Miller And The Matisses

“He is a bright sage, a dancing seer who, with a sweep of the brush, removes the ugly scaffold to which the body of man is chained by the incontrovertible facts of life.”
----- Henry Miller on Henri Matisse, Tropic Of Cancer, p. 164

My interest in this subject began with an on-line anecdote about Henry from the granddaughter of the famed French painter, Henri Matisse. My research on this minor footnote soon led to connections between Henry and Henri Matisse, as well as his son, Pierre. These may seem like trivial points individually, but, stacked together, they establish an intellectual and casual personal relationship with a great family of the arts.

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HENRI MATISSE

Henri Matisse (1869-1954) was a celebrated French painter, noted for his brilliant use of colour. Upon his death in 1954, Andre Berthoin (French Minister of National Education) described Matisse this way: "His was the most French of palettes. Intelligence, reason and the alliance of a sense of finesse and of simplifying geometry gave to all he painted the rare virtue of being truly French" [1].

Although Henri Matisse appears as a passing reference in Miller’s Crazy Cock (which he’d begun in 1927), the true impact of the painter’s work on Miller becomes obvious in Henry’s writings of 1931. In the long-unpublished The New Instinctivism—which was written by early summer, 1931 [2] — Miller gives over a page of high praise for Matisse, of whom he states “touches me profoundly.” “Matisse is the sum of modern painting. Matisse is the epiphenomenona of the new phenomenology. Matisse is the wobbly axis which gives core to the revolutions in plastic, the hub of the wheel which is falling apart, which will keep rolling when all that has gone to make up the wheel has disintegrated.” He doesn’t see beauty in the women Matisse paints, but instead sees “women of the boulevards.”

In June or July 1931, Henry went to the Galerie Georges Petit at 8, rue de Seze to see a Matisse exhibit that included “Reclinging Nude” (c.1925). The exhibit ran from June 16 – July 25, 1931 [3]. In August, Henry began writing Tropic Of Cancer, which would eventually include a lengthy reference to his 1931 visit to the Matisse exhibit. Much of the reverent language used in this passage has been clearly re-crafted from his New Instinctivism draft. “On the threshold of that big hall whose walls are now ablaze, I pause a moment to recover from the shock which one experiences when the habitual gray of the world is rent asunder and the color of life splashes forth in song and poem” (p. 162); “He it is, if any man today possesses the gift, who knows where to dissolve the human figure, who has the courage to sacrifice an harmonious line in order to detect the rhythm and murmur of the blood, who takes the light that has been refracted inside him and lets it flood the keyboard of color” (p. 164) [4]. (see Raoul Ibarguen’s critique of this passage in Narrative Detours).

Henri Matisse (left) at the 1931 Galerie Geroges Petit exhibit in Paris, which Miller attended. (Photo: Hulton Archive/Getty Images; this is cropped from the larger original found here).

With this level of enthusiasm, it’s not surprising that an early edition of Tropic Of Cancer—a Czech translation published in 1938—should feature an image of a naked woman “specially drawn” by Matisse (at left) [5]. According to Ferguson’s Henry Miller: A Life, Miller eventually met Matisse and got into an argument with him about the work of Miró, which Miller thought was intellectual, but Matisse found was the work of a “peasant” (p. 241).

Henri Matisse would continue to be casually referenced in Miller’s later works, as an example of an accomplished artist (often in lists of names like Picasso and Proust).

PIERRE MATISSE

Henri Matisse’s son Pierre Matisse (1900-1989) did not become a painter like his father, but instead took a different angle on the family legacy and became an art dealer. In 1931, he opened the Pierre Matisse Gallery in New York City, which remained operative until his death in 1989.

In 1936, Henry had befriended Pierre Matisse, although I can’t say anything about the origin or nature of this relationship at that time. They were friendly enough that Pierre shipped a copy of Black Spring to James Laughlin on Henry’s behalf, then wrote to tell him he’d done so [6].

In 1947, Henry published a limited run of Into The Nightlife, which showcased the artwork of Bezalel Schatz. Henry’s ledger book shows that Pierre bought a copy (as referenced in the PBA Gallery archive—see item 33). Late in 1958, Miller needed money and sought to sell some Fernand Léger artwork that he had acquired for The Smile at the Foot of the Ladder. Pierre Matisse bought them for $3500. Henry was happy about the sale, writing to Matisse that “there is indeed a Santa Claus!” In a letter to Bob MacGregor, Henry described Matisse as “a brick” who could be counted on for a favour [7].

ALEXINA SATTLER

Finally we come to the anecdote about the daughter-in-law of Henri Matisse, whose birth name was Alexina Sattler. The brief reference is made by Alexina’s daughter, Jacquline Matisse Monnier on the website for the Tate Museum, and in relation to artist Marcel Duchamp:

“There was something about Marcel Duchamp that people found attractive. My mother thought he had a charismatic allure. She told me a story that at one point Henry Miller had a crush on her, but he was rather vulgar and had no grace in what he was proposing, whereas Marcel just knew how to say and do things. He had a very light touch.”

