The Devil at Large (32 page)

I have kept Henry’s spelling idiosyncracies intact and have refrained from editing my own youthful enthusiasm (silly as it often is) out of my letters. You have the exchange just as it occurred.

T
HE FIRST EXCHANGE OF
letters between Henry Miller and me took place in April 1974 and appears in Chapter 2. Sometime during the early summer of 1974, Henry Miller sent me an essay he had written—“Fear and How It Gets That Way”—which he was planning to submit for publication. I had not asked for this boost and its effusiveness embarrassed me. He prefaced it with this letter:

5/6/74

Dear Erica—

Please let me or Bradley know as soon as you can if you want any changes or deletions made. He has a copy which he will send to some editor soon as you give the OK.

This in haste.

Henry Miller

TWO WRITERS IN PRAISE OF RABELAIS AND EACH OTHER

Certainly anyone whose book is on the best-seller list (even if at the bottom), needs no review, no boosting. These few words, therefore, are gratuitous, or, if you like, homage from one writer to another. Above all, a warm, heart-felt tribute to a woman writer, the likes of which I have never known.

In some ways, this book—
Fear of Flying
—is the feminine counterpart to my own
Tropic of Cancer.
Fortunately, it is not as bitter and much funnier. The author has quite a gripe about shrinks, which most of us share with her. I say the author, but in my head I cannot separate the author from her chief protagonist, Isadora Zelda. In the case of
Tropic of Cancer
, on the other hand, critics and readers alike were inclined to think I had
invented
Henry Miller. To this day many people refer to it as a novel, despite the fact that I have said again and again that it is not.

Erica Jong, the author, said to me in a letter that she thought it silly to make distinctions regarding the genre or category of a book. A book is a book is a book, to paraphrase Gertrude Stein. However, people do seem to concern themselves unnecessarily over this question of identity. As a rule, the autobiography is not as popular as the novel, unless it is sensational. I think, on the other hand, that publishers are always fearful of autobiographies, because of the threat of libel and slander, or defamation of character suits. But then publishers, in the main, are a timid lot, full of fears of every sort.

The wonderful thing about Erica Jong’s book is that she or Isadora is full of fear, all kinds, but makes no bones about it and makes us laugh over her tragic moments.

The book is definitely therapeutic, not only for women but for men too. It should be read for one thing by every shrink, every psychiatrist, every psychologist. It should also be read by Jews. They take quite a drubbing in this book. It’s hard to call the book “anti-Semitic”, since the author herself is Jewish and knows whereof she speaks. In her biting humor and sarcasm she is merciless toward her own people. Of course she is not unique in this. One has only to think of Swift, O’Casey, Knut Hamsun, Shaw, Celine, and Henry Miller. Yet all of us were writers who loved their country. We merely despised our country’s inhabitants.

Yes, I know that of all the peoples in the world the Jews are reputed to be foremost in their ability to make fun of themselves, acknowledge their shortcomings. But if someone other than a Jew does this he is immediately called an anti-Semite.

It’s silly to go on pretending that under the skin we are all brothers. The truth is more likely that under the skin we are all cannibals, assassins, traitors, liars, hypocrites, poltroons.

Do not misunderstand. Erica Jong is far from being a misogynist or a misanthropist. I get the impression that she loves life, and people too. But her intelligence does not permit her to overlook their glaring faults. It is this gusto of hers which supplies us with some of the funniest and raciest passages. One is tempted to say—“She writes like a man”—only she doesn’t write like a man but like a 100% woman, a female, sometimes a “bitch”. In many ways she is more forthright, more honest, more daring than most male authors. That’s what I like about her. In short, she is a treat for sore eyes.

Parenthetically, I wonder when or if Germaine Greer is going to give us a book on this order. Germaine Greer is another woman writer who tickles my fancy and elicits my admiration. Certainly, when I read her interview in Playboy, was it, I could scarcely believe my eyes. Men are no match for women of this sort.

The interesting thing is that these two women are endowed with strong intellects, they are cultured, they have read well, and have excellent taste. But above all, they are fearless.

