In 1935 a young Englishman living on Corfu wrote enthusiastically to a middle-aged Brooklynite who had just published a succes de scandale in Paris: "...Tropic [of Cancer] turns the corner into a new life which has regained its bowels." Henry Miller, realizing that in Lawrence Durrell he had hooked his ideal reader, responded: "You're the first Britisher who's written me an intelligent letter about the book." Thus began a correspondence that ended...