Yes, this is the minor, paltry piece of gossip that inspired this entire post. I soon found myself on a personal mission to flesh it out with something more substantial. Let me say this: there is no more, other than the context and conjecture I’ll attempt to bring to it.

Alexina Sattler (1906-1995) entered into the Matisse family through her marriage to Pierre Matisse [8]. The American-born artist—nicknamed “teeny” because of her petite stature—went to Paris in 1921 to pursue her artistic vocation. She married Pierre in 1929. In 1939, Pierre went into service for WWII; in his absence, Alexina took over duty at the Pierre Matisse Gallery in New York. She divorced Pierre in 1949, and later married Marcel Duchamp in 1954, although she had originally met him in 1923.


At right: A illustrated portrai of Alexina made by Henri Matisse in 1938. (Source: Herbert F Johnson Museum of Art)

Henry did not arrive in Paris for his extended stay until March 1930, at which time Alexina was newly married as Alexina Matisse. The Matisses then opened Pierre’s gallery in New York in 1931.That leaves a window of opportunity for Henry meeting Alexina in 1930-31. Henry was familiar with NY-based Pierre in 1936, so possibly they’d all met during one of Pierre’s return visits to Paris in the 30s. Alexina was unmarried from 1949 to 1953, but Henry was in Big Sur most of that time, and married to two different women in that period. As well, I don’t have any impression that he really knew Alexina outside of her relation to Pierre. Bottom line: if this anecdote is accurate, then Henry seems to have made a crude proposition to a married woman, whether she was Alexina Matisse or Alexina Duchamp.


Henry, you dawg.

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REFERENCES

[1] NYTimes.com (New York Times). 1954. On This Day. “Obituary-Art World Mourns Henri Matisse, Dead at Home in Nice at Age of 84:” November 4, 1954. LINK; [2] The New Instinctivism was published only recently in Nexus: The International Henry Miller Journal, Vol. 4. Matisse refs on pages 22-24. With acknowledgement to Karl Orend who had previously explored the Henri Matisse connection in footnote 107 of this published Instinctivism essay; [3] I found the dates for this exhibition in several on-line sources, including a reference to a 1931 commemorative book from the exhibit. See listing at Antiqbook; [4] Miller, Henry. 1987 [1934]. Tropic Of Cancer. NY: Grove Press; [5] Ferguson, Robert. 1991. Henry Miller: A Life. NY: WW Norton, p. 346. I’ve found no other references to this be specially drawn, or simply acquired-- Ferguson does not list his source; [6] Wickes, George, ed. 1996. Henry Miller And James Laughlin: Selected Letters. New York: Norton, p. 7; [7] Wickes, George, ed. 1996. Henry Miller And James Laughlin: Selected Letters. New York: Norton, pp. 147-154; [8] Sattler's bio was sourced with Wikipedia, Kubisme.info (in Dutch), Geneall, and a couple fo other minor references elsewhere. Her photo was found here, as part of a group shot from the 1940s.

Letters To Gustav Hellström

Two years ago, I discovered two letters written by Miller to a Swedish writer named Lars Gustav Hellström, on the HistoryForSale.com website. The following is my own summary of the content of this pair of letters, along with some background information.

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LETTER TO HELLSTROM - 1949

Henry Miller had been corresponding with poet Hugo Manning since about 1944 [1]. In 1949, Henry received word from Hugo that a Swede named Lars Gustav Hellström had done a translation of one of Miller’s Hamlet letters for a Swedish magazine. On November 28, 1949, Henry wrote a letter to the 62-year old Hellström. Although it seems that permission had not been sought to do the translation, Henry gives Hellström permission to continue to do so, as long as he gets the O.K. from the publisher. “I scarcely ever write anything for magazines,” writes Henry, who is curious to receive a copy of the Swedish magazine in which the translation appears.

This is the actual letter that Miller wote to Hellstrom in 1949. This image is copywritten by HistoryForSale.com, but I hope they don't mind my use of it here, as it draws attention to their merchandise. The original document currently sells for US $ 1, 499.

“How does my 'Air-Conditioned Nightmare' go there?” adds Henry. “Haven't the slightest idea. I rather imagine it doesn't go at all!” With a “Sincerely Yours,” Henry signed his name. As an afterthought, he wrote vertically along the left-hand column, “Presume you've heard that Book I of 'Rosy Crucifixion' is out now in Paris - same publisher.” Henry posted this letter from his home in Big Sur, addressing it to Lars Gustav Hellström at Östervägen 25 in Solna, Sweden.