I cannot help but wonder how Women’s Lib. regards this book of Erica Jong. Here is a liberated woman who tells of her need for men, or, as she sometimes puts it, her need for a lay. She admits to being horny, and how! We don’t hear enough from women on this subject. With all this, and she goes the limit, this book can scarcely be called “pornographic”. It is full of obscenity, whatever that means, but underneath it all, there is a most serious purpose. The book is full of meaning and a paean to life. The death-eaters are the shrinks, teachers, parents, and so on.

What is most intriguing of all to me is that she has made a British shrink, who is really a first-class scoundrel, a delightful character. He makes an awful lot of sense, despite his propensity for handing out one-liners, like Henny Youngman.

This lousy bastard turns out to be the saviour of Isadora Zelda, though he may not have meant to be. It’s he who, by his unabashed treachery, opens her eyes, makes her face herself, makes her accept reality. He is certainly an “anti-hero.” Bastard though he is, he knows how to get along, or, I suppose I should say, “he knows on which side his bread is buttered”.

I dwell on this character because too few of us are ready to acknowledge that we can learn (as much or more) from an evil character as from a good one. We
know
that the do-gooders wreak a lot of havoc, but we do not seem to know that the evil-doers can work a lot of good in this fucked-up world. If they accomplish nothing more than to shatter our idealistic dreams, they have done enough.

But I am exaggerating somewhat, as regards Adrian, the British shrink and no. 1 bastard. He is not truly evil, he just doesn’t give a fuck if he happens to ruin a few lives in the course of his having his way.

I had a most intense feeling of joy, of liberation, when the bandages finally fell from Isadora’s eyes. Thought it was a bit of a let-down to see her return to her husband (another shrink, but an Oriental one), I felt that she would remain on her own two feet. Once the bandages are removed you don’t put them on again. Maybe she, author or protagonist, still has a fear of flying—who hasn’t?—but she can cope with it.

I feel like predicting that this book will make literary history, that because of it women are going to find their own voice and give us great sagas of sex, life, joy and adventure.

Henry Miller

When Henry Miller first wrote to me last April to declare himself my loyal and “devoted fan,” I was delighted. Feminist critiques of Miller notwithstanding, he is our modern American Rabelais—always as drunk with language as he is with sexuality; as much in love with words as he is with women.

Long before I began hearing from Miller in the morning mail, I loved the sheer energy of his writing, the rollicking, headlong power of his sentences; the way he could make language mimic the inner turmoil of thoughts.

Miller has been the most misunderstood of writers. Because he dared call for “a classic purity where dung is dung and angels are angels”—he managed to incur the hostility of countless critics, post office authorities and censors who had never read Sappho, Catullus, Petronius, Rabelais, Chaucer (or even Shakespeare or Donne, for that matter) and therefore saw the frank sexuality in his work as an instance of modern depravity—when in truth it represented the resurrection of an ancient tradition.

In dealing with contemporary literature, we tend to lose historical perspective. Sexuality in literature is not new. In fact, it could be argued that the last 150 years have been aberrant in this regard. There was greater open sexuality in the arts in Fielding’s time, Swift’s time, Shakespeare’s time, Chaucer’s time than there has been in the last century or so. Until very recently, publishing was still governed by the aesthetics of a post-Victorian age which was more comfortable relegating sexuality to pulp fiction (and keeping so-called “high art” free of it) than about realizing that sexuality should be an organic part of literature.

The Victorian, after all, does not give up sex; he only gives up
open
sex. He does not practice abstinence, but only hypocrisy. He will abhor any trace of sexuality in a book of poems, yet drool over a porno novel in private. It was this hypocrisy that Miller set out to challenge. Why relegate sex in the outhouse, the whorehouse, the 42nd street bookstore? Boccaccio, Villon, Rabelais and countless others recognized the awesome power of sexuality in life; why should a modern writer have to write around it?

