The Devil at Large (37 page)

Only fear makes us fail to hear him—fear of falling, fear of flying. He wants us to come home to the world and to understand that all true revolution starts inside us. He asks us to recover the divinity of man and woman. We shut out his voice at our peril. He is offering us nothing less than life.

A
LL TITLES ARE BY
Henry Miller unless otherwise noted. Page numbers listed with sources refer to the currently available edition of Miller’s works as listed in the bibliography.

PAGE

Introduction: Why Henry Miller?

“… has caught the flame he tried to pass on.” From an early draft of
The World of Lawrence
, edited out of final text. Ms. is in UCLA Special Collections.

Chapter 1: Born Hungry: Henry & Me

“… no one lived there.” Quoted in Mary Dearborn,
The Happiest Man Alive
, p. 304.

Chapter 2: Henry Hero

“… but I will sing …”
Tropic of Cancer
, p. 2.

“… and humiliated as in America.”
Tropic of Capricorn
, p. 12.

“A complete circle.”
Order and Chaos chez Hans Reichel
, p. 25.

Chapter 3: Just a Brooklyn Boy

“… a cussed streak in me …”
Tropic of Capricorn
, p. 10.

“… bringing me out of the womb.”
Ibid.

“… clutching womb …”
Ibid.
, p. 61.

“… snug and secure it may be.”
Book of Friends
, p. 17.

“… her grip like an octopus.”
Tropic of Capricorn
, p. 61.

“… to fill a hundred books.”
Reflections
, p. 20.

“… one will never be loved …”
The Time of the Assassins,
p. 49.

“… the same with Lawrence and with Rimbaud.”
Ibid
., p. 48.

“… pillar of society like she wanted me to be.”
Reflections
, p. 20.

“… and can roam the streets at will …”
Book of Friends
, p. 15.

“… except a real pony.”
From Your Capricorn Friend
, p. 7.

“… my mother was stupid and cruel.”
Ibid
., p. 77.

“… scenes of my childhood.”
Book of Friends
, p. 28.

“… to talk that way to a woman.”
Ibid
., p. 30.

“… the first artist to appear in my life.”
Ibid
., p. 38.

“‘I don’t want to set the world on fire.’”
Ibid
., p. 100.

“… hates the Jews more than the Jews?”
Tropic of Cancer
, p. 3.

“… tomorrow never came.”
Tropic of Capricorn
, p. 11.

“… stuff like that, I give up.”
Life and Times
, p. 185.

“… to be my mother.”
Ibid
., from unpaged endpaper.

“… essay on Nietzsche’s ‘Anti-Christ.’” From an unpublished letter to Huntington Cairns, 1939.

“… I have regretted ever since.”
Ibid.

“… to open a man’s eyes …”
The Black Cat
magazine, quoted in Jay Martin,
Always Merry and Bright
, p. 53.

“… chancre on a worn-out cock …”
Tropic of Capricorn
, p. 19.

“I couldn’t get over it.”
Ibid
., p. 17.

“… I gave him an earful.”
Ibid.

“… given the company away to the poor buggers.”
Ibid
., p.27.

“… to bring all humanity to God …”
Ibid.

“… spitting, fuming, threatening.”
Ibid
., p.30.

“(… more than my wife!)” From an unpublished letter to Huntington Cairns, 1939.

“I was scared shitless.”
Tropic of Capricorn
, p. 34.

“… and sulphur in my blood.”
Ibid.

“… less than 300 pages, and ruined.” From an unpublished letter to Huntington Cairns, 1939.

Chapter 4: Crazy Cock in the Land of Fuck

“Nobody
dies
here….”
Tropic of Cancer
, p. 29.

“hours together, discussing ideas.” Author conversation with Georges Belmont.

“…
movement,
all the time!”
Ibid.

“That was Montparnasse in those days.”
Ibid.

“… death of everything sensitive …”
Letters to Emil
, p. 87.

“… direct as a knife-thrust.”
Ibid
., p. 72.

“… like some evil dream …”
Ibid
., pp. 93–95.

“… his whole being.” Brassaï,
Grandeur Nature
, p. 12.

“I am singing.”
Tropic of Cancer
, p. 2.

“… for deigning to notice him.” From the original ms. of
Crazy Cock
in the UCLA Special Collections.

“He is like me.” Anaïs Nin,
Henry and June
, pp. 5–6.

“… on his own introspective journey.”
Ibid
., p. 6.