Gustav (or Gustaf) Hellström was born in Sweden in August 1882 [2]. He worked as a foreign correspondent for a Swedish newspaper until 1935, reporting from the big Western cultural centres of Paris, New York and London. As a novelist, he worked in a realist style, including his 1927 “masterpiece,” a saga of a provincial Swedish family called Snörmakare Lekholm får en idé (Lacemaker Lekholm Has an Idea – full text). According to the Nobel Prize website, Hellstrom was member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, and had deleivered Nobel presentation speeches for T.S. Eliot and William Faulkner. It is said that Hellström’s wife was a friend of Marcel Duchamp and Carl Van Vechten (who took the photo of Henry found on the Wikipedia website).

LETTER TO HELLSTROM - 1951

The second letter from Henry to Gustav was written on April 24, 1951, again from Big Sur. In it, Henry asks if Gustav received a book he sent him, which implies that a correspondence existed beyond these two letters. Here is the text in full, followed by notes on the references:

“The rights to 'Picodiribi' belong pro tem to James Laughlin, New Directions, 333 6th Avenue, N.Y.C. Have not sold rights (in English) for the book yet. It will be published in French by Corréa, Paris. Can't believe Girodias has no copies of the 'Tropics'. Will write him to send you them. Must be some mistake. That experience at Döme - reminds me of the unique occasion when I was in a book store and some one asked for one of my books. Have you seen the February and March issues of 'The World Review' (London) which contain chapter from my new book about books - this chapter on Blaise Cendrars? Haven't heard a word about Patchen. Did you get the Hart Crane book I sent you?”

Above: An excerpt of Miller's letter from April 1951.

Picodiribi: Miller actually meant Picodiribibi, which was a portrait he wrote about an “Italian who used to visit our speakeasy in the Village—circa 1925 or ’26—an extraordinary conversationalist, a buffoon, and cultured to the fingertips” [3]. The piece originally appeared as “The Robot Picodiribibi” in the July 1950 issue of World Review magazine (Shifreen & Jackson, C233), then again in December of that year in New Directions 12 anthology (Shifreen & Jackson, B69). It would be incorporated into Plexus in 1952.

James Laughlin: founded the New Directions imprint in 1936, and became one of Henry’s publishers.

Corréa, Paris: Henry’s French publisher, which had released the first edition of Plexus in 1952 (Shifreen & Jackson, A83a), amongst other things. When Henry refers to “the book,” I’m not sure if he means Plexus, or if he’d had planned to release the short “Robot Picodiribibi” as a booklet.

Girodias: Maurice Girodias, heir to the Obelisk Press, which had first published Tropic of Cancer and Tropic of Capricorn.

Döme: Le Dôme is a café in Paris which became Miller’s prime hang-out during his early days in Paris. The way he mentions it here, I get the impression that Henry is referencing Hellstrom’s own experience at Le Dôme from a previous letter.

February and March issues of 'The World Review': “Blaise Cendrars” (Shifreen & Jackson, C239) and “More about Blaise Cendrars” (Shifreen & Jackson, C241) were published in the February and March issues of World Review, respectively.

my new book about books: Miller’s The Books in My Life was first published in October 1952 (Shifreen & Jackson, A86a). Henry had been working “feverishly” on this book since January 17, 1950 [4]. At the time of writing this letter, Henry was struggling with coming up with a better title for this book than what it became [5].

Patchen: Kenneth Patchen (1911-1972) was an American writer/poet, who had made a strong impression on Henry (see Miller’s homage to him, “Patchen: Man Of Anger & Light,” which originally appeared in 1946, and was re-published in Stand Still Like The Hummingbird). After five years of living in a little cottage in a small town in Connecticut, Patchen moved to San Francisco in 1951 [6]. Perhaps Miller is referencing his relocation.

Hart Crane: Hart Crane (1899-1932) was an Ohio-born poet who lived one of those tragic poet’s lives, ending with suicide off of a steamship at age 32. Miller was not particularly fond of Crane’s work. Writing to Wallace Fowlie in 1944, Henry wrote: “I can’t read Crane. I mean I don’t find anything in him that others see. My fault doubtless” [7]. (Miller is perhaps being kind because Fowlie had written an essay on Crane). Crane’s suicide is mentioned in passing in Books in My Life (p.217) [he was referenced in a letter written by Sherwood Anderson, which Miller had read]. I’m thinking that Henry unloaded his Crane book on Hellström because he didn’t really care for it. The favour must have been returned by Hellström, because Henry included his name in an appendix in Books in My Life, entitled “Friends Who Supplied Me With Books.”

Lars Gustav Hellstrom died in Sweden less than two years later, on February 27, 1953.

