Henry Miller

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

Miller in 1940
Born Henry Valentine Miller
(1891-12-26)December 26, 1891
Yorkville, Manhattan
Died June 7, 1980(1980-06-07) (aged 88)
Pacific Palisades, Los Angeles
Occupation Writer
Nationality American
Period 1934–80
Genre Surrealism, novel
Notable works Tropic of Cancer
Black Spring
Tropic of Capricorn
The Colossus of Maroussi
The Rosy Crucifixion
Spouse Beatrice Sylvas Wickens (1917–24)
June Miller (1924–34)
Janina Martha Lepska (1944–52)
Eve McClure (1953–60)
Hiroko Tokuda (1967–77)
Children 3
Signature

Henry Valentine Miller (December 26, 1891 – June 7, 1980) was an American writer. He was known for breaking with existing literary forms, developing a new sort of semi-autobiographical novel that blended character study, social criticism, philosophical reflection, explicit language, sex, surrealist free association and mysticism.[1][2] His most characteristic works of this kind are Tropic of Cancer (1934), Black Spring (1936), Tropic of Capricorn (1939) and The Rosy Crucifixion trilogy (1949–59), all of which are based on his experiences in New York and Paris, and all of which were banned in the United States until 1961.[3] He also wrote travel memoirs and literary criticism, and painted watercolors.[4]

Early life

Miller was born at his family's home, 450 East 85th Street, in the Yorkville section of Manhattan, New York City. He was the son of Lutheran German parents, Louise Marie (Neiting) and tailor Heinrich Miller.[5] As a child, he lived for nine years at 662 Driggs Avenue in Williamsburg, Brooklyn,[6] known at that time (and referred to frequently in his works) as the Fourteenth Ward. In 1900, his family moved to 1063 Decatur Street in the Bushwick section of Brooklyn.[7] After finishing elementary school, although his family remained in Bushwick, Miller attended Eastern District High School in Williamsburg.[8] As a young man, he was active with the Socialist Party of America (his "quondam idol" was the black Socialist Hubert Harrison).[9] He attended the City College of New York for one semester.[10]

Career

Brooklyn, 1917–30

Miller married his first wife, Beatrice Sylvas Wickens, in 1917;[11] their divorce was granted on December 21, 1923.[12] Together they had a daughter, Barbara, born in 1919.[13] They lived in an apartment at 244 6th Avenue in Park Slope, Brooklyn.[14] At the time, Miller was working at Western Union; he worked there from 1920-24. In March 1922, during a three-week vacation, he wrote his first novel, Clipped Wings. It has never been published, and only fragments remain, although parts of it were recycled in other works, such as Tropic of Capricorn.[15] A study of twelve Western Union messengers, Miller called Clipped Wings "a long book and probably a very bad one."[16]

In 1923, while he was still married to Beatrice, Miller met and became enamored of a mysterious dance hall dancer who was born Juliet Edith Smerth but went by the stage name June Mansfield. She was 21 at the time.[17] They began an affair, and were married on June 1, 1924.[18] In 1924 Miller quit Western Union in order to dedicate himself to writing completely.[19] Miller later describes this time – his struggles to become a writer, his sexual escapades, failures, friends and philosophy – in his autobiographical trilogy The Rosy Crucifixion.

Miller's second novel, Moloch: or, This Gentile World, was written in 1927–28, initially under the guise of a novel written by June.[20] A rich older admirer of June, Roland Freedman, paid her to write the novel; she would show him pages of Miller's work each week, pretending it was hers.[21] The book went unpublished until 1992, 65 years after it was written and 12 years after Miller’s death.[20] Moloch is based on Miller’s first marriage, to Beatrice, and his years working as a personnel manager at the Western Union office in Lower Manhattan.[22] A third novel written around this time, Crazy Cock, also went unpublished until after Miller's death. Initially titled Lovely Lesbians, Crazy Cock (along with his later novel Nexus) told the story of June's close relationship with the artist Marion, who June had renamed Jean Kronski. Kronski lived with Miller and June from 1926 until 1927, when June and Kronski went to Paris together, leaving Miller behind, which upset him greatly. Miller suspected the pair of having a lesbian relationship. While in Paris, June and Kronski did not get along, and June returned to Miller several months later.[23] Kronski committed suicide around 1930.[24]

