But he was also in New York for business since he was trying to sell his work to American publishers. What may have darkened his world view at this moment in time was also the growing realization that Anaïs Nin would never leave her husband for him. Let’s not forget that New York had been the place of literary failure, failed relationships, failed fatherhood, and New York was the place of his mother he loathed so much (apparently, and curiously, there is no evidence that he visited his family, his daughter or his ex, June, while in New York). In fact, when reading Aller Retour New York (1935), which was really a long rambling letter to Miller’s friend Alfred Perlès, all the euphoria of his Paris days seemed to have fizzled in a New York minute. These letters also mention Spengler… and Spengler’s Decline of the West was very much on Henry Miller’s mind, when setting foot in New York again in 1935, after having launched himself as a writer in Paris. It has the kind of gorgeous madness in it which only a very sane imagination can produce.
The last two letters Miller wrote to Nin from Paris were full of energy and enthusiasm over Cancer‘s reception with a particularly memorable, and possibly underhanded, compliment from fellow American author Katherine Anne Porter:
In January 1935, after Miller’s debut Tropic of Cancer had come out in Paris and the first reactions came in, Miller went back to the city where he was born, in hot pursuit of Anaïs Nin who had gone there to study with Otto Rank, possibly to become a therapist herself.
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