“Whatever I do is done out of sheer joy; I drop my fruits like a ripe tree. What the general reader or the critic makes of them is not my concern.” HENRY MILLER, American writer (1891-1980)
Painting: Henry Miller portrait, watercolor by Fabrizio Cassetta. Prints available at fineartamerica.com.
Renowned diarist Anais Nin — the muse of Henry Miller and many others — lived in Silverlake (Los Angeles) from the early 1960s until her death in 1977 at age 73. Her beautiful home, located at 2335 Hidalgo, was designed by Eric Lloyd Wright (Frank’s grandson), the half-brother of Rupert Pole, Nin’s then-husband. Nin led a complicated personal life that included bicoastal husbands (Hugh Guiler in New York and Rupert Pole in California). She eventually had her marriage to Pole annulled, but continued to live with him in the gorgeous house he had built just for her.
From REFLECTIONS by Henry Miller (Capra Press, 1981): With Anais I felt safe, secure. She delighted in keeping things running smoothly so I could write. She was really a true guardian angel, supportive and enthusiastic about my writing at a time when I needed it most. She was generous too. Kept me going with little gifts — pocket money, cigarettes, food, and so on. She sang my praises to the world long before I’d become regarded as a writer. In fact, it was Anais who paid for the first printing of Tropic of Cancer. For these reasons I feel utterly grateful to her. It’s rare to find a friend, a confidante, a colleague, a helpmate, and a lover, all in the same person.
“Anyone who can only think of one way to spell a word obviously lacks imagination.” MARK TWAIN
“In this chthonian* world the only thing of importance is orthography** and punctuation. It doesn’t matter what the nature of the calamity is, only whether it is spelled right.” HENRY MILLER
*chthonian: Concerning, belonging to, or inhabiting the underworld.
**orthography: A part of language study that deals with letters and spelling.
Cartoon: “The Far Side,” 1985 by Gary Larson, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
“Whatever I do is done out of sheer joy; I drop my fruits like a ripe tree. What the general reader or the critic makes of them is not my concern.” HENRY MILLER, American writer (1891-1980)
Painting: Henry Miller portrait, watercolor by Fabrizio Cassetta. Prints available at fineartamerica.com.
ANAIS NIN
by Henry Miller
With Anais I felt safe, secure. She delighted in keeping things running smoothly so I could write. She was really a true guardian angel, supportive and enthusiastic about my writing at a time when I needed it most. She was generous too. Kept me going with little gifts — pocket money, cigarettes, food, and so on. She sang my praises to the world long before I’d become regarded as a writer. In fact, it was Anais who paid for the first printing of Tropic of Cancer. For these reasons I feel utterly grateful to her. It’s rare to find a friend, a confidante, a colleague, a helpmate, and a lover, all in the same person.
Excerpt: Reflections by Henry Miller (Capra Press, 1981), edited by Twinka Thiebaud
Photo: Anais Nin, photographed by Carl Van Vechten (1940). Image courtesy of Marquette University Archives.
Note: Barbara Kraft has written a fascinating, compelling memoir about the last years of Nin’s life. Anais Nin: The Last Days is available at Amazon.com here.
FIRST WRITING JOB
by Henry Miller
The constant battle to stay alive to stay fed, that’s what made me. I wouldn’t let it destroy me; I couldn’t let it get the best of me.
Jesus! When I think of what June and I went through to make a few lousy bucks – it was nightmarish.
We printed some of my poems and June went from bar to café selling them while I waited outside. We knew she’d make more money if I wasn’t around. Sometimes she wouldn’t come out of a bar for a couple of hours. She’d sit and talk to some guy who’d buy her drinks and even pay her just to listen to him. She’d come out with maybe only fifty cents, once in a while she’d show up with fifty dollars and there I’d be, huddled in a doorway freezing to death with a valise of printed poems in my hand…
June was such a beauty. She usually went with me when I’d ask for writing jobs. We got sympathy and favors more often than if I went alone.
One day we met the head of Liberty magazine. I asked him for a job as assistant editor. He looks June and me over very carefully and he says, “Write me an article on words!” I jumped at the chance to prove myself to someone who could give me a good job, and it was a broad subject – I could write just about anything I felt like…
Well, it took a long time for Liberty to pay me. They didn’t know whether or not to use the article because, as they explained to me, it was “too good,” “too high brow.” That bucked me up tremendously. The recognition and encouragement was extremely important to me. Eventually they did pay me, though the article never was published. Three hundred dollars was a windfall in those days.
June was with me when I went to pick up the check. On the way to the elevator the editor shook my hand, wished us luck, and pressed a twenty-dollar bill into my hand. It was people like that who bolstered my efforts, encouraged me to forge ahead. Without them I wouldn’t be where I am today.
Excerpted from Reflections by Henry Miller (Capra Press, 1981), Edited by Twinka Thiebaud
During the final four years of his life, Henry Miller wrote more than 1,500 love letters (over 4,000 pages!) to his muse, a beautiful Native American actress named Brenda Venus. Originally published by Morrow in 1986 — six years after Miller’s death — the voluminous correspondence was edited into an approximately 200-page book, with commentary by Venus. When it came out, the book received rave reviews, including a sensitive, insightful analysis by Noel Young in the L.A. Times (2/2/1986). Here is an excerpt:
Henry Miller’s death in 1980 brought an end to one of the most extraordinary romances ever conceived, coming as it did from the impassioned mind of a man nearly 90, admittedly a physical ruin, and the good graces of a young actress, aptly named Brenda Venus, in the prime of her life. For Miller, it was love at first sight, kindling an ardor that kept him alive for four more years. He did what he did best — he wrote; and he laid it all on the line in more than 1,000 letters from which this volume is drawn.
An ordinary man, blind in one eye and partially paralyzed, might have taken to bed and wasted away, but not Henry Miller. Instead, he fell hopelessly, shamelessly in love and spilled it out in letters to his dear Brenda, wallowing in a euphoria that lasted to his end. He worked himself into a lather, at least on paper, and lived for those Thursday nights when she appeared at his door, took him by his arm and drove him to dinner at his favorite Japanese restaurant in the Hollywood Hills. One stormy night, to spare him hobbling through the puddles in the parking lot, she simply picked him up and carried him upstairs to the entrance. He accepted this with aplomb and a jaunty smile.”
Dear, Dear Brenda by Henry Miller (with text by Brenda Venus, edited by Gerald S. Sindell with an introduction by Lawrence Durell) is available at Amazon.com here.
Find out more about the fascinating Brenda Venus at her website, brendavenus.com.
In October 1979, Barbara Kraft interviewed her friend Henry Miller about his life and art — in what turned out to be his last long interview. (Miller passed away in June 1980 at age 88.) The dialogue was published in the Spring 1981 issue of the Michigan Quarterly Review. Read “A Conversation with Henry Miller” here.
Kraft is the author of the recently published ebook Anais Nin: The Final Days, available here.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: A former reporter for Time, Washington Post, People, USA Today, and Architectural Digest, Barbara Kraft is author of The Restless Spirit: Journal of a Gemini, with a preface by Anaïs Nin. Kraft’s work has appeared in Hudson Review, Michigan Quarterly, and Columbia Magazine, and among the many radio programs she has hosted and produced is Transforming OC, a two-part KCRW documentary on the 2006 opening of the Renee and Henry Segerstrom Concert Hall in Costa Mesa. Kraft lives and writes in Los Angeles.
Silver Birch Press 