Paris, 1930–39

In 1928, Miller spent several months in Paris with June, a trip which was financed by Freedman.[22] One day in Paris, Miller met in the street another author, Robert W. Service, who recalled the story in his autobiography as “Soon we got into conversation which turned to books. For a stripling he spoke with some authority, turning into ridicule the pretentious scribes of the Latin Quarter and their freak magazine”.[25] In 1930, Miller moved to Paris unaccompanied.[26] Soon after, he began work on Tropic of Cancer, writing to a friend, "I start tomorrow on the Paris book: First person, uncensored, formless - fuck everything!"[27] Although Miller had little or no money the first year in Paris, things began to change with the meeting of Anaïs Nin who, with Hugh Guiler, went on to pay his entire way through the 1930s including the rent for an apartment at 18 Villa Seurat. Nin became his lover and financed the first printing of Tropic of Cancer in 1934 with money from Otto Rank.[28] She would write extensively in her journals about her relationship with Miller and his wife June; the first volume, covering the years 1931-34, was published in 1966.[26] Late in 1934, June divorced Miller by proxy in Mexico City.[29]

In 1931, Miller was employed by the Chicago Tribune Paris edition, thanks to his friend Alfred Perlès who worked there, as a proofreader. Miller took this opportunity to submit some of his own articles under Perlès' name, since at that time only the editorial staff were permitted to publish in the paper. 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.[30] At that time a young British author, Lawrence Durrell, became a lifelong friend. Miller's correspondence with Durrell was later published in two books.[31][32] During his Paris period he was also influenced by the French Surrealists.

His works contain detailed accounts of sexual experiences. His first published book, Tropic of Cancer (1934), was published by Obelisk Press in Paris and banned in the United States on the grounds of obscenity.[33] The dust jacket came wrapped with a warning: "Not to be imported into the United States or Great Britain."[34] He continued to write novels that were banned; 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. While the aforementioned novels remained banned in the US for over two decades, in 1939, New Directions published The Cosmological Eye, Miller's first book to be published in America. The collection contained short prose pieces, most of which originally appeared in Black Spring and Max and the White Phagocytes (1938).[35]

Miller lived in France until June 1939.[36]

Greece, 1939–40

In 1939 Durrell, who lived in Corfu, invited Miller to Greece. Miller described the visit in The Colossus of Maroussi (1941), which he considered his best book.[19] 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.[37]

California, 1942–80

1957 watercolor by Henry Miller

In 1940, Miller returned to New York; after a year-long trip around the United States, a journey that would become material for The Air-Conditioned Nightmare, he moved to California in June 1942, initially residing just outside Hollywood in Beverly Glen, before settling in Big Sur in 1944.[36] While Miller was establishing his base in Big Sur, the Tropic books, then still banned in the USA,[38] 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 proved to be a major influence on the new Beat Generation of American writers, most notably Jack Kerouac, the only Beat writer Miller truly cared for.[39] By the time his banned books were published in the 1960s and he was becoming increasingly well-known, Miller was no longer interested in his image as an outlaw writer of smut-filled books; however, he eventually gave up fighting the image.[40]

In 1942, shortly before moving to California, Miller began writing Sexus, the first novel in The Rosy Crucifixion trilogy, a fictionalized account documenting the six-year period of his life in Brooklyn falling in love with June and struggling to become a writer.[41] Like several of his other works, the trilogy, completed in 1959, was initially banned in the United States, published only in France and Japan.[42] In other works written during his time in California, Miller was widely critical of consumerism in America, as reflected in Sunday After The War (1944) and The Air-Conditioned Nightmare (1945). His Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch, published in 1957, is a collection of stories about his life and friends in Big Sur.[43]

In 1944, Miller met and married his third wife, Janina Martha Lepska, a philosophy student who was 30 years his junior.[26] They had two children: a son, Tony, and a daughter, Valentine.[44] They divorced in 1952. The following year, he married artist Eve McClure, who was 37 years his junior. They divorced in 1960,[26] and she died in 1966, likely as a result of alcoholism.[45] In 1961, Miller arranged a reunion in New York with his ex-wife and main subject of The Rosy Crucifixion trilogy, June. They hadn't seen each other in nearly three decades. In a letter to Eve, he described his shock at June's "terrible" appearance, as she had by then degenerated both physically and mentally.[46]

In February 1963, Miller moved to 444 Ocampo Drive, Pacific Palisades, Los Angeles, California, where he would spend the last 17 years of his life.[47] In 1967, Miller married his fifth wife, Hoki Tokuda.[48][49] In 1968, Miller signed the “Writers and Editors War Tax Protest” pledge, vowing to refuse tax payments in protest against the Vietnam War.[50] After his move to Ocampo Drive, he held dinner parties for the artistic and literary figures of the time. His cook and caretaker was a young artist's model named Twinka Thiebaud who later wrote a book about his evening chats.[51] Thiebaud's memories of Miller's table talk were published in a rewritten and retitled book in 2011.[52]