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[1] Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, U. of Texas. Hugo Manning Papers - "Biographical Sketch."http://www.lib.utexas.edu/taro/uthrc/00083/hrc-00083.html . [2] The bio of Hellstrom has been mostly cobbled together from info drawn from Encyclopedia Britannica and the Hellstrom website (which is in Swedish, but I translated through Translation Guide). [3] Durrell, Lawrence (ed.). 1959. The Henry Miller Reader. NY: New Directions; p. 83. [4] MacNiven, Ian S. (ed.). 1989. The Durrell-Miller Letters, 1935-80. London: Faber & Faber, p. 246; [5] Wickes, George, ed. 1996. Henry Miller And James Laughlin: Selected Letters. New York: Norton, p. 85; [6] Smith, Larry (ed.) "Kenneth Patchen Places." http://members.aol.com/smithcours/Patchen/KennethPatchenPlaces.htm ; [7] Miller, Henry, and Wallace Fowlie. 1975. Letters of Henry Miller and Wallace Fowlie (1943-1972). NY: Grove Press; letter dated March 1, 1944, p. 41.

Filming 'Tropic Of Cancer'

“The film of Tropic of Cancer will be definitively produced and directed by Joseph Strick, who made Ulysses (by Joyce). He’ll do it the same way. No castration, no modification. Bravo for him, I say!”
---- Henry Miller in a letter to Brassai, July 31, 1968

Henry Miller’s 1934 novel, Tropic Of Cancer, was adapted and released as a feature film in 1970. Although the film maintained Paris as its locale—as it had been in the novel—the action was shifted to contemporary times (1969). Although it remains the only film adaptation of Miller’s classic novel, it had not been the first attempt to do so.

THE FAILED CANCER PROJECT

Joseph E. Levine’s Embassy Pictures distributed foreign films in the U.S., most notably Godzilla (1956) and Fellini’s 8½ (1963). It was around this time that Embassy decided to get into the film production business, and in 1962 Levine bankrolled a film version of Tropic Of Cancer [1]. In January 1963, Henry was looking forward to going to Paris for 17 weeks as a “consultant” on the film, which would also yield a substantial payday [2]. But by June 1963, the production was bogged down in litigation [3], with production partners and an actress suing Levine. Due to these troubles, Henry’s contract as advisor was terminated at the end of the year [4]. In June 1964, the conflicts were settled out of court [3] and Levine was ready to forge ahead again with Tropic, but, by the following summer, Henry expressed his concern to Brassai: “I'm increasingly convinced they're going to massacre my Cancer. What can be done? The author counts for nothing” [5]. The project eventually lost steam and died in development.

ROBERT EVANS TAKES A PING-PONG WAGER

Famed Hollywood producer Robert Evans has many saucy stories to tell in his memoirs The Kid Stays in the Picture. Although the dialogue exchange he provides between he and Henry [6] seems apocryphal to me (maybe it isn’t, but it remains otherwise unsubstantiated), Evans tells of a friendly ping-pong game that turned into a hustled wager in which Henry bet him to turn Tropic Of Cancer into a film if he won. The balls fell in Miller’s favour. As the head of production at Paramount Pictures, Evans had the clout to get it made, but, writes Evans, the top brass were less than impressed, and threatened to fire him and burn the negative. “It played in one theater and disappeared for good,” writes Evans. “Because of Henry Miller, I traveled a back elevator for the next two months. Henry, you got the last laugh, wherever you are, and I'm sure it ain't heaven” [6].

Above left: A German poster for the movie.

In another telling of this same story [7], Evans makes no mention of a wager, but instead quotes Henry as challenging him verbally: “'You don't have the guts to make Cancer.'” Is any of this true? In fact, Joseph Strick’s production company Tropic Film Corporation (half backed by a Swiss film corporation) [12] produced the film in 1969, while Evans’ Paramount seems to have been involved only as far as picking up distribution rights [13].

TROPIC OF CANCER – THE PRODUCTION

On December 8, 1968, the New York Times reported that director Joseph Strick would be attached to direct. Strick had previously earned an edgy reputation for his film adaptation of James Joyce’s Ulysses (1967), whose raw language caused much controversy, including a ban in Ireland that would last 33 years. Henry initially felt encouraged by the vision of the 45-year old director, whose unorthodox approach got him fired the previous year by the Hollywood honchos who were paying for a conventional adaptation of Lawrence Durrell’s Justine.

Above: A 1971 Japanese poster for the film.