“Henry faded.”
Ibid
., p. 14.

“… the same madness, the same stage.”
Ibid.,
p. 15.

“… he writes his book.”
Ibid
., p. 37.

“… in the space of a generation …”
Tropic of Cancer
, pp. 11–12.

“… from my shoulders.”
Ibid
., p. 97.

“… it presented itself.”
Ibid.

“I go forth to fatten myself.”
Ibid
., pp. 97–99.

“… spit out two franc pieces…”
Ibid
., pp. 5–6.

“… a fraction of my feelings…”
Ibid.

“… like a dead clam.”
Ibid.

“… with this kind of enthusiasm.”
Ibid
., p. 171.

“… to the bottomless pit.”
Ibid
., p. 94.

“… what is there is the heart.”
Ibid
., p. 163.

“… hungry seeing mouths.”
Ibid.

“… two enormous lumps of shit.”
Ibid
., p. 97.

“… a sheer loss of time….”
Ibid.,
pp. 139–49.

“… since it’s not my fifteen francs?”
Ibid
., pp. 142–43.

“… such a degree of perfection.”
Ibid
., pp. 153–54.

“… with strangled embryos.”
Ibid
., p. 165.

“… the process of disillusion quickens.”
Ibid
., p. 164.

“… its course is fixed.”
Ibid
., p. 318.

Chapter 5: The Last Man on Earth

… “entangled and indebted.” Author conversation with Betty Ryan, Nov. 14, 1992.

“in mufti.”
Ibid.

“…
always Saturday afternoon.
”
Black Spring
, p. 34.

“… one of the great human joys.”
Ibid
., pp. 37–38.

“… shouting
Hallelujah!
”
Ibid
., pp. 44–45.

“… all of life in this art.” Author conversation with David Black.

“… except a finger bowl.”
Black Spring
, pp. 91–92.

“… break her heart?”
Ibid
., p. 110.

“… women don’t want to be worshiped.”
The Wisdom of the Heart
, p. 141.

“I smelled it.” Alfred Perlès,
My Friend Henry Miller
, p. 132.

… ordered Ryan to knock on a pipe … Author conversation with Betty Ryan, Nov. 14, 1992.

“… for all the French care.” From an unpublished letter to Huntington Cairns, 1939.

“… the Obelisk Press.” Alfred Perlès,
My Friend Henry Miller
, p. 178.

“… a totality which is inexhaustible.”
Tropic
o
f Capricorn
, p. 333.

“… whose head has just been lopped off.”
Ibid
., p. 34.

“… you are Lilith, and I know it.”
Ibid.

“… enjoying the celestial fireworks!”
Ibid.

“… beneath my coat.”
Ibid
., p. 339.

“…—
also
Hamlet
Ms
.”
The Durrell-Miller Letters
, pp. 100–101.

“…
to last the rest of my life.”
From an unpublished letter to Huntington Cairns, 1939.

“… finished canvases by a master.”
The Colossus of Maroussi
, p. 3.

“… painters, legislators, visionaries.”
Ibid
., p. 48.

“… as well as from the heavens.”
Ibid.

“… scattered far and wide.”
Ibid
., pp. 53–54.

“… the world of light and beauty.”
Ibid
., p. 55.

“… not taken up with mysticism.” Mary Dearborn,
The Happiest Man Alive
, p. 207.

“… one rebirth too many.” Robert Ferguson,
Henry Miller: A Life
, p. 267.

“… copulation of clichés.” Vladimir Nabokov, Afterword to
Lolita
, p. 35.

“… writers who might be called creative.”
The Air-Conditioned Nightmare
, p. 35.

“… the man of vision a criminal …”
Ibid
., p. 24.

“To be a rabbit is better still.”
Ibid
., p. 16.

“Love corduroys.”
An Open Letter to All and Sundry, The New Republic
, Nov. 8, 1943.

“…
the view is so magnificent.” Letters to Anaïs Nin
, p. 330.

“… in the mirror of eternity.”
Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch
, p. 8.

Chapter 6: Heart Filled with Light …

“… you alone control nothing…”
Letters to Anaïs Nin
, p. 336.

“… come without struggle?”
Ibid
., p. 337.

“… the day we were married.”
Henry Miller: The Paintings. A Centennial Retrospective
, p. 21.

“… when I visit the dentist now and then.”
The Durrell-Miller Letters
, pp. 178–79.

