The Devil at Large (40 page)

When
Sexus
was banned in Norway and two booksellers were convicted for selling obscenity, Henry wrote two letters to Trygve Hirsh, the defending attorney, explaining how “censorship works like a boomerang,” always stimulating rather than discouraging the public from tracking down banned books. Henry declares himself as being opposed to judgment, condemnation, and slaughter. He equates the censor with the murderer, and says that it is the censor who is immoral: “How can one guard against evil, in short, if one does not know what evil is?”

“Reunion in Barcelona; A Letter to Alfred Perlès,” from “Aller retour New York.” Scorpion Press, England, 1959.

See p. 321.

To Paint Is to Love Again.
Cambria Books, CA, 1960.

This material also appears in
Semblance of a Devoted Past.
See p. 322.

Art and Outrage: Lawrence Durrell and Alfred Perlès.
Dutton, New York, 1961.

A selection of letters between Miller, Durrell, and Perlès.

Stand Still Like the Hummingbird.
New Directions, New York, 1962.

Reprint of earlier pieces, including Miller’s essay on Walt Whitman.

Lawrence Durrell and Henry Miller: A Private Correspondence.
Edited by George Wickes. Dutton, New York, 1964.

Letters chronicling the friendship of Miller and Durrell, 1935–1959.

Miller, Henry and Nin, Anaïs.
Letters to Anaïs Nin/Henry Miller.
Edited and introduced by Gunther Stuhlmann. Putnam, New York, 1965.

A partial record of the Nin/Miller relationship, published when both were alive. More revelations were to come later.

Collector’s Quest: The Correspondence of Henry Miller and J. Rives Childs, 1947–1965.
Edited by Richard Clement Wood. University Press of Virginia/Randolf-Macon College, Charlottesville-Ashland, 1968.

Miller, Henry, and Gordon, William A.
Writer & Critic: A Correspondence with Henry Miller.
Louisiana State University Press, Baton Rouge, 1968.

Miller arguing with a critic who is writing a book he hates.

This Is Henry, Henry Miller from Brooklyn.
Nash publishing, Los Angeles, 1974.

Dialogues between Henry and Robert Snyder, the filmmaker who created
The Henry Miller Odyssey
, a most revealing and intelligent documentary about Henry. This book is a companion piece to the film, which is available from Master Works Video, 15313 Whitfield Avenue, Pacific Palisades, CA. 90272.

Miller, Henry, and Fowlie, Wallace.
Letters of Henry Miller and Wallace Fowlie,
1943–1972. Introduction by Wallace Fowlie. Grove Press, New York, 1975.

A fascinating correspondence between Miller and the Yale professor and critic. Sheds light on Miller’s life and philosophical preoccupations.

“An Open Letter to Stroker.” One Nine Two Seven Press/Stroker, New York, 1978.

Inspired by the writings and art work of Tommy Trantino, a prisoner in Trenton State Prison, New Jersey, this is a correspondence between Henry and Irving Stettner, a fan who wrote to him late in his life. It later appeared in
From Your Capricorn Friend.
See below.

Henry Miller: Years of Trial and Triumph,
1962–1964:
The correspondence of Henry Miller and Elmer Gertz.
Edited by Elmer Gertz and Felice Flanery Lewis. Southern Illinois University Press, 1978.

Miller’s correspondence with one of the attorneys who defended him against charges of obscenity.

The Theatre & Other Pieces.
Stroker, New York, 1979.
*

Reflections.
Edited by Twinka Thiebaud. Borgo Press, California, 1981; Capra Press, California, 1981.

Twinka Thiebaud, who took care of Henry when I knew him, recorded many of Henry’s dinner-table pronouncements on women, erotica, feminism, Emma Goldman, spiritualism, death, Nin, Gurdjieff, Mailer, Chaplin, Whitman, etc. If you couldn’t be Henry’s guest, this is the next best thing.

From Your Capricorn Friend: Henry Miller and the
Stroker,
1978–1980.
New Directions, New York, 1984.

An exchange of letters between Irving Stettner (a.k.a. The Stroker) and Henry. Amusing letters from Henry’s eighties, with comments on Isaac Bashevis Singer, Warren Beatty, morning erections, and memories of childhood.