After a visit to London, Miller was sent to Paris in the summer of 1969 as a consultant on the film, an experience he wrote about for a article called “Tropic Of Cancer Revisited,” published in Playboy’s June 1970 issue: “I had hardly arrived at my hotel when I was summoned to the shooting of a scene in a night spot on a narrow little street called Passage du Depart off the rue d’Odessa” (p. 133). The chauffered ride to the set gave Henry a flashback of his bike rides from Porte de Clichy to Louveciennes in 1932-33 to see Anais Nin (135). Paris “looked better to me than it ever had,” wrote Miller, despite the “ugly modern apartments,” but he seemed resigned to the fact that “there would be no attempt to re-create the Paris of the Thirties” for the film(133). Henry’s impressions of Paris was to be the most-asked media question (201) during his nearly-two month visit. He would never return to Paris again [8].

James Decker’s essay “Literary Text, Cinematic ‘Edition’: Adaptation, Textual Authority, and the Filming of Tropic of Cancer” (2007) covers details about the filming of Tropic Of Cancer as well as offering analysis of its adaptation: “Strick attempts to preserve as much of Miller's language as possible, but he hardly follows the novel word-for-word or scene-by-scene, choosing instead to alter those parts of the book that would not translate well to the screen. Strick, moreover, consciously chose to emphasize the book's comedic elements.”

Decker quotes Strick admitting that he “doesn't write well enough to do an original screenplay.” Although Strick is listed as a co-writer--along with associate producer Betty Botley--Strick’s Ulysses writing partner Fred Haines was originally assigned the task. According to Haines’ obituary in The Independent (he died this month, on May 4th), the two men “disagreed on the shape of the screenplay, [and] Haines simply asked that he not be credited as the writer.”

Although Henry uses the Playboy article to express admiration for Strick’s directing demeanor, Rip Torn’s vitality (playing Henry 30 years younger), and Ellyn Burstyn’s penetrating understanding of Mona/June (whom she portrayed), Henry was most pleased to socialize with a short, hunched French bit-actor named Alfred Baillou, who played a minor part as a night watchman at the lycée at Dijon (a role that essentially ended up on the cutting room floor): “the most interesting person I had the pleasure of conversing with during my visits to the set,” wrote Miller. “We talked as people talk who have known each other for years […] like myself, he was drawn to the arcane and the occult” (Playboy, 200).

Henry also had the company of his son Tony, who got some work on the film [8]. His young wife, Hoki, was to join him in Paris, but chose to stay away most of the time, even though Henry got Strick to call her to offer her a small part in the film [9].

Henry was invited to view the raw, unedited film dailies, but he found the process “tedious and confusing” (Playboy 134). He also made a fleeting appearance in the film as a “spectator” in a wedding scene. His tenure as advisor ended around August 10th [5].

'X' FACTOR

“Cancer film opened in N.Y. at the Paris Cinema on 58th & 5th Ave. last week. Mixed reviews by critics,” wrote Henry to Lawrence Durrel on February 27, 1970 [10]. Some critics felt that the faithful narration slowed the action down; parts of the film were considered unintentionally funny, or even sexist [8]. Pauline Kael, however, seems to have appreciated it: “This series of vignettes and fantasies, with bits of Miller's language rolling out, may be closer to Russ Meyer's THE IMMORAL MR. TEAS than to its source, but at least it isn't fusty. It makes you laugh” [from Kael’s 5001 Nights at the Movies, and online here]. (Kael had originally written a longer review for The New Yorker on March 7, 1970. For a full analysis of the use of sex in this film, and a thorough breakdown of its content, read Decker’s essay.)

To make matters worse, the film was saddled with a “X” rating. Strick, as the Producer, immediately took antitrust legal action against his own distributor, Paramount Pictures, who refused to release the film without a rating (which Strick wanted); being branded with an "X" severely restricted its sales potential. (Tropic Film Corp v. Paramount Pictures Corp. 319 F Supp., 1247 (S.D.N.Y. 1970).

Regardless of the accuracy of Robert Evans’ ping-pong anecdote with Henry, perhaps he had made a bad wager after all; perhaps he was hoping to cash in on the “X” cachet that had reached its peak with the Academy Award wins for the X-rated Midnight Cowboy in 1969. The Paramount publicity packets for theatre owners in 1970 reveals their eagerness to cash in on scandal: "One of the things that you can do to heighten [the] controversy, thereby bringing attention to your engagement, would be to screen the film for a number of local dignitaries, judges, lawyers, college professors, and students and let them debate on their pro and con feelings" [14].

I am not clear that the film was originally X-rated due to sexual portrayals or for language. However, when re-classified in the 1992, Tropic Of Cancer was labelled with the new NC-17 rating: “for strong language and sex-related dialogue.”

Miller, 1970: “[It’s] possible that a public that has been feeding on raw meat will find [the movie] Tropic Of Cancer tame, even innocent, like the author himself. One thing that I suspect audiences will not find tame, however, is the narration, taken word for word from the book” (Playboy 201).

