Henry Miller

For other people named Henry Miller, see Henry Miller (disambiguation).

Henry Miller
File:Henrymiller.jpg
Born	Henry Valentine Miller
Occupation	Writer, painter
Genre	Erotic literature, Surrealism, Novel
Spouse	Beatrice Sylvas Wickens (1917–1928) June Miller (1928–34) Janina Martha Lepska (1944–52) Eve McClure (1953–1960) Hiroko Tokuda (1967–1977)

Henry Valentine Miller (December 26, 1891 – June 7, 1980) was an American novelist and painter. He was known for breaking with existing literary forms and developing a new sort of 'novel' that is a mixture of novel, autobiography, social criticism, philosophical reflection, surrealist free association, and mysticism, one that is distinctly always about and expressive of the real-life Henry Miller and yet is also fictional. His most characteristic works of this kind are Tropic of Cancer, Tropic of Capricorn and Black Spring. He also wrote travel memoirs and essays of literary criticism and analysis.

Biography

Miller was born to tailor Heinrich Miller and Louise Marie Neiting, in the Yorkville section of Manhattan, New York City, of German Catholic heritage. As a child he lived at 662 Driggs Avenue in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, known in that time (and referred to frequently in his works) as The Fourteenth Ward. As a young man, he was active with the Socialist Party (his "quondam idol" was the Black Socialist Hubert Harrison). He briefly—for only one semester—attended the City College of New York. Although he was an exceptional scholar, he was willing neither to be anchored nor to submit to the traditional college system of education.

His first wife was Beatrice Sylvas Wickens, whom he married in 1917. During 1928-29, Miller spent several months in Paris with his second wife, June Edith Smith (June Miller). The next year he moved to Paris unaccompanied, and he continued to live there until the outbreak of World War II. Although Miller had little or no money the first year in Paris, things began to change with the meeting of Anais Nin who would go on to pay his entire way through the 1930s including the rent for the beautiful and modern apartment at 18, villa Seurat. Anaïs Nin became his lover and financed the first printing of Tropic of Cancer in 1934 with money from Otto Rank.

In the fall of 1931, Miller was employed by the Chicago Tribune (Paris edition) as a proofreader, thanks to his friend Alfred Perlès who worked there. Miller took this opportunity to submit some of his own articles under Perlès name, since only the editorial staff were permitted to publish in the paper in 1934. This period in Paris was highly creative for Miller, and during this time he also established a significant and influential network of authors circulating around the Villa Seurat. One author who became a lifelong friend was the young British author Lawrence Durrell. Durrell, who lived in Corfu, invited Miller out to Greece, a visit which Miller describes vividly in The Colossus of Maroussi. Miller's correspondence with Durrell was later published. During the Paris period he was also influenced by the French Surrealists.

His works contain detailed accounts of sexual experiences, and his books did much to free the discussion of sexual subjects in American writing from both legal and social restrictions. He continued to write novels that were banned in the United States on the grounds of obscenity. Along with Tropic of Cancer, his Black Spring (1936) and Tropic of Capricorn (1939) were smuggled into his native country, building Miller an underground reputation. One of the first acknowledgments of Henry Miller as a major modern writer was by George Orwell in his 1940 essay Inside the Whale, where he wrote:

Here in my opinion is the only imaginative prose-writer of the slightest value who has appeared among the English-speaking races for some years past. Even if that is objected to as an overstatement, it will probably be admitted that Miller is a writer out of the ordinary, worth more than a single glance; and after all, he is a completely negative, unconstructive, amoral writer, a mere Jonah, a passive acceptor of evil, a sort of Whitman among the corpses.

In 1940, he returned to the United States, settling in Big Sur, California, and continued to produce vividly written works that challenged contemporary American cultural values and moral attitudes. He spent the last years of his life at his home in 444 Ocampo Drive, Pacific Palisades, Los Angeles, California.

While Miller was establishing his base in Big Sur, the 'Tropics' books, still banned in the USA, were being published in France by the Obelisk Press and later the Olympia Press. There they were acquiring a slow and steady notoriety among both Europeans and the various enclaves of American cultural exiles. As a result, the books were frequently smuggled into the States, where they would prove to be a major influence on the new Beat generation of American writers (most notably Jack Kerouac) some of whom would adopt stylistic and thematic principles found in Miller's oeuvre.

The publication of Miller's Tropic of Cancer in the United States in 1961 led to a series of obscenity trials that tested American laws on pornography. The U.S. Supreme Court, in Grove Press, Inc., v. Gerstein, citing Jacobellis v. Ohio (which was decided the same day in 1964), overruled the state court findings of obscenity and declared the book a work of literature; it was one of the notable events in what has come to be known as the sexual revolution. Elmer Gertz, the lawyer who successfully argued the initial case for the novel's publication in Illinois, became a lifelong friend of Miller's. Volumes of their correspondence have been published.

In 1968, Miller signed the “Writers and Editors War Tax Protest” pledge, vowing to refuse tax payments in protest against the Vietnam War.