Letters from Henry Miller to Hoki Tokuda Miller.
Edited by Joyce Howard Miller. Freundlich Books, New York, 1986.

Correspondence between Henry and his last wife.

Miller, Henry, and Nin, Anaïs,
A Literate Passion: Letters of Anaïs Nin and Henry Miller
,
1932–1953.
Edited and with an introduction by Gunther Stuhlmann. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, New York, 1987.

After Anaïs, Henry, and Henry’s husband had died, a more complete selection of letters appeared. Essential reading for an understanding of the Miller/Nin relationship.

Dear, Dear Brenda: The Love Letters of Henry Miller to Brenda Venus.
Text by Brenda Venus, edited by Gerald Seth Sindell. H. Holt, New York, 1987.

Late in life Henry fell in love with actress Brenda Venus, an affair of the heart that kept him going. The relationship, as usual, took place mostly in Henry’s mind—but this was also true when he was young. Reading these letters, one feels that he fell in love with the name “Venus” as much as anything!

“Dear Bernie Wolfe.” Privately printed, n.d. (Probably 1948.)

The text of a letter from Miller to Bernard Wolfe concerning
Really the Blues
, a book by Wolfe and Milton Mezzrow.

Miller, Henry, and Schnellock, Emil.
Letters to Emil.
Edited by George Wickes. New Directions, New York, 1989.

Essential letters describing Henry’s first years in Paris, when he was abandoning
Crazy Cock
and beginning
Tropic of Cancer.
In these exchanges we hear and see “the raw, living imprint of my Paris life.” Shows the transition from the turgid style of
Crazy Cock
to the fearless fuck-every-thingness of
Tropic of Cancer.

*Fugitive Miller publications.

M
OST USEFUL WORKS FOR
understanding Henry’s life and times.

Brassaï.
Henry Miller: Grandeur Nature.
Gallimard, Paris, 1975.

——.
The Secret Paris of the Thirties.
Pantheon Books, New York, 1976.Charney, Maurice.
Sexual Fiction.
Methuen, London and New York, 1981.

de Grazia, Edward.
Girls Lean Back Everywhere.
Random House, New York 1992.

Dearborn, Mary.
The Happiest Man Alive.
Simon and Schuster, New York, 1991.

Dick, Kenneth C.
Henry Miller: Colossus of One.
Alberts-Sittard, 1967.

Dworkin, Andrea.
Woman Hating.
E.P. Dutton & Co., New York, 1974.

——.
Intercourse.
Free Press/Macmillan, New York, 1987.

——.
Letters from a War Zone.
Seeker & Warburg, New York, 1987.

——.
Mercy.
Four Walls, Eight Windows, New York, 1991.

——, and MacKinnon, Catharine A.
Pornography and Civil Rights.
Organizing Against Pornography, Minneapolis, Minnesota, 1988.

Ferguson, Robert.
Henry Miller: A Life.
W.W. Norton & Company, New York, 1991.

Girodias, Maurice.
The Frog Prince.
Crown Publishers, New York, 1980.

Goldman, Emma.
Living My Life.
Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1931.

Gottesman, Ronald, ed.
Critical Essays on Henry Miller.
G.K. Hall & Co., New York, 1992.

Griffin, Susan.
Pornography and Silence.
Harper & Row, New York, 1981.

Hutchinson, E.R. Tropic of Cancer
on Trial.
Grove Press, New York, 1968.

Kluver, Billy and Julie Martin.
Kiki’s Paris: Artists and Lovers 1900–1930.
Abrams, New York, 1989.

MacNiven, Ian S., ed.
The Durrell-Miller Letters, 1935–80.
New Directions, New York, 1988.

McAlmon, Robert and Boyle, Kay.
Being Geniuses Together.
North Point Press, Berkeley, California, 1984.

Mailer, Norman. “Henry Miller, Genius and Lust, Narcissism.” In
American Review.
No. 24, 1976.

Martin, Jay.
Always Merry and Bright.
Capra Press, Berkeley, California, 1978.

Millett, Kate.
Sexual Politics.
Doubleday & Company, Inc., New York, 1970.

Nabokov, Vladimir.
Lolita.
Vintage Books, New York, 1989.

Nin, Anaïs.
Henry and June.
Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, New York, 1986.