Only 200 copies of Miller's 1972 chapbook On Turning Eighty were published. Published by Capra Press, in collaboration with Yes! Press, it was the first volume of the "Yes! Capra" chapbook series and is 34 pages in length.[53] The book contains three essays on topics such as aging and living a meaningful life. In relation to reaching 80 years of age, Miller explains:

If at eighty you’re not a cripple or an invalid, if you have your health, if you still enjoy a good walk, a good meal (with all the trimmings), if you can sleep without first taking a pill, if birds and flowers, mountains and sea still inspire you, you are a most fortunate individual and you should get down on your knees morning and night and thank the good Lord for his savin’ and keepin’ power.[54]

Late in life, Miller filmed with Warren Beatty for the 1981 film Reds, which was also directed by Beatty. 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.[55] During the last four years of his life, Miller held an ongoing correspondence of over 1,500 letters with Brenda Venus, a young Playboy playmate, actress and dancer. A book about their correspondence was published in 1986.[56]

Death

Miller died of circulatory complications at his home in Pacific Palisades on June 7, 1980, at the age of 88.[57] His body was cremated and his ashes shared between his son Tony and daughter Val. Tony has stated that he ultimately intends to have his ashes mixed with those of his father and scattered in Big Sur.[58]

US publication of previously banned works

The publication of Miller's Tropic of Cancer in the United States in 1961 by Grove Press 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; a volume of their correspondence has been published.[59] Following the trial, in 1964–65, other books of Miller's which had also been banned in the US were published by Grove Press: Black Spring, Tropic of Capricorn, Quiet Days in Clichy, Sexus, Plexus and Nexus.[60] Excerpts from some of these banned books, including Tropic of Cancer, Black Spring and Sexus, were first published in the US by New Directions in The Henry Miller Reader in 1959.[61][62]

Watercolors

In addition to his literary abilities, Miller produced numerous watercolor paintings and wrote books on this field. He was a close friend of the French painter Grégoire Michonze. It is estimated that Miller painted 2,000 watercolors during his life, and that 50 or more major collections of Miller’s paintings exist.[63] The Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin holds a selection of Miller's watercolors,[64] as did the Henry Miller Museum of Art in Ōmachi City in Nagano, Japan, before closing in 2001.[65] Miller's daughter Valentine placed some of her father's art for sale in 2005.[66] He was also an amateur pianist.[67]

Literary archives

Miller's papers can be found in the following library special collections:

Miller's friend Emil White founded the nonprofit Henry Miller Memorial Library in Big Sur in 1981.[76] This houses a collection of his works and celebrates his literary, artistic and cultural legacy by providing a public gallery as well as performance and workshop spaces for artists, musicians, students, and writers.[76]

Literary references

Miller is considered a "literary innovator" in whose works "actual and imagined experiences became indistinguishable from each other."[77] His books did much to free the discussion of sexual subjects in American writing from both legal and social restrictions. He influenced many writers, including Jack Kerouac, Norman Mailer, Philip Roth, Cormac McCarthy, Paul Theroux and Erica Jong.[34]

Throughout his novels he makes references to literature; he cites Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Joris-Karl Huysmans, Balzac and Nietzsche as having a formative impact on him.[78]

Tropic of Cancer is referenced in Junot Díaz's 2007 book The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao as being read by Ana Obregón. Miller's legal difficulties, Tropic of Cancer and Tropic of Capricorn are mentioned in Denis Johnson's 2007 novel Tree of Smoke, in a conversation between Skip Sands and his uncle, Colonel Sands. Miller is mentioned again later in the novel.[79]

Bibliography

Films

Miller as himself

Miller appeared as himself in several films:[80]

Actors portraying Miller

Several actors played Miller on film, such as:

