The Devil at Large (34 page)

By the way, I have a good friend named David Griffin (he recently married the lady to whom
Fear of Flying
is dedicated), and many years ago, when he was at Columbia, he wrote a master’s essay called the Possibility of Joy: Henry Miller’s Role in the American Tradition. I think he sent the essay to you years ago and corresponded with you about it. He’s just given me a copy of it, which I have not yet read, but I can tell you that he loves your work and understands it. He has particularly interesting notions about why your work was banned for so long—not because of the four-letter words only, but because of the liberating effect of the work. If everyone were to soar as you do, civilization (Joyce calls it “syphilisation”) would crumble. Anyway, David wants to be remembered to you, and is terribly fond of you, though he’s never met you. He feels that your books have changed his life and changed all his ideas about writing. I’m sure that many, many people feel that way. I myself have met dozens who do.

I may be coming to California next week (if not, we’ll be there some time this summer) and I will call you. I’d love to take you to dinner and talk. Helen Smith says you are hard to reach by phone, but maybe she will do the phoning for me.

With love,

Erica

P.S. I am enclosing a copy of my newest poem, which is written in the style of Whitman, whom I adore.

July 4, 1974

Dear Erica—

Tell David Griffin to get in touch with me. He’s faded out of my memory. And thank you for the dope for Twinka I don’t think it’s a part for her, but who knows? She’s got the makings of a real actress in her.

I’ve often wanted to ask you, then forget, what is the meaning of that word “menarche”, which occurs somewhere about middle of your book. Can’t find it in the dictionary, English nor French. Did you make it up.

I enjoyed your homage to Walt Whitman, who was truly the greatest, greater, I mean, than Dostoievsky or Tolstoi? On page 2 on top of page, are 4 lines about molars of corpses that baffle me. Am I stupid or did you write it unthinkingly? Forgive me if I put it to you this way, but I have often found on rereading something I wrote the day before a phrase or paragraph which makes no sense to me. I had something in mind but lost it in trying to express it. I know about “poetic license”—but is that what this is?

Your publisher (secretary) wrote me again. They are all out of those blue blurbs, which you wrote and which I like to enclose in my letters. They seem happy that you sold the movie rights (6 figures!) but I am not so sure if it will do the book good or kill it. It may make money, yes. All my movie ventures lose money!

This is my 20th letter today. Must stop. Hope to see you later in summer. I take it you are now adapted to your marriage. Good for you! Cheers & hugs.

Henry Miller

P.S. I have no planets in Aries but three on conjunction in Scorpio, facing Aries. A bit lop-sided. (Mars, Moon, Uranus.)

7/7/74

Dear Erica—

You’re right—there is a similarity in our handwriting. Only yours is still more free and open, I feel. Since I lost the sight in my right eye I make mistakes, mis-spell words, leave others out, etc. It’s a tribulation.

Your interview was wonderful to read. I would have answered in much the same way. You have a wonderful memory for what other writers have said. Do you keep these phrases in a notebook for ready reference?

I can see from your answers what “teaching” has done for you. I lack all that. I always feel that I am a bit stupid when I talk. (One of the men I greatly admire is______? can’t think of it now! He wrote short books on St. Francis of Assisi, Charles Dickens, Robert Louis Stevenson. Also the “Father Brown” series. He was a converted Catholic and could always make Shaw or any of them look like dummies in a debate. Whom am I thinking of? When he wrote his column for the papers (in a pub or café) he laughed aloud over what he was writing. He could make me swallow the Virgin Mary and all that shit. He was a “believer” and a great wit. Now I remember—Gilbert K. Chesterton! If you never read his little book called “Charles Dickens”, please do. I know Dickens is a pain in the ass—but not this book about him. It’s a gem.

