The smile at the foot of the ladder
This touching fable tells of Auguste, a famous clown who could make people laugh but who sought to impart to his audiences a lasting joy. Originally inspired by a series of circus and clown drawings by the cubist painter Femand Léger, Miller eventually used his own decorations to accompany the text in their stead. "Undoubtedly," he says in his explanatory epilogue, "it is the strangest story I have yet written."
Print Book, English, 1958 [i.e. 1959]
New Directions, New York, 1958 [i.e. 1959]