The Henry Miller Reader Read online

  ALSO BY HENRY MILLER

  THE AIR-CONDITIONED NIGHTMARE

  ALLER RETOUR NEW YORK

  BIG SUR AND THE ORANGES OF HIERONYMUS BOSCH

  THE BOOKS IN MY LIFE

  THE COLOSSUS OF MAROUSSI

  THE COSMOLOGICAL EYE

  A DEVIL IN PARADISE

  THE DURRELL-MILLER LETTERS

  FROM YOUR CAPRICORN FRIEND

  HENRY MILLER ON WRITING

  INTO THE HEART OF LIFE

  JUST WILD ABOUT HARRY

  LETTERS TO EMIL

  THE NIGHTMARE NOTEBOOK

  THE SMILE AT THE FOOT OF THE LADDER

  STAND STILL LIKE THE HUMMINGBIRD

  THE TIME OF THE ASSASSINS

  THE WISDOM OF THE HEART

  CONTENTS

  Introduction by Lawrence Durrell

  Author’s Preface

  PLACES

  The 14th Ward

  Paris and Its Suburbs

  Dijon

  Epidaurus and Mycenae

  The Ghetto (N.Y.)

  Big Sur Invocation

  STORIES

  Picodiribibi

  Reunion in Brooklyn

  Max

  Goldilocks

  Automotive Passacaglia

  Berthe

  LITERARY ESSAYS

  The Universe of Death

  Of Art and the Future

  Reflections on Writing

  The Wisdom of the Heart

  Tribute to France

  PORTRAITS

  Un Etre Etoilique

  Hans Reichel

  Alfred Perles

  Blaise Cendrars

  THE MAN HIMSELF

  A Commonplace Book of Aphorisms and Ideas

  APPENDIX

  Defense of the Freedom to Read

  Chronology

  Bibliography

  INTRODUCTION

  INTRODUCTION

  by LAWRENCE DURRELL

  It would be invidious to make extravagant claims for the genius of an author the greater part of whose best work is not available to his countrymen. This task were better left to the critics of a future age who will be able to discuss it with the impartiality it deserves. But one thing is certain: both America and England will one day be forced to come to terms with him on his own ground. Yet perhaps when this time comes—when he can be studied in the light of his intentions—even the moralists of letters (it is too much to hope that our puritan cultures will ever cease to bring forth moralists) may discover that, in an inverted sort of way, Miller is really on the side of the angels; and that his work, regarded in its totality (as he wishes it to be) is simply one of the great liberating confessions of our age, and offers its readers the chance of being purged “by pity and by terror” in the Aristotelian way. It offers catharsis. . . .

  But my job would be best done if I could succeed in situating him in the literature of our time—for he does not fit easily into any of the text-book categories. Indeed he is rather a visionary than merely a writer. I suspect that his final place will be among those towering anomalies of authorship like Whitman or Blake who have left us, not simply works of art, but a corpus of ideas which motivate and influence a whole cultural pattern.

  Miller has elected to shame the devil and tell the truth, and his work is one of the bravest, richest and most consistent ventures in this domain since Jean-Jacques Rousseau. By its very nature such a task must transgress the narrow limits of what ordinary people regard as permissible; canons of taste, conventional ideas of beauty and propriety, they must be renovated in the light of his central objective—the search for truth. Often the result is shocking, terrifying; but then truth has always been a fierce oracle rather than a bleat or a whimper. But no one, I think, could read (as I have just done) through the whole length and breadth of his work without wonder and amazement—and finally without gratitude for what he has undertaken on behalf of us all. It isn’t pretty, a lot of it, but then neither is real life. It goes right to the bone. It is absolutely veridic and unflinching in its intellectual bravery. It is significant, too, to mention that among the first few great men of the day to acknowledge Miller’s greatness was a philosopher, Count Keyserling. I still remember the expression of amazed delight on the face of the author of Tropic of Cancer when he unfolded the telegram and read the message: “I salute a great free spirit.”