I am full of thoughts today; could write you a dozen pages but don’t want to impose on you. Just gave Val the New York review to read and share with Twinka….I wrote a savage letter to my New Directions man. Imagine—they have 17 books of mine in circulation and my royalties on them for the last 5 years have not exceeded $6,000.00
a year!!!
And they think I should be happy and grateful! I am furious. I am going (at last) to get myself an American agent (probably Sydney Oman’s agents—I know them quite well). Last night I gave Oman (and his agent’s wife, a Frenchwoman) the blurb (blue) you wrote about
Fear of Flying
. I always carry one in my pocket to hand out. (Like Rimbaud carrying that belt around his waist with 40,000 fra. in it—
gold
francs!)

Why doesn’t your publisher reprint your blurb? Have they stopped their print of you now that you have been sold to the movies? They seemed so proud of that achievement. As I said somewhere—“The publisher, whether good or bad, is the natural enemy of the author.” (Like that little critter—Riki—Tike—Tabi—which always kills the cobra. What’s its name again?

Octaroon
. Do you know that word? No one in my family seems to know it. I was once in love with an octoroon—she was my secretary and assistant in the Western Union—Camilla Euphrosmia Fedrant. What a name!When I read your poem on Whitman (who for me is the one and only!) I meant to urge you to look up a chapter in “Books in My Life.” It is called “A Letter to Pierre Lesdiam.” He was a Belgian poet, who wrote in French. I had a long correspondence with him. He was a wonderful person (almost a saint) and a great reader. He was also my champion in Belgium, a Puritanic country somewhat like Norway.)

I am fond of that chapter because of the comparison or sous I made between Whitman and Dostoievsky. When you find time, do read it. I beg you. It’s the nearest I come to you in your critical language. ( You have, at least, two languages—one, the poet (whether novelist or poetess), the other the teacher-critic. I love both.

Another book I can’t help recommending to you is Maurice Nadeau’s book on “Gustave Flaubert”. Flaubert may seem like a dead horse to you but not this book. It’s another gem. Should keep you awake nights and pissing in your pants all day. Put out by a small publisher in Long Island. I think it was the Library Press, or something like that. Consult a guide book—or Publishers’ Weekly.

The last I have to tell you today is this. You made a “reader” out of Connie, my secretary. That girl hardly ever cracked a book. She hadn’t even read my books, even though she was my secretary. Finally she did read two—with much effort. Anyway, I persuaded her to go out and buy your book. She did. She read it. She rejoiced and she suddenly wants to read. Promised me she will now tackle “Mysteries,” “The Idiot” and “Tropic of Cancer”. Never knew that reading could be such a pleasure. Says you opened her eyes. For which the bard be praised. Hallelujah! Erica Go Bragh!
Nam myo ho renge kyo
. ( Yes, I say the latter every night before falling asleep. I am going to add you to the list tonight).

One last thing. In my last letter I forgot to answer your question about collaborating with you on something for a mag. The truth is, I’m a bit timid. I could do better probably, if we discussed some writer we both liked, as I did with Pierre Losdam.

As for sex, I don’t think I have another word to say on that subject. You are only 32 or 33—you can still tackle it. I am 83. Makes a difference.

Once I wrote about—
nothing
, though I pretended I was writing about a friend’s drawings. I consider that a feat. Just words. By the way, Hesse speaks marvelously in a posthumous book—as well as in “Siddhartha” of course—about things like immortality and other words we bandy about as being nothing but words. Yet, “nothing but words” can mean so much, n’est-ce pas?

You and I, we have the itch. We eat words, shit words, and fuck them good and proper too, I suppose.

Enough! Cheerio!

Henry

P.S. I am a little melancholy today. My beloved Lisa Liu, the Chinese actress and opera star, has just left for Hong Kong. She took a copy of your book with her. I won’t see her for 3 or 4 months. So, I’ll work!!

P.S. I never read or heard of Roethke, whom you mention several times. Twinka is lending me Sylvia Plath’s one and only novel.