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REFERENCES

[1] Martin, Jay. 1978. Henry Miller: Always Merry And Bright. NY: Penguin; p. 471; [2] MacNiven, Ian S. (ed.). 1989. The Durrell-Miller Letters, 1935-80. London: Faber & Faber, p. 392; [3] Wickes, George, ed. 1996. Henry Miller And James Laughlin: Selected Letters. New York: Norton, p. 226; [4] Decker, James. 2007. “Literary Text, Cinematic ‘Edition’: Adaptation, Textual Authority, and the Filming of Tropic of Cancer” in College Literature, Summer 2007; n12; [5] Brassai. 2002. Henry Miller: Happy Rock. U. Of Chicago Press; p. 155; [6] Evans, Robert. 2002. The Kid Stays in the Picture. New Millenium Press, p. 176-177; [7] Grobel, Lawrence. 2000. Above the Line: Conversations about the Movies. US. Da Capo Press, p. 24; [8] Dearborn, Mary. Happiest Man Alive: Biography of Henry Miller. NY: Simon & Shuster; p. 296; [9] Howard, Joyce (ed.). 1986. Letters by Henry Miller to Hoki Tokuda Miller; pp.155; [10] MacNiven, Ian S. (ed.). 1989. The Durrell-Miller Letters, 1935-80. London: Faber & Faber, p. 438; [12] Journal of Marketing, Vol. 35, No. 1 (Jan., 1971), pp. 74-85; [13] U.S. Federal Trade Commission: http://www.ftc.gov/reports/violence/Appen%20D.pdf , p.28; [14] Decker, James. http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3709/is_200707/ai_n19434698/pg_14, Note 22.

delay...

I've been insanely busy with other things. I hope to get back to posting by May 9th.

Kerouac Lets Miller's Dinner Get Cold

“[Jack] Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, and Lawrence Ferlinghetti, among others, admired Miller greatly, no doubt recognizing in spiral form’s figure-like flights like jazzy improvisation that marked their own compositions,” writes literary professor and author, James Decker [1]. Miller’s free use of language and subject matter helped inspire that beat generation, and Jack Kerouac was no exception. In the summer of 1960, an opportune moment for the two iconic writers to meet was thwarted by the deteriorating mental state that Kerouac tried to medicate with alcohol and would soon after lead to a Big Sur personal breakdown.

Jack Kerouac (1922-1969) was propped up as the “king of the beat generation” whether he liked it or not; such was the impact of his On The Road (1957) and the mystique of the scene of the beatnik elite with whom he associated. By 1960, The Dharma Bums, Dr. Sax and The Subterraneans had been published, the latter being prepared for release as a major Hollywood film. His celebrity was at its peak, everyone wanted to know him, and alcohol helped him deal with the attention and the increasing feeling that everyone was trying to use him (he would eventually die of cirrhosis of the liver at age 47).

The Dharma Bums (1958) impressed Henry Miller, who had been sent a review copy at his home in Big Sur. Miller was moved to write the publisher, Viking Press, and express how he was “intoxicated” “from the moment I began reading.” “No man can write with that delicious freedom and abandonment who has not practiced severe discipline …. Kerouac could and probably will exert tremendous influence upon our contemporary writers young and old … we’re had all kinds of bums heretofore but never a Dharma bum, like this Kerouac” [2] Henry forwarded the book to Lawrence Durrell, pleading for him not to dismiss it (as he did the Beats), adding: “I say it’s good, very good, surpassingly good. The writing especially. He’s a poet. His prose is poetry. Or, shall I say, the kind of poetry I can recognize” [3] Kerouac was thrilled with the news of Miller’s letter: “a real breakthrough for us,” he wrote to Allen Ginsberg [4]. In the following months, Henry kept sending mail to Kerouac, who reported in a letter to a friend that Miller “writes to me every week” [5].

Later in 1959, Miller was commissioned by Avon to write the preface to the paperback edition of Kerouac’s The Subterraneans. In it, Miller praised Kerouac’s voice as being representative of a movement against self-destructive nature of the Atomic Age: “Let the poets speak. They may be 'beat,' but they’re not riding the atom-powered Juggernaut. Believe me, there’s nothing clean, nothing healthy, nothing promising about this age of wonders—except the telling. And the Kerouacs will probably have the last word.”

Jack Kerouac (left) with Lawrence Ferlinghetti in a 1959 photograph taken by Kirby Ferlinghetti (Bancroft Library. University of California, Berkeley).

In 1960, Lawrence Ferlinghetti (b. 1919) was a Beat poet, publisher, and founder of San Francisco’s City Lights bookstore. He was also the new owner of a cabin in Big Sur, which he offered as a retreat for Kerouac, who was “at the end of [his] nerves” [6] about the impeding opening of the MGM film version of The Subterraneans and the resultant publicity machine. As well, he fled west to “basically to get out of New York and to get out of drinking so much,” recounts Ferlinghetti [7]. “Talking to admirers over Jack Daniels all night won’t lead to writing a new novel,” wrote Kerouac [7] before his departure; yet that's exactly what happened upon arrival.