In addition to his literary abilities, Miller was a painter and wrote books about his work in that field. He was a close friend of the French painter Grégoire Michonze. He was also an amateur pianist.

After his move to Pacific Palisades, he held innumerable dinner parties for a host of famous guests. His cook and caretaker was a young artist's model called Twinka Thiebaud who later wrote a book of his evening chats: Reflections published by Capra Press in 1981. In February 2011, extensively rewritten and retitled: What Doncha Know? about Henry Miller, Thiebaud's memories of Miller's table talk was published by Eio Books.

During the last four years of his life, Miller held an ongoing correspondence of over 1500 letters with Brenda Venus, a young and vivacious Playboy playmate, actress and dancer. An article detailing their affair ran in a special edition of Playboy in 1996. The article called her Miller's "twilight muse" during the bedridden final years of his life.

Before his death, Miller filmed with Warren Beatty for his film Reds. He spoke of his remembrances of John Reed and Louise Bryant as part of a series of 'witnesses'. The film was released eighteen months after Miller's death.

Miller died in Pacific Palisades in 1980. After his death, he was cremated and his ashes scattered off Big Sur.

Miller's papers were donated to the UCLA Young Research Library Department of Special Collections. The Henry Miller Art Museum at Coast Gallery in Big Sur, the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center at the University of Texas at Austin, and UCLA all hold a selection of Miller's watercolors, as did The Henry Miller Museum of Art in Omachi City in Nagano, Japan, before closing in 2003. A portion of the correspondence between the Grove Press and Henry Miller are currently housed in the Special Collections Research Center at Syracuse University. Special Collections at the University of Victoria holds a significant collection of Miller's manuscripts and correspondences, including the corrected typescript for Max and Quiet Days in Clichy, as well as Miller's lengthy correspondence with Alfred Perlès.

Works

• Moloch or, This Gentile World, written in 1927, not published until 1992 (by the Estate of Henry Miller). ISBN 0-8021-3372-X
• Crazy Cock, written 1928–1930, not published until 1960. ISBN 0-8021-1412-1
• Tropic of Cancer, Paris: Obelisk Press, 1934.
• What Are You Going to Do about Alf?, Paris: Printed at author's expense, 1935.
• Aller Retour New York, Paris: Obelisk Press, 1935.
• Black Spring, Paris: Obelisk Press, 1936. ISBN 0-8021-3182-4
• Max and the White Phagocytes, Paris: Obelisk Press, 1938.
• Tropic of Capricorn, Paris: Obelisk Press, 1939. ISBN 0-8021-5182-5
• Henry Miller's Hamlet Letters, Vol. I, with Michael Fraenkel, Santurce, Puerto Rico: Carrefour, 1939. ISBN 0-8095-4058-4
  • Vol. II, with Michael Fraenkel, New York: Carrefour, 1941.
  • Vol. I complete New York: Carrefour, 1943.
• The Cosmological Eye, New York: New Directions, 1939. ISBN 0-8112-0110-4
• The World of Sex, Chicago: Ben Abramson, Argus Book Shop, 1940.
  • Oneworld Classics 2007 ISBN 978-1-84749-035-3
• Under the Roofs of Paris (originally published as Opus Pistorum), New York: Grove Press, 1941.
• The Colossus of Maroussi, San Francisco: Colt Press, 1941. ISBN 0-8112-0109-0
• The Wisdom of the Heart, New York: New Directions, 1941. ISBN 0-8112-0116-3
• Sunday after the War, New York: New Directions, 1944.
• Semblance of a Devoted Past, Berkeley, Calif.: Bern Porter, 1944.
• The Plight of the Creative Artist in the United States of America, Houlton, Me.: Bern Porter, 1944.
• Echolalia, Berkeley, Calif.: Bern Porter, 1945.
• Henry Miller Miscellanea, San Mateo, Calif.: Bern Porter, 1945.
• Why Abstract?, with Hilaire Hiller and William Saroyan, New York: New Directions, 1945. ISBN 0-8383-1837-1
• The Air-Conditioned Nightmare, New York: New Directions, 1945. ISBN 0-8112-0106-6
• Maurizius Forever, San Francisco: Colt Press, 1946.
• Remember to Remember, New York: New Directions, 1947. ISBN 0-8112-0321-2
• Into the Night Life, privately published 1947
• The Smile at the Foot of the Ladder, New York: Duell, Sloan and Pearce, 1948.
• Sexus (Book One of The Rosy Crucifixion), Paris: Obelisk Press, 1949. ISBN 0-87529-173-2
• The Waters Reglitterized, San Jose, Calif.: John Kidis, 1950. ISBN 0-912264-71-3
• The Books in My Life, New York: New Directions, 1952. ISBN 0-8112-0108-2
• Plexus (Book Two of The Rosy Crucifixion), Paris: Olympia Press, 1953. ISBN 0-8021-5179-5
• Quiet Days in Clichy, Paris: Olympia Press, 1956. ISBN 0-8021-3016-X
  London: Oneworld Classics, 2007. ISBN 978-1-84749-036-0
• Recalls and Reflects, New York: Riverside LP RLP 7002/3, 1956
• The Time of the Assassins: A Study of Rimbaud, New York: New Directions, 1956. ISBN 0-8112-0115-5
• A Devil in Paradise, New York: New Directions, 1956. ISBN 0-8112-1244-0
• Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch, New York: New Directions, 1957. ISBN 0-8112-0107-4
• The Red Notebook, Highlands, N.C.: Jonathan Williams, 1958.
• Reunion in Barcelona, Northwood, England: Scorpion Press, 1959.
• Nexus (Book Three of The Rosy Crucifixion), Paris: Obelisk Press, 1960. ISBN 0-8021-5178-7
• To Paint Is to Love Again, Alhambra, Calif.: Cambria Books, 1960.
• Watercolors, Drawings, and His Essay "The Angel Is My Watermark," Abrams, 1962.
• Stand Still Like the Hummingbird, New York: New Directions, 1962. ISBN 0-8112-0322-0
• Just Wild about Harry, New York: New Directions, 1963. ISBN 0-8112-0724-2
• Greece (with drawings by Anne Poor), New York: Viking Press, 1964.
• Insomnia or The Devil at Large, New York: Doubleday and Company, 1974. ISBN 0-385-9037-4
• Book of Friends, 1976
• Sextet, New Directions, 1977. ISBN 0811218007
• My Bike and Other Friends, 1978
• Joey, 1979
• Opus Pistorum, New York: Grove Press, 1983. ISBN 0-394-53374-7
• Dear, Dear Brenda: The Love Letters of Henry Miller to Brenda Venus, 1997. (ISBN 0-688-02816-0)