  To grasp the intention is everything. “I am against pornography and for obscenity,” writes Miller; and again in another place: “My books are not about sex but about self-liberation”; and yet again: “The full and joyful acceptance of the worst in oneself is the only sure way of transforming it.” These statements deserve the reader’s fullest attention.

  But even if Miller were not the personage he happens to be his tremendous prose-gift would have carried him easily into the forefront of contemporary writing. This anthology has been designed to show him in his various moods and styles, and to illustrate his thinking; for while the whole work constitutes “a single, endless autobiography,” he is a protean craftsman and handles every vein, from the short story to the essay, with equal ease and delight. I have tried to select the best examples from each field; I have also tried to follow him synoptically from the Bowery to Paris, from Paris to Greece, and then back to America where he now lives, reconciled (to judge by his latest book) to the native country which he has criticized so harshly, and of whose literature he is the jewel and nonpareil. Yes, the rogue elephant of American literature has found a quiet home at last in California where he waits patiently for the time when his work will receive the official clemency it deserves. Meanwhile the French and the Japanese reader (he is a best-seller in both countries) keep him alive and able to concentrate on Nexus which is to be his last book.

  At peace with his neighbor, reconciled to friend and foe alike, and secure in the knowledge of his fame, he awaits the verdict of the young Americans of the future—not just the writers, but the ordinary folk as well, artisans, laborers and carpenters who buy their fifteen thousand copies of Whitman every year. . . .

  What will they make of this great tortured confession which spans the whole range between marvelous comedy and grim tragedy? It is exciting to imagine. I am not gifted with second sight unfortunately but I imagine that they will realize that Miller has been honest on behalf of us all, so to speak, and that everything which he describes as true of himself is true of every man-jack of us, particularly what is self-indulgent, perverse or even downright horrible; particularly what is silly no less than noble or grand. What he has tried to do is to accept and so transform the warring elements in the secret life of man, and his work is a record of the battle at every stage. That is really the central message of Miller. Great vagabond of literature that he is, he will not want for readers among our grandchildren.

  AUTHOR’S PREFACE

  AUTHOR’S PREFACE

  The idea of providing commentaries on the various sections which make up this compilation is the publisher’s, not mine. It was only when it was pointed out to me that many of those into whose hands this book will fall have never heard of me or my work that I consented to do it. Since the great body of my work is autobiographical and replete with landmarks, since nearly everything I touch on in my writings explains how and why I came to write what I did, and often when and where, all this data intended for the enlightenment of the reader seemed superfluous to me. What I had forgotten is that the most important books, the most revelatory, are banned in English-speaking countries. Excerpts are given herein from some of these books, such as Tropic of Cancer, Black Spring, Sexus and The World of Sex, as well as from some books long out of print and now almost impossible to find, viz., Max and the White Phagocytes and Hamlet, which was written in collaborat
ion with Michael Fraenkel. The selections from the banned books are, of course, innocuous, and therefore somewhat misleading.

  To further aid the reader a list of all my works is given in chronological order in the index at the back of the book; the name of the original publisher and the place of publication has also been added. Many of these works now exist in translation but, in the case of the banned books, their importation is still prohibited, no matter what the language.

  I should like to ask the reader not to write me as to how to obtain the banned books. There are booksellers in this country who handle them under the counter and who charge a handsome price for this service; it is not permitted to reveal their names. On the other hand, the reader should know that many college and university libraries throughout the country are in possession of these books; they are usually available to “the serious student.” There is also a Henry Miller Literary Society in Minneapolis which endeavors to answer questions pertaining to the author or his work. One may write either to Edward P. Schwartz, president, at 121 North 7th St., or to Thomas H. Moore, Secretary, at 3748 Park Avenue, Minneapolis, Minnesota. Don’t write me! I have no secretary. The better to understand my attitude, please refer to the Epilogue of Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch. This is my answer to all questions.

