Tropic of Capricorn
Miller’s autobiographical attack on wage work, hierarchy, and the machinery of American business.
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Money and How It Gets That Way
by Henry Miller
A Pound-prompted comic anatomy of money: part mock economics, part cultural history, and wholly suspicious of the value people agree to worship.
- 1938
- 64
About Henry Miller
The story, briefly
Spoiler-freeMoney and How It Gets That Way is Henry Miller’s satirical pseudo-treatise on currency, value, credit, and the habits of mind that make money seem natural. Ezra Pound prompted the work by sending Miller a postcard asking whether he ever thought about money. Miller answered with a deliberately unruly survey of its legends, forms, and social uses, dedicated the result to Pound, and published it in Paris in 1938 as the first Booster Broadside. It is economic criticism performed as a burlesque rather than a practical guide.
The story, in more detail
Miller treats money as a collective fiction with very real consequences. The essay jumps between history, anecdote, etymology, coins, paper, credit, labor, and consumption, refusing the calm abstractions of an economics textbook. Its comedy comes from taking familiar financial rituals seriously enough to make them strange again.
The Harry Ransom Center records a fifty-page carbon typescript dated 1 November 1936 and dedicated to Ezra Pound. The finished book appeared in Paris in September 1938 from Booster Publications: a sixty-four-page broadside edition generally described as approximately 495 copies. The small press object and the extravagant argument belong together—an essay about exchange issued far outside commercial publishing’s center.
Themes and analysis
The question from Ezra Pound
Ezra Pound asked Miller whether he had thought about money and how it acquired its power. Miller responded with a comic essay that adopts the manner of a learned explanation. The surviving typescript is dated 1 November 1936; the first Paris edition appeared in 1938.
The connection with Pound explains the occasion and the dedication. It does not make Miller’s essay a statement of agreement with all Pound’s economic or political beliefs. The humor needs to be read as Miller’s response to the question.
A parody of expert explanation
The essay makes fun of a style of reasoning that seems to explain a subject while repeatedly circling back to its starting point. A passage on money’s existence, for example, turns an obvious proposition into elaborate argument. The authority of the explanation becomes part of the joke.
This matters because a literal reading can misidentify the book’s purpose. Miller is not presenting a workable monetary system. He uses the language of expertise to expose how confidently people talk about something they pursue, depend on, and often understand poorly.
Money in Miller’s other writing
In Miller’s autobiographical books, money usually appears as a concrete problem: paying rent, finding food, taking a job, or relying on a friend. This essay shifts from those situations to the language used to explain money itself.
Read beside Tropic of Capricorn, the difference is useful. The novel gives employment and economic dependence a lived setting. The essay performs its argument through comic explanation. One should not be mistaken for a factual commentary that settles the meaning of the other.
The small-press edition and the collected essay
Booster Publications issued the sixty-four-page first edition in Paris in a small print run. Later American publication brought the essay into Miller’s network of independent presses. UCLA preserves proofs and correspondence concerning a subsequent edition.
Readers do not need a rare first edition to encounter the essay. It also appears in Stand Still Like the Hummingbird. That collection places its financial comedy beside Miller’s writing on art, censorship, and other authors, making its relationship to his broader concerns easier to follow.
Why we recommend it
A material idea made strange
Miller turns the everyday authority of money back into an odd human invention.
The Pound connection
A postcard question from Ezra Pound becomes a full comic treatise—and a revealing exchange between two polemical writers.
What this book explores
The people in its pages
Ezra Pound
The dedicatee and instigator: Pound’s postcard asking Miller whether he thought about money prompted the essay.
Timeline
1936
Miller dates the surviving typescript 1 November and dedicates it to Ezra Pound.
1938
Booster Publications issues the essay in Paris as the first Booster Broadside.
Book editions
Paperback
- Paperback
- Booster Publications
- 1938
Reader reviews
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The Plight of the Creative Artist in the United States of America
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Read our takeMoney and How It Gets That Way: frequently asked questions
What kind of book is Money and How It Gets That Way?
A short satirical essay about currency, value, labor, credit, and the social beliefs that give money its authority.
Why is it dedicated to Ezra Pound?
Pound prompted the project with a postcard asking Miller whether he ever thought about money.
When was it first published?
Booster Publications issued it in Paris in September 1938 as a sixty-four-page broadside.
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References
References
The sources below include the primary text, editions, scholarship, archival materials, and other records that informed this page. They document Money and How It Gets That Way, its publication, and its place in literary history.
1Money and How It Gets That Way
EssaysHenry Miller, 1938Used forThe primary text represented by this page, used for descriptions of the work’s contents and for any quoted passages shown here.
2Henry Miller on Money — commentary and essay excerpts
WebsiteThe MarginalianUsed forWeb source consulted for documented facts and historical context presented on the Money and How It Gets That Way page.
3Henry Miller: An Inventory of His Collection
ArchiveHarry Ransom Center, The University of Texas at AustinUsed forArchival evidence used to document the historical record connected to Money and How It Gets That Way.
4Henry Miller rare-book catalogue
WebsiteLibraccioUsed forWeb source consulted for documented facts and historical context presented on the Money and How It Gets That Way page.
5The Happiest Man Alive: A Biography of Henry Miller
BiographySimon & Schuster, 1991Used forBiographical evidence used to verify chronology, relationships, and historical context connected to Money and How It Gets That Way.
6Henry Miller: A Life
BiographyW. W. Norton, 1991Used forBiographical evidence used to verify chronology, relationships, and historical context connected to Money and How It Gets That Way.
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Why these sources are here
The primary text is the baseline reference for every book page. Additional references document publication history, interpretation, and historical context where that evidence is available.
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