Films

Miller was portrayed by Fred Ward in the 1990 movie Henry & June, and by Rip Torn in the 1970 film adaptation of Tropic of Cancer. In the 1970 Jens Jørgen Thorsen adaptation of Quiet Days in Clichy, the Miller-based character of 'Joey' was played by the late Paul Valjean. Claude Chabrol's 1990 adaptation of the same novel saw Andrew McCarthy play the Miller role as "Henry Miller" himself. Miller was also featured in the documentary Henry Miller Is Not Dead that featured music by Laurie Anderson. Miller appeared as an interviewee in Warren Beatty's film Reds.

Feminist-lesbian whinging

Feminist activist Kate Millett has criticized Miller for his depiction of female characters. In her 1970 work Sexual Politics, analyzed Miller alongside D.H. Lawrence and Norman Mailer, finding that each tends to assume a male audience, objectifying female characters in the process. While reasserting Miller's importance as a novelist, Millett cast doubt upon his status as an icon of sexual freedom, concluding, "Miller is a compendium of American sexual neuroses, and his value lies not in freeing us from such afflictions, but in having had the honesty to express and dramatize them" (p. 295). Norman Mailer came to Miller's defense in The Prisoner of Sex in 1971. According to Martin B. Duberman, writing for The New Republic on November 27, 1976, Miller ought to be rescued from both Mailer and Millett.

Further reading

• Smith, J. Y. (June 9, 1980). "Author Henry Miller Dies; Famed for Two 'Tropic' Books". The Washington Post, C3.
• Norman Mailer (1976). "Genius and Lust: a journey through the major writings of Henry Miller"
• Winslow, Kathryn (1986). "Henry Miller: full of life"
• Dearborn, Mary V. (1991). "The Happiest Man Alive: A Biography of Henry Miller"
• Erica Jong (1993). "The Devil at Large: Erica Jong on Henry Miller"
• Brassaï (2002). "Henry Miller, Happy Rock"
• Anderson, Christiann (March 2004). "Henry Miller: Born to be Wild"
• Lawrence Durrell, editor, The Henry Miller Reader, New Directions Publishing, 1969 ISBN 0811201117
• Twinka Thiebaud (2011). "What Doncha Know? about Henry Miller", Eio Books, ISBN 978-0975925522

External links

• Henry Miller Online by Dr. Hugo Heyrman a tribute
• Henry Miller at Internet Movie Database
• Grove/Atlantic, Inc. is the US Publisher of Tropic of Cancer (novel) and Tropic of Capricorn (novel)
• Henry Miller A Personal Collection
• Henry Miller collection at University of Victoria, Special Collections
• Template:Worldcat id
• Miller Related Links
• An Interview with Henry Miller on Folkways Records
• George Wickes (Summer–Fall 1962). "Henry Miller, The Art of Fiction No. 28". The Paris Review.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: date format (link)
• Henry Miller Memorial Library
• Narrative Detours: Henry Miller and the Rise of New Critical Modernism
• Miller quotes online
• Kenneth Rexroth on Miller
• Dinner with Henry Miller, a video from UBUWEB
• Miller reading excerpts of his books
• Tropic of Cancer, a song
• Henry Miller's Art Collection at the Harry Ransom Center at The University of Texas at Austin
• Henry Miller correspondence and other archival collections at Southern Illinois University Carbondale, Special Collections Research Center