black trunk had been spilled about. “I have another vehicle,” said Dudley—“an abandoned car rescued from the auto cemetery: my empire. I stand still and go everywhere. No wheels, no motor, no lights, no traction. I wander through jungles, rivers, swamps, deserts—in search of the Mayas. We are trying to find our father, our name, our address.”

When I heard this last sentence I jumped.

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