Yet Miller was banned for years because of his refusal to practice this hypocrisy (and so were Lawrence and Joyce). Quite recently, attempts were made in Vermont to ban
Ms.
magazine on the grounds of having published an allegedly obscene excerpt from my novel, “Fear of Flying.” And the British reviews of the same novel have been full of outrage and apoplexy about its frank sexuality. (This from the country of Blake and Lawrence and Fielding and Chaucer!)

Sexual censorship is still with us and is not likely to go away until sexual openness and health become the norm in society. (I expect, never.) Even though it has been proven again and again that censorship accomplishes nothing, that it in fact creates
interest
in a book rather than disinterest, there continue to be outraged parents and school officials who press for censorship. One can only interpret this as their need to censor their own prurience. They are not “sparing their children,” for no sooner is a book banned than children become more avid than ever to get their hands on it. Besides, no one has ever proven that sexuality in literature promotes sexuality in life—any more than books about diet promote weight loss. In fact, the analogy holds true to this degree: people seem to read about sex rather than engage in it, just as they tend to buy diet books rather than to diet.

Perhaps Miller was censored, not because he advocated sex, but because he fought hypocrisy. He is one of the relatively few modern authors whom we can speak of as a liberator. His autobiographical novels recount the vicissitudes of a soul in search of itself. The energy of the struggle, the honesty with which the struggle is depicted—lead one to identify deeply with Miller even when one’s own experience has not been precisely parallel.

Unfortunately, we do not have a recognized tradition of this kind of novel in America. The first-person mock-memoir is often misunderstood as a
roman à clef
or an autobiography and critics waste their time trying to pry the moustaches off characters to discover their “real” identities. We forget that Proust, Colette and Celine wrote this kind of book before Miller, and that the intermingling of fact and fiction is the stock-in-trade of the novel—that most undefinable of forms. What matters is not what we
call
a book—but whether or not it awakens us, jolts us, makes us see the world through new eyes. Sex can be part of that jolting, but it
need
not be. And that should be for the writer to decide—not the censor.

5/24/74

Dear Erica Jong—

Just a little word to say I am recommending your book to all and sundry and getting hearty “thank you’s” for it. I even recommend the book to foreigners … Which reminds me—have your publishers submitted it to French, German and Italian publishers? If not, I would recommend their trying Rowohlt in Germany, Editions Stock in Paris, and Longanssi in Milan, Italy. Use my name just as strongly as you wish.

Today I am reading a book about one of my favorite playwrights—Sean O’Casey. Did you ever read or see his “Juno and the Paycock?” or Synge’s “Playboy of the Western World?” or, from another angle—“The Dybbuk” (Eye bothers me—excuse spelling.) I’m curious about certain books and authors—if you have read them or not? For instance—“A Glastonbury Romance” by John Cowper Powys—“Mysteries” (and the others) by Knut Hamsun, Isaac Bashevis Singer’s books and that epic novel by his brother—wrote something about “Ashkenazi???”

I always see you in my mind reading. A voracious reader. (“Boulimique”) How about “She” by Rider Haggard? or “Charles Dickens” by G. K. Chesterton? (a beauty!) or Sean O’Casey’s plays? or “The Playboy of the Western World” by Synge?

You must have liked the Dadaists! What a pity that so few of the good, but less well-known French writers have not been translated.

Well, I really have nothing much to tell you. By the way, did you find Bradley Smith a pain in the ass? He’s not “a great friend” of mine, just another publisher. Bores me to tears often all ego. And that tone of voice! I hope it wasn’t too painful. I didn’t recommend that they call on you, you know. Despite what Time wrote last week, I don’t like visitors, except unusual ones. And normally not writers. Painters are better. Writers are mostly like ingrown nails. Do you agree? Worse than shrinks some times!

Cheers now!

Love from all your new fans!

Henry Miller

May 28, 1974

Dear Erica Jong—

The enclosed is from my son Tony’s wife. (They are splitting up after 6 months of marriage. She needed your book like
poison
. I hope it did the trick!) To tell you the truth, it did me a world of good too, upon a second reading. Now Tony, my son, is reading it. Everyone I have lent it to or bought a copy for has flipped. Mostly women. They all intend to write you and thank you. It hits women hard—and it should do the same for men.