“… to an aperture …”
A Literate Passion: Letters of Anaïs Nin and Henry Miller
,
1932–1953,
p. 307.

“… hydraulic approach to sex …” Gore Vidal, “The Sexus of Henry Miller,”
Book Week
, Aug. 1, 1965.

“… on the side of life.”
Lawrence Durrell and Henry Miller: A Private Correspondence
, p. 269.

“…
I have plenty.”
Author conversation with Georges Belmont, 1992.

“… the most important test.” Most pertinent to censorship in the United States are the following cases:
United States
v.
One Book Called
Ulysses, 5 F. Supp. 182, (SDNY 1933;
aff’d
72 F.2d 705 (2nd Cir. 1934);
Roth
v.
U.S.
354 U.S. 476, 77 S.Ct. 1304, L.Ed 2d 1498 (1957);
Jacobellis
v.
Ohio
, 378 U.S. 184, 84 S.Ct. 1676, 12 L.Ed.2d 793 (1964);
Grove Press, Inc.
v.
Gerstein,
378 U.S. 577, 84 S.Ct. 1909,12 L.Ed 2d. 1035 (1964);
Miller v. California
, 413 U.S. 15, 93 S.Ct. 2607, 37 L.Ed.2d 419 (1973).

“… combination of sex and intellect.” Charles Rembar,
The End of Obscenity
, p. 179.

“… that ignoble reputation.” The case in question is
Grove Press
v.
Gerstein
, 1964.

“… disgusting book.”
Ibid
., p. 210.

“… duality and elusiveness.” Anaïs Nin in
The Booster
, November 1937, p. 27.

Chapter 7: Must We Burn Henry Miller? …

“… this onerous burden of sexuality falls.” Kate Millett,
Sexual Politics
, p. 295.

“… home of a lunatic.”
The Cosmological Eye
, p. 290.

“… that which we are seeking.”
Ibid
., p. 270.

“… only the hate, the violence.” Anaïs Nin,
Henry and June
, p. 86.

“… makes these conditions sexual.” Andrea Dworkin and Catharine MacKinnon,
Pornography and Civil Rights
, p. 36.

Chapter 8: Sexomania/Sexophobia or, Sex-Libris

“‘… dreaming it up to make money!’”
Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch
, p. 129.

“… our way of thinking which makes death.”
The World of Sex
, p. 59.

“… any justification for life.”
The World of Lawrence
, p. 17.

“… usurp the body’s proper function.”
Ibid
., pp. 175–76.

“… in all primitive peoples.”
Ibid
., p. 176.

“…to behave like the animal he is….”
Ibid.

“… refuses to be resolved.”
Ibid
., p. 177.

“… he is finished, he can croak.”
Ibid
., 185–86.

“It is the rape and scorn of the mother.”
The Great Cosmic Mother
, p. 193.

“… the waste of contemporary disintegration.”
The World of Lawrence
, p. 187.

“… the evil seed of the Christian ideal.”
Ibid
., p. 188.

“… he wanted to overthrow.”
Ibid
., p. 191.

“… did not invent the obscene.” Walter Kendrick,
The Secret Museum: Pornography in Modern Culture
, p. 33.

“… the last phase of evolution….”
The World of Sex
, p. 10.

“… I am my own saviour.”
Ibid
., p. 11.

“… open the doors of the world for us …”
Ibid
., pp. 57–58.

“… is neither beneficent or cruel.”
Ibid.

Chapter 9: Why Must We Read Miller? …

“…the discovery of truth.”
The World of Sex
, pp. 53–54.

“… to the loftiest peaks.”
Ibid
., p. 54.

“… the one I am talking about.”
Ibid.

“… against the side of a steep cliff.”
Ibid
., pp. 54–55.

“… their stay on earth.”
Ibid
., p. 55.

“… he chooses to dwell on.”
Ibid.

“… in another life.”
Ibid
., pp. 56–57.

“… to be completely ‘the writer.’”
The Books in My Life
, as quoted in
Henry Miller on Writing
, p. 126.

“… a few Christians shared!” Unpublished letter from Thomas Merton to Henry Miller, June 22, 1964. Private collection of Charles Monk, New York.

“… clinging to the tails of comets.”
Sexus
, p. 29.

The quotes from Noel Young in the End Note, in which he describes Henry’s last days, come from a letter to Erica Jong dated 30 September 1992. Other information in this section comes from conversations with Twinka Thiebaud and Bill Pickerill.