Kerouac arrived in San Francisco by train on or around July 22, 1960 [6]; “really happy for the first time in three years,” wrote Kerouac in his 1962 novel, Big Sur (p.5). Plans had been made a week before for he and Ferlinghetti to have dinner with Henry Miller upon Jack’s arrival: “Miller was going to drive up the coast from where he lived on Partington Ridge, to Carmel Highlands, to the house of a friend named Effron Doner. We were going to drive down the coast and meet there for supper,” remembers Ferlinghetti [8]. But Kerouac snuck into San Francisco without first notifying his sponor, and was found in the early-afternoon drinking next door to City Lights Books at Versuvio’s bar.

A contemporary view of the interior of Vesuvio's (image from Vesuvios' website).

As time passed, and Kerouac drank and socialized with “old buddies,” Ferlinghetti did the math and realized they had to leave for the three-hour drive if they were going to make it in time for dinner. Kerouac kept putting off the departure, beginning a series of courtesy phone calls to Miller with apologies and assurances like, ‘‘I’ll tell you what, we’re leaving now, we’ll be there by eight o’clock, for sure.’ “[H]is voice on the phone just like on his records,” wrote Kerouac of Miller in Big Sur, “nasal, Brooklyn, goodguy voice” [9]. At 10 PM, Kerouac made his final appeal to Henry, of which he would write, “we’re all drunk at ten calling long distance and poor Henry just said, ‘Well I’m sorry I dont get to meet you Jack but I’m an old man and at ten o’clock it’s time for me to go to bed, you’d never make it here until after midnight now.” [9].

Ferlinghetti “gave up on the whole scene” and drove back home without Kerouac, to his cabin at Bixby Canyon in Big Sur. Kerouac would later feel “awful guilt” about standing Miller up, “because he’s gone to the trouble of writing the preface to one of my books” [9]. But, he admits that what he was really thinking at the time was, “Ah the hell with it he was only getting in on the act like all these guys write prefaces so that you dont even get to read the author first,” a perspective of thought that Kerouac defines as a “remorseful paranoia” and “an example of how really psychotically suspicious and loco I was getting” [9]. Kerouac remained at the bar until late, took a taxi into Big Sur, stumbled through the Pacific darkness with a lantern to find Ferlinghetti’s cabin, and was found sleeping in a nearby meadow the next morning [7].

Kerouac would write of the rest of his stay in Big Sur in his novel of the same name (1962), in which the natural utopia surrounding him is just a backdrop for his alcoholic binging and a nervous breakdown, in what the Literary Kicks website calls his "most depressing (but fascinating) novel." In 1961, Kerouac wrote of plans to return to the coast and “See Henry Miller this time” but, as far as anyone knows, a meeting between the two writers never happened.
The Vesuvio bar still exists and seems to sustain itself, in part, on the ghost of Kerouac's drunken night here . At its intersection stands a since-christened Jack Kerouac Alley.

Eric Lehman reviews The Dharma Bums and Big Sur at Empty Mirror Books, and has written a travel essay about Big Sur, which includes references to both Kerouac and Miller.

References

[1] Decker, James M. Henry Miller and Narrative Form: Constructing the self, rejecting modernity. New York: Taylor & Francis Inc, 2005; p. 155.
[2] Charters, Ann (ed.). Kerouac: Selected Letters 1957-1959. New York: Viking Press, 1999; p. 157.
[3] MacNiven, Ian S. (ed.). The Durrell-Miller Letters, 1935-80. London: Faber & Faber, 1989; p. 331: Letter, Oct. 30, 1958.
[4] Charters, Ann (ed.). Kerouac: Selected Letters 1957-1959; p. 158, letter of October 15, 1958.
[5] Charters, Ann (ed.). Kerouac: Selected Letters 1957-1959; p. 177, letter to Philip Whelan, January 10, 1959.
[6] Charters, Ann (ed.). Kerouac: Selected Letters 1957-1959; p. 260, letter to Ferlinghetti, July 8, 1960.
[7] Ferlinghetti, Lawrence. “How Henry Miller and Jack Kerouac Never Met” in, Anctill, Pierre, et al. (eds.). Un Homme Grand: Jack Kerouac at the Crossroads of Many Culures. Ottawa: Carleton University Press, 1990; p. 70-71. All of the unsourced assertions made in the telling of Kerouac missing the meeting with Miller come from this account.
[8] Ferlinghetti (ibid); in the memoir, Big Sur (1962)—written closer to the actual events than Ferlinghetti’s memoir—Kerouac states that Henry's friend lived in Santa Cruz (p. 185).
[9] Kerouac, Jack. Big Sur. New York: Farrar, Straus and Cudahy, 1962; p. 158.