This time, on rereading, I find Adrian even more delightful. A lovable bastard. I wonder that you ever got him out of your hair.

I think you have done, for men and women, in this book, what I did in
Tropic of Cancer
. Those last scenes in your book—the room in the rue de la Harpe (I think my “Max” actually lived in that street), the missing Tampax, the toilet in the hall, all are wonderful, like those vast boisterous reliefs O’Casey gives you after a heartrending scene. You really give the illusion of being free at last. It’s quite wonderful. Absolutely therapeutic. And the way you treat your own people—only you and Isaac Singer have dared be so honest about the Jews. (He lives near you, I think. Ever meet him?) I did,
once
, and what do you suppose we talked of for an hour or more? Knut Hamsun. He was Singer’s idol, as he was and still is, mine. I wish I could write like him. I have read “Mysteries” at least
5
times—and will reread it some more doubtless. Must stop.

my best,

Henry Miller

P.S. I’m even recommending your book to Europeans (who read English.) Do let me know which foreign publishers have taken it. Wouldn’t you like to see it in Turkish?

P.S. No analyst could have thought up a better “cure” than Adrian by his betrayal. That was a marvelous bit!

1 June 1974

Dear Henry (if I may),

I am up to my ass in Miller! Your absolutely wonderful letters—& now two books sent me by Noel Young (ON TURNING EIGHTY & THE WATERS REGLIT-TERIZED)—& Bradley Smith’s gift to me: MY LIFE & TIMES BY HENRY MILLER. I think your great gift is having learned to write with all the naturalness of speech—& having learned to put your whole personality into your writing—to make a generous gift of yourself in your work. Most writers never learn this. They are niggardly. They try to conceal themselves (which no artist can ever do), & what comes across is forced & stingy. What you have—in your books, in your letters, in your watercolors—is generosity—a greatness of spirit that cannot be taught; one is born with it. But most people are born without it. I think I like ON TURNING EIGHTY as much as any essay of yours I’ve ever read. I love what you say about youth being “premature old age.” I get younger too, as I get older. Whenever I feel really lousy, I look at your example & think—“I can always look forward to being eighty!” Maybe by then I’ll have learned to stop suffering & to live in the present. ONWARD! I also love your line, “One of the big differences between a genuine sage & a preacher is gaiety.” I want to use that somewhere—maybe as a quote for my next novel. Literary critics—especially here in America—have a real prejudice against humor. They tend to feel that great books are gloomy books. They’ve never really absorbed the lesson of Rabelais. A few weeks ago a woman I know (a fan of my poetry & a practicing gestalt therapist) called me to tell me about FEAR OF FLYING. “Very amusing,” she said, “but now I think you have to drop the humor & write a really SERIOUS book.” “But my humor is serious,” I said. “Oh,” she said.

To answer your questions about foreign publishers, Fear of Flying is due to be published in Denmark & Sweden, in Holland, in England.* So far, no French-publisher has taken it—though someone has an option, at present. Don’t know who. Laffont in France had it for months. All their “scouts” loved it; but the final decision was “too American.” I met the editor who finally turned it down. He said something about how the French weren’t interested in psychiatry. I think he had the wrong idea about the book entirely. Maybe you know a French publisher who would understand the book. If so, please tell me where it should be sent. So far—no German publisher either. Maybe they think the book too anti-German: I’d love to have your ideas. There is a British agent working on selling the book in Germany & France, but I’m starting to distrust all agents. My current NY agent is screwing me royally on the movie rights (an enormous mess at the moment). All too absent-minded to keep trace of it. How do you manage????

I don’t usually compose at the typewriter (la macchina?); like you, I feel more honest when I spill it all out in ink on the page. But I just bought a new typewriter that lets me change the ribbon colors easily & quickly & I’m having so much fun with my new toy that I wanted to write to you on it. Still, the typewriter constricts me, changes my style. I don’t type fast enough. I keep using the same one finger—like masturbating instead of fucking. (Writing in script being like fucking).