References

  1. ↑ Shifreen, Lawrence J. (1979). Henry Miller: a Bibliography of Secondary Sources. Rowman & Littlefield. pp. 75–77. ...Miller's metamorphosis and his acceptance of the cosmos.
  2. ↑ Mary V. Dearborn, The Happiest Man Alive: A Biography of Henry Miller, New York: Simon & Schuster, 1991, p 12.
  3. ↑ "Henry Miller's novels censored and banned in US due to their sexually explicitly content," FileRoom.org, 2001.
  4. ↑ "Gallery," henrymiller.info. Accessed August 31, 2013.
  5. ↑ Dearborn, The Happiest Man Alive, pp. 20–22.
  6. ↑ Jake Mooney, "'Ideal Street' Seeks Eternal Life," The New York Times, May 1, 2009.
  7. ↑ Dearborn, The Happiest Man Alive, p. 36.
  8. ↑ Dearborn, The Happiest Man Alive, p. 38.
  9. ↑ Introduction from A Hubert Harrison Reader, University Press of New England
  10. ↑ Dearborn, The Happiest Man Alive, p. 42.
  11. ↑ Frederick Turner, Renegade: Henry Miller and the Making of Tropic of Cancer, New Haven: Yale University Press, 2011, pp. 88, 104.
  12. ↑ Dearborn, The Happiest Man Alive, p. 85.
  13. ↑ Robert Ferguson, Henry Miller: A Life, New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1991, p. 60.
  14. ↑ Dearborn, The Happiest Man Alive, p. 59.
  15. ↑ Dearborn, The Happiest Man Alive, pp. 70–73.
  16. ↑ Henry Miller (ed. Antony Fine), Henry Miller: Stories, Essays, Travel Sketches, New York: MJF Books, 1992, p. 5.
  17. ↑ Dearborn, The Happiest Man Alive, pp. 78-80.
  18. ↑ Dearborn, The Happiest Man Alive, p. 87.
  19. 1 2 Wickes, George (Summer–Fall 1962). "Henry Miller, The Art of Fiction No. 28". The Paris Review.
  20. 1 2 “Moloch, Or, This Gentile World,” Publishers Weekly, September 28, 1992.
  21. ↑ Mary V. Dearborn, “Introduction,” Moloch: or, This Gentile World, New York: Grove Press, 1992, pp. vii–xv.
  22. 1 2 Ferguson, Henry Miller: A Life, pp. 156–58.
  23. ↑ Dearborn, The Happiest Man Alive, pp. 102-17.
  24. ↑ Dearborn, The Happiest Man Alive, p. 119.
  25. ↑ http://robertwservice.blogspot.com/2015/05/henry-miller-1891-1980.html
  26. 1 2 3 4 Anderson, Christiann (March 2004). "Henry Miller: Born to be Wild". BonjourParis. Retrieved September 30, 2011.
  27. ↑ Alexander Nazaryan, "Henry Miller, Brooklyn Hater," The New Yorker, May 10, 2013.
  28. ↑ Dearborn, The Happiest Man Alive, p. 171.
  29. ↑ Dearborn, The Happiest Man Alive, p. 174.
  30. ↑ Gifford, James. Ed. The Henry Miller-Herbert Read Letters: 1935–58. Ann Arbor: Roger Jackson Inc., 2007.
  31. ↑ Wickes, George, ed. (1963). Lawrence Durrell & Henry Miller: A Private Correspondence. New York: Dutton. OCLC 188175.
  32. ↑ MacNiven, Ian S, ed. (1988). The Durrell-Miller Letters 1935–80. London: Faber. ISBN 0-571-15036-5.
  33. ↑ Baron, Dennis (October 1, 2009). "Celebrate Banned Books Week: Read Now, Before It's Too Late". Web of Language. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Retrieved September 30, 2011.
  34. 1 2 Arthur Hoyle, "Remember Henry Miller? Censored Then, Forgotten Now," Huffington Post, May 14, 2014.
  35. ↑ Arthur Hoyle, The Unknown Henry Miller: A Seeker in Big Sur, New York: Arcade Publishing, 2014, pp. 23, 38-39.
  36. 1 2 Henry Miller, Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch, New York: New Directions, 1957, pp. 1–2.
  37. ↑ Orwell, George "Inside the Whale", London: Victor Gollancz Ltd., 1940.
  38. ↑ For details re the ban in the United States, see e.g., Tropic of Cancer (novel)#Legal issues.
  39. ↑ Dearborn, The Happiest Man Alive, pp. 286-87.
  40. ↑ Dearborn, The Happiest Man Alive, p. 279.
  41. ↑ Ferguson, Henry Miller: A Life, p. 295.
  42. ↑ Frank Getlein, "Henry Miller's Crowded Simple Life," Milwaukee Journal, June 9, 1957.
  43. ↑ Dearborn, The Happiest Man Alive, pp. 263-64.
  44. ↑ Barbara Kraft, "Hanging in LA with Anaïs Nin (and Henry Miller)," LA Observed, January 24, 2012.
  45. ↑ Ferguson, Henry Miller: A Life, p. 356.
  46. ↑ Dearborn, The Happiest Man Alive, p. 280.
  47. ↑ Ferguson, Henry Miller: A Life, p. 351.
