Sour Orange Juice

A DEVIL IN PARADISE (128 pp.)--Henry Miller--New American Library (25/).

"With Moricand I entered new waters. Moricand was not only an astrologer and a scholar steeped in the hermetic philosophies, but an occultist . . . Rather tall, well built, broad-shouldered, heavy and slow in his movements, he might have been taken for a descendant of the American Indian family . . . Perhaps the closest description I can give of him at the outset of our acquaintance is that of a Stoic dragging his tomb about with him."

Thus, with a bright spurt of one of the most carefully wasted literary talents of the century, Author Henry Miller admits readers into his own first meeting with Conrad Moricand. Conrad must be conceded to be one of the least lovely characters of modern times. He was an astrologer, drug addict, scholar, louse, lamprey or --to reduce it all to Miller's own explicit prose--a "phoney bastard."

This book is an advance segment of the memoirs of the occasionally printable author of Tropic of Cancer and Tropic of Capricorn, and it makes a readable, sometimes hilarious appetizer to a more thorough work scheduled to come out early next year under the title Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch.

Lamprey Moricand attached himself to Miller in Paris in 1936. Once he had been rich, but by then he was destitute, his only assets being the fine art of conversation and the black art of astrology. Miller gave him minute sums of money, and served him up as a dinner-table oddity among the bohemian intellectuals and expatriates. Miller also got him astrological commissions among his friends and, when friends ran short, invented imaginary characters for whom Moricand would supply horoscopes. It proved to be an expensive game.

After the war Moricand scouted out Miller's place of rest in California. Miller was living precariously in a cabin above the cliffs at Big Sur with a young wife (his third), a small daughter, a plenitude of unpaid bills and an uncertain future.

Nevertheless, he scraped together the money to fetch the moribund Moricand from his rats' castle in Switzerland to the solitude of Miller's own Walden Pond (the Pacific Ocean). Moricand saluted Miller, systematically went about the business of making himself master in Miller's house. He became Mrs. Miller's ally in her daily quarrels with Miller. He demanded gauloises bleues cigarettes, special tooth powder of pumice, writing paper of a special shape. He refused to be pacified by the Pacific, and he plugged his air less room so that no fresh air could leak in. Finally, he demanded drugs.

Moricand contributed to the household only one tangible asset, a collection of his exquisitely detailed pornographic drawings. But he declined to sell them to Hollywood connoisseurs. Miller's friends advised him to get rid of his incubus, but Moricand insisted on regarding the papers Miller had signed to get the man into the U.S. as a moral and legal obligation upon Miller to support him.

After three months Miller purged his household of Conrad -- but not before the Man Who Came to Dinner had worsened Miller's relations with his wife, urged stern discipline for Miller's daughter, plunged Miller into combat with his best friends, and got himself deported back to France.

As a parting gesture, Moricand pronounced a curse on Miller.

"That is not a friend," a mutual acquaintance consoled Miller. "That is a living corpse." The living corpse ceased living in a charity hospital on Aug. 31, 1954. "He was alone like a rat," reports Miller with relief--but also with a tinge of regret.

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