  It will be observed, in reading these brief commentaries on the texts selected, that I myself have only a hazy notion sometimes of where and when I wrote certain things. This is natural enough, if one stops to think about it, because giving birth is, for an author, a way of getting rid of something, of forgetting, of burying the itch. With time and effort, I could of course achieve the perfect recall, but in doing so I would find myself tempted to write a short book about each text. I should also like to point out that, even if all the surrounding circumstances were dug up and laid before the reader, he would still be no nearer to the mystery of creation.

  The facts about anything, and especially about a man’s writings, are usually so much dust in the eye. What is important to know about a writer is given in his writing. No amount of information about a writer will clear up the controversy which his work arouses, if he is a controversial writer. The discerning ones will read between the lines; the patient, plodding researcher will only grow more confused. As with astrology, everything hinges on one’s ability to interpret.

  But publishers like to make it easy for the reader. They do not realize of course, what a disservice they are doing him. The lazy reader does no one any good.

  HENRY MILLER

  PLACES

  THE 14TH WARD

  (FROM BLACK SPRING)

  It was during these ultrahappy days, when writing Black Spring and other things, that I rediscovered the glorious days of my childhood—in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. After only three or four years’ residence in France I had come to think of it as my rightful home. Several times I was on the verge of applying for French citizenship.

  When one is supremely happy, as I was then, one thinks back to other happy periods in the past, some of which, in my case, were prenatal. (I was much obsessed at this time with the thought of life in the womb, for the reason, no doubt, that I was completely free of all responsibilities.)

  Home was a word whose significance I pondered over frequently. (Oddly enough, I was never more “at home” than in this rootless period.) What did it mean, that strange word “home,” which in German is even stronger than in English, and which the French render by a chez soi?

  When I said that I almost became a French citizen I mean rather a citizen of Paris. Like the 14th Ward of my childhood days, Paris was my country. I have never succeeded in being more than a local patriot.

  I am a patriot—of the 14th Ward Brooklyn, where I was raised. The rest of the United States doesn’t exist for me, except as idea, or history, or literature. At ten years of age I was uprooted from my native soil and removed to a cemetery, a Lutheran cemetery, where the tombstones were always in order and the wreaths never faded.

  But I was born in the street and raised in the street. “The post-mechanical open street where the most beautiful and hallucinating iron vegetation,” etc. . . Born under the sign of Aries which gives a fiery, active, energetic and somewhat restless body. With Mars in the ninth house!

  To be born in the street means to wander all your life, to be free. It means accident and incident, drama, movement. It means above all dream. A harmony of irrelevant facts which gives to your wandering a metaphysical certitude. In the street you learn what human beings really are; otherwise, or afterwards, you invent them. What is not in the open street is false, derived, that is to say, literature. Nothing of what is called “adventure” ever approaches the flavor of the street. It doesn’t matter whether you fly to the Pole, whether you sit on the floor of the ocean with a pad in your hand, whether you pull up nine cities one after the other, or whether, like Kurtz, you sail up the river and go mad. No matter how exciting, how intolerable the situation, there are always exits, always ameliorations, comforts, compensations, newspapers, religions. But once there was none of this. Once you were free, wild, murderous. . .

  The boys you worshiped when you first came down into the street remain with you all your life. They are the only real heroes. Napoleon, Lenin, Capone—all fiction. Napoleon is nothing to me in comparison with Eddie Carney who gave me my first black eye. No man I have ever met seems as princely, as regal, as noble, as Lester Reardon who, by the mere act of walking down the street, inspired fear and admiration. Jules Verne never led me to the places that Stanley Borowski had up his sleeve when it came dark. Robinson Crusoe lacked imagination in comparison with Johnny Paul. All these boys of the 14th Ward have a flavor about them still. They were not invented or imagined: they were real. Their names ring out like gold coins—Tom Fowler, Jim Buckley, Matt Owen, Rob Ramsay, Harry Martin, Johnny Dunne, to say nothing of Eddie Carney or the great Lester Reardon. Why, even now when I say Johnny Paul the names of the saints leave a bad taste in my mouth. Johnny Paul was the living Odyssey of the 14th Ward; that he later became a truck driver is an irrelevant fact.