July 20, 1974

Dear Henry,

I’m delighted to have your letters and delighted to have a new fan in Irene Tzu. I also love the photograph of the watercolor you sent me. Seeing your watercolors has made me want to paint again. I haven’t really done it since I was a first-year college student. I painted up a storm the summer I was 18—and that was the last time I really gave myself to it. I was at a writers colony in Massachusetts—had gone there to follow my college poetry teacher, with whom I was in love, of course. He was a pompous little cock-of-the-walk who arranged to have all his infatuated girl students follow him into the mountains where he could seduce them—away from the watchful eyes of the Barnard faculty. He lived (that summer) in a converted chicken coop, which he made a big deal about as a “writing coop.” I was in love with him but too scared to sleep with him. When I finally had my big chance, I blew it by getting so incredibly drunk on two bottles of chianti that I puked red puke all over him (and me). He carried me home, put me tenderly into bed, saying, “This is what friends are for.” I think he was probably relieved at never having to fuck me. It turned out later that he was all swagger and talk and very little action. Besides, I had a boyfriend at home to whom I was being unbelievably loyal. I still believed in romantic monogamy in those days. (The boyfriend at home turned out to be the Madman in
Fear of Flying
.)

Anyway, during all the imagined sexual upheavals of that summer, I painted, (though I was at the colony as a student of writing). I used to set up my portable easel in a seventeenth-and eighteenth century cemetery and do portraits of people out-doors—in or near the graveyard. I was very melancholy and adolescent and thought myself the most sensitive young woman in the entire world—like everyone else. My paintings were always full of high, brilliant color, but my drawing was never up to my grandfather’s Old Master standards. My grandfather draws with all the expert technique of an Ingres, and one of the reasons I suppose I became afraid of a career as an artist was because I knew that my drawing would never measure up to those family standards. Now I begin to realize that the freedom and color sense that I had was very valuable in itself and ought to be reexplored. Your splendid new watercolor reminds me of the fantastic vision of life which is so much more important in painting than sheer draughtsmanship. I have never done watercolors on wet paper, but seeing yours and the joy they embody, I feel I would like to try it. I used to paint in oils on scarcely primed canvas. Sometimes I would make the oil and turpentine into a very thin wash and use it like watercolor, bleeding into the canvas, and sometimes I would use the paint very thickly with a palette knife. (All this is very distant recollection at this point). Also, I seem to have given away nearly all of my paintings. Whenever somebody asked me for a painting, I’d give it, as long as they promised to have it so people would see it. They are scattered now in the homes of friends I never see anymore. Tant pis: Someday I’ll do some real painting again.

I thought it would fascinate you to see the shit my paperback publisher is using to promote
Fear of Flying
. I read with great empathy and shared fury your remarks about being ripped off by your publishers. I agree that the publisher is a natural enemy of the author. It can’t be otherwise, really. The kind of openness to experience that one needs to be an author
has
to be antithetical to the selective blindness of the businessman (or even businesswoman). The woman who is doing the movie of
Fear of Flying
is a case in point. Utterly ruthless, with a kind of foxy brilliance about films, but ready to sacrifice everything and everyone—including her husband, lovers and me—for the project at hand. I used to think that I was one-track minded about writing. I used to think that writing made me “selfish” (my mother always called me “selfish” because I was sitting in a room and writing). But these movie people make me realize that I haven’t even begun to understand the meaning of the world “selfish.” They make the publishers appear like holy saints.

Yes, you are absolutely right: we eat words, shit words and fuck words, too. There is nothing more comforting than writing. One of the more intelligent of my shrinks once said, “It makes you feel good to write because in your writing you tell the truth whereas in your life you have to lie to keep people from getting mad at you.” It is true that I find it very hard to express anger directly and that I seem to express it through my writing. I feel exhilarated after a morning’s work because I have been telling the truth to myself, and what can be better than that?

I spoke to Helen and Bradley last week and I expect to come to California either at the beginning of August or in the first week of September. I can’t wait to see you and talk to you. I don’t give a shit whether we write anything together (on sex or writing or anything at all). I just want to talk and share and get to know you. I keep reading your books—
Black Spring
particularly delights me. I am mad about “A Saturday Afternoon” and your cry for “a classic purity, where dung is dung and angels are angels.” I promise to get a hold of
Books in My Life
, which I confess I’ve never read, and your other long reading list, too! I sure as hell have a lot of work to do. Give Connie a hug for me, and tell her I’m glad I turned her on to words, words, words.