——.
Incest: From “A Journal of Love.”
Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, New York, 1992.Orwell, George.
An Age Like This, 1920-1940.
Vol. 1. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, New York, 1968.

Paglia, Camille.
Sexual Personae.
Yale University Press, New Haven, Connecticut, 1990.

——.
Sex, Art and American Culture.
Vintage Books, New York, 1991.

Perlès, Alfred.
My Friend Henry Miller.
John Day Company, New York, 1956.

Porter, Bern, ed.
The Happy Rock: A Book About Henry Miller.
Bern Porter, Berkeley, California, 1945.

Stoltenberg, John.
Refusing To Be a Man.
Breitenbush Books, Inc., Portland, Oregon, 1989.

Vidal, Gore. “The Sexus of Henry Miller.”
Book Week,
August 1, 1965.

——. “Pen Pals: Henry Miller and Lawrence Durrell.”
Times Literary Supplement
(London), Sept. 9–15, 1988.Wiser, William.
The Crazy Years.
Thames and Hudson, New York, 1985.

Special thanks to Joni Evans, Ed Victor, Ken Burrows, Enid Linn, Valentine Miller, and Tony Miller, without whom this book would not have emerged. Every book is a triumph over silence. You helped.

E
RICA
J
ONG
is an award-winning poet, novelist, and memoirist, and one of the nation’s most distinctive voices on women and sexuality. She has won many literary awards: the Bess Hokin Prize from
Poetry
magazine (also awarded to Sylvia Plath and W. S. Merwin); a National Endowment for the Arts award; the first Fernanda Pivano Award in Italy (named for the critic who introduced Ernest Hemingway, Allen Ginsberg, and Erica Jong herself to the Italian public); the Sigmund Freud Award for Literature, also it Italy; the United Nations Award for Excellence in Literature; and the Deauville Award for Literary Excellence in France.

Raised by artists in the intellectual melting pot of New York’s Upper West Side, Jong graduated from the High School of Music & Art and Barnard College, where she majored in writing and Italian literature. She then completed a Master’s degree in eighteenth-century English literature at Columbia (1965) and began PhD studies. She first attracted serious attention as a poet, publishing her debut volume,
Fruits & Vegetables
, in 1971 and her second,
Half-Lives
, in 1973.

Also in 1973, she published the book for which she is best known. Partially drawing on Jong’s early life, as well as her wild imagination,
Fear of Flying
, hailed by John Updike as the female answer to
Portnoy’s Complaint
and
The Catcher in the Rye
, is about a woman trying to find herself and learn how to fly free of her repressions. Isadora Wing seeks to discover her soul and her sexuality, and in the process, she delves into erotic fantasy and experimentation, shocking many critics—but delighting readers.

While the book’s explicitness inevitably drew controversy, the novel has endured because of its psychological depth and wild humor. Its heroine, Isadora Wing, whose quest for liberation and happiness struck a chord with many readers, galvanized them to change their lives. The novel gathered momentum, eventually landing on top of the
New York Times
bestseller list. It has since sold over twenty-six million copies in forty languages. It has been as beloved in Asia, Europe, Australia, New Zealand, and South America as in North America, and has been written about, studied, and taught in universities.

Erica Jong followed Isadora Wing through three additional novels,
How to Save Your Own Life, Parachutes & Kisses
, and
Any Woman’s Blues
. She has also published eight award-winning volumes of poetry and written brilliant historical fiction, like
Fanny
:
Being the True History of the Adventures of Fanny Hackabout-Jones
, a fantasy about what would have happened if Fielding’s Tom Jones had been a woman. She has written a glittering novel about sixteenth-century Venice (where she has spent many summers),
Shylock’s Daughter
or
Serenissima,
and an amazing recreation of ancient Greece, entitled
Sappho’s Leap
. Her moving memoir,
Fear of Fifty,
and her writer’s meditation on the craft,
Seducing the Demon
, have also been bestsellers in the United States and abroad. Her most recent publication is an anthology of women writing about the best sex they’ve ever had,
Sugar in my Bowl
.

Dividing her time between New York City and Weston, Connecticut, Jong lives with her husband, famed divorce attorney Ken Burrows, and a standard poodle named Belinda Barkowitz. Jong’s daughter, Molly Jong-Fast, is also a writer, and the mother of Jong’s three grandchildren, an eight-year-old and four-year-old twins.