  Before the great change no one seemed to notice that the streets were ugly or dirty. If the sewer mains were opened you held your nose. If you blew your nose you found snot in your handkerchief and not your nose. There was more of inward peace and contentment. There was the saloon, the racetrack, bicycles, fast women and trot horses. Life was still moving along leisurely. In the 14th Ward, at least. Sunday mornings no one was dressed. If Mrs. Gorman came down in her wrapper with dirt in her eyes to bow to the priest—“Good morning, Father!” “Good morning, Mrs. Gorman!”—the street was purged of all sin. Pat McCarren carried his handkerchief in the tail-flap of his frock coat; it was nice and handy there, like the shamrock in his buttonhole. The foam was on the lager and people stopped to chat with one another.

  In my dreams I come back to the 14th Ward as a paranoiac returns to his obsessions. When I think of those steel-gray battleships in the Navy Yard I see them lying there in some astrologic dimension in which I am the gunnersmith, the chemist, the dealer in high explosives, the undertaker, the coroner, the cuckold, the sadist, the lawyer and contender, the scholar, the restless one, the jolt-head and the brazen faced.

  Where others remember of their youth a beautiful garden, a fond mother, a sojourn at the seashore, I remember, with a vividness as if it were etched in acid, the grim, soot-covered walls and chimneys of the tin factory opposite us and the bright, circular pieces of tin that were strewn in the street, some bright and gleaming, others rusted, dull, copperish, leaving a stain on the fingers; I remember the ironworks where the red furnace glowed and men walked toward the glowing pit with huge shovels in their hands, while outside were the shallow wooden forms like coffins with rods through them on which you scraped your shins or broke your neck. I remember the black hands of the iron-molders, the grit that had sunk so deep into the skin that nothing could remove it, not soap, nor elbow grease, nor money, nor love, nor death. Like a black mark on t
hem! Walking into the furnace like devils with black hands—and later, with flowers over them, cool and rigid in their Sunday suits, not even the rain can wash away the grit. All these beautiful gorillas going up to God with swollen muscles and lumbago and black hands. . .

  For me the whole world was embraced in the confines of the 14th Ward. If anything happened outside it either didn’t happen or it was unimportant. If my father went outside that world to fish it was of no interest to me. I remember only his boozy breath when he came home in the evening and opening the big green basket spilled the squirming, goggle-eyed monsters on the floor. If a man went off to the war I remember only that he came back of a Sunday afternoon and standing in front of the minister’s house puked up his guts and then wiped it up with his vest. Such was Rob Ramsay, the minister’s son. I remember that everybody liked Rob Ramsay—he was the black sheep of the family. They liked him because he was a good-for-nothing and he made no bones about it. Sundays or Wednesdays made no difference to him: you could see him coming down the street under the drooping awnings with his coat over his arm and the sweat rolling down his face; his legs wobbly, with that long, steady roll of a sailor coming ashore after a long cruise; the tobacco juice dribbling from his lips, together with warm, silent curses and some loud and foul ones too. The utter indolence, the insouciance of the man, the obscenities, the sacrilege. Not a man of God, like his father. No, a man who inspired love! His frailties were human frailties and he wore them jauntily, tauntingly, flauntingly, like banderillas. He would come down the warm open street with the gas mains bursting and the air full of sun and shit and oaths and maybe his fly would be open and his suspenders undone, or maybe his vest bright with vomit. Sometimes he came charging down the street like a bull skidding on all fours, and then the street cleared magically, as if the manholes had opened up and swallowed their offal. Crazy Willy Maine would be standing on the shed over the paint shop, with his pants down, jerking away for dear life. There they stood in the dry electrical crackle of the open street with the gas mains bursting. A tandem that broke the minister’s heart.