  48. ↑ Carolyn Kellogg, "Henry Miller's last wife, Hoki Tokuda, remembers him, um, fondly?", Los Angeles Times, February 23, 2011.
  49. ↑ John M. Glionna, "A story only Henry Miller could love", Los Angeles Times, February 22, 2011.
  50. ↑ “Writers and Editors War Tax Protest,” New York Post, January 30, 1968.
  51. ↑ Thiebaud, Twinka. Reflections: Henry Miller. Santa Barbara, CA: Capra Press, 1981. ISBN 0-88496-166-4
  52. ↑ Thiebaud, Twinka. What Doncha Know? about Henry Miller. Belvedere, CA: Eio Books, 2011. ISBN 978-0-9759255-2-2
  53. ↑ Henry Miller (1972). On turning eighty ; Journey to an antique land ; foreword to The angel is my watermark. Capra Press. ISBN 978-0-912264-43-1.
  54. ↑ Shane Parrish (11 August 2014). "Henry Miller on Turning 80, Fighting Evil, And Why Life is the Best Teacher". Farnham Street Blog. Retrieved 17 August 2014.
  55. ↑ Vincent Canby, "Beatty's 'Reds,' With Diane Keaton," New York Times, December 4, 1981.
  56. ↑ Dear, Dear Brenda: The Love Letters of Henry Miller to Brenda Venus. New York: Morrow, 1986. ISBN 0-688-02816-0
  57. ↑ Alden Whitman, "Henry Miller, 88, Dies in California," The New York Times, June 9, 1980.
  58. ↑ "Playing Ping Pong With Henry Miller," BBC Radio 4, July 25, 2013.
  59. ↑ Gertz, Elmer, and Felice Flanery Lewis, eds. (1978). Henry Miller: Years of Trial & Triumph, 1962–1964: The Correspondence of Henry Miller and Elmer Gertz. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press. ISBN 0-8093-0860-6.
  60. ↑ Henry Miller, Preface to Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch, New York: New Directions, 1957, p. ix.
  61. ↑ Harry T. Moore, "Hard-Boiled Eloquence," New York Times, December 20, 1959.
  62. ↑ Henry Miller, "Author's Preface," The Henry Miller Reader, New York: New Directions, 1959, p. xv.
  63. ↑ Coast Publishing. "Henry Miller: The Centennial Print Collection" (PDF). Retrieved 2011-09-29.
  64. ↑ "Henry Miller: An Inventory of His Art Collection at the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center". Retrieved 2011-09-29.
  65. ↑ "Henry Miller Art Museum to Close". Japan Times. August 31, 2001. Retrieved September 26, 2011.
  66. ↑ Miller, Valentine (2005). "Henry Miller: A Personal Collection". Retrieved 2011-09-29.
  67. ↑ Dearborn, The Happiest Man Alive, p. 291.
  68. ↑ Southern Illinois University Special Collections Research Center. "Search Results for "Henry Miller"". Retrieved 2011-09-29.
  69. ↑ "Grove Press Records: an inventory of its records at Syracuse University". Retrieved 2011-09-29.
  70. ↑ "Finding Aid for the Henry Miller Papers, 1896–1984, 1930–1980". Retrieved 2011-09-29.
  71. ↑ "Beatrice Wickens Miller Sandford and Barbara Miller Sandford: A Preliminary Inventory of Their Collection of Henry Miller in the Manuscript Collection at the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center". Retrieved 2011-09-29.
  72. ↑ University of Victoria Library. "Henry Miller collection". Retrieved 2011-09-29.
  73. ↑ University of Virginia Library. "Search results for "Henry Miller"". Retrieved 2011-09-29.
  74. ↑ Yale University Library. "Guide to the Henry Miller Papers". Retrieved 2011-09-29.
  75. ↑ "Henry Miller papers". University of Pennsylvania Libraries. Retrieved 17 April 2015.
  76. 1 2 "About the Henry Miller Library". Retrieved 2011-09-29.
  77. ↑ Sipper, Ralph B. (January 6, 1991). "Miller's Tale: Henry Hits 100". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved September 26, 2011.
  78. ↑ Shmoop. "Tropic of Cancer Allusions".
  79. ↑ Denis Johnson, Tree of Smoke, New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, pp. 386, 415.
  80. ↑ Henry Miller at the Internet Movie Database
  81. ↑ "Reds" by Steinberg, Jay S. Turner Classic Movies. Retrieved May 15, 2013
  82. ↑ "Henry Miller Is Not Dead". Moving Images Distribution Society. Retrieved September 26, 2011.

Further reading

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