The Annotated Nexus - Pages 49, 50

49.0 In the basement apartment, Dr. Kronski prepares to give Stasia a physical examination, but his assumption that this is all some set-up for sexual mischief is apparent. Mona’s concern, for the sexually predatory nature of Kronski’s words, is justified when Stasia cries “Rape!” from behind closed doors.

49.1 hermaphrodite
Before Stasia’s examination, Dr. Kronski (9.2) rather rudely jokes that he may discover that she’s a hermaphrodite. See 17.2 for Miller’s previous description of Stasia being both male and female.

49.2 rudimentary tail
Along with the statement above, Kronski jokes that he may detect basic evidence of the existence of a tail on Stasia. As with any human, he would find her tailbone (coccyx), perhaps even an elongated one, which some evolutionists believe is a vestigial organ: a useless remnant of our biological past. Kronski is not being scientific, of course; his exaggeration is a dehumanizing insult, implying that Stasia is a freak of nature, probably meant as a judgment of her sexual orientation or nature. One can’t be sure of this reflects the opinions of Kronski (Emil Conason) or are simply those of Miller, embedded in Kronski’s characterization.

49.3 examination
The whole point of this physical exam was due to a challenge initiated from Stasia in 48.6, for Kronski to “explore [her] anatomy” (instead of her submitting to a psychological exam). I don’t quite understand her motivation, so I don’t really get the surprise and offense that propels the psychodrama of this whole scene. Are the women (and Henry) playing childish games with Kronski (i.e. is he being baited and misled), or is Kronski a straight-up rapist? (p.50)

49.4 “if were a fancy house”
I have only one edition of Nexus (Grove Press, 1987) from which to compare Kronski’s line “You’d be better off if were a fancy house.” My knowledge of technical grammar rules is not perfect, but it seems to me that there’s a typo here: it should be, I think, “this were a fancy house.” This is Kronski’s sneering response to Mona’s criticism that he’s acting as if he were in a bordel, and not a doctor’s office. A fancy house is just another term for brothel or whore-house; according to Cassell’s Dictionary of Slang, it was used from the late 19th-century to the 1930s. By saying that Mona would be “better off,” Kronski is calling her a whore, although he states that Stasia is even more suited to the role.

49.5 long room
As Kronski continues his examination from behind closed doors, Mona nervously paces in the apartment with Henry. I mention this here merely to help construct the dimensions of their Henry Street apartment (see note 9.15). As a basement apartment, it would be long, as it would extend the length of the house above them.

50.0 Henry and Mona catch Kronski in the act of trying to forcefully mount Stasia. Defending himself against criticism that he’s a bastard and sadist, Kronski threatens that, if he were mean, he would have them all locked up in a mental asylum for this farce of moral turpitude. Embarrassed, Stasia snaps at Mona, whom she feels is treating her like a child.

50.1 landlady
The landlady at Henry Street is first mentioned here on page 50, although she will re-appear on several pages of Nexus: 173, 182, 186, 191, 195, 223-225, 274, and 305. Her name is Mrs. Skolsky (p.195), and she will be examined later for the more significant references. Here, Henry is simply worried that the commotion of Mona and Stasia screaming at Kronski will prompt the appearance of the landlady with a clever.

50.2 “too normal”
Kronski doesn’t understand why he is being verbally and physically assaulted by Mona and Stasia for his apparent sexual assault. He doesn’t understand "the fuss," stating that her exam proved her to be “normal.” In fact, he admits, he was “excited” by the fact that she was “too normal.” This phrase is up for interpretation, but my guess is that he thought he was being used to test for her heterosexual tendencies and found, he believed (we don’t know what happened behind those doors) that those sexual impulses for men were more than normal, they were actively enthusiastic. Explaining his excitement, Kronski shouts, “What’s wrong with that?” Again, Stasia either encouraged him behind closed doors, or he is rationalizing his sexual assault with a false, deluded “she was asking for it” defense. We’ll see, with Stasia’s bizarre reaction to follow on page 51, how it’s quite possible that she presented Kronski with a schizophrenic scenario.

50.3 “I chimed in”
Henry comes to Kronski’s defense by agreeing, “Yeah, what’s wrong with that?” I’m not sure what to make of Henry’s reaction. Either Henry is playing his part in this somewhat surreal psychodrama (as is Stasia, apparently), or else, presented with an apparent rape-in-progress, is indifferent because he’s in agreement with the “she was asking for it”-type, jerk mentality. Again, page 51 will seriously put sympathy for Stasia into question, as she may just be playing games (or maybe she's crazy). It’s worth noting as well that Kronksi tells Henry that, by doing this, he was doing him “a good turn,” implying that his actions were motivated by a request for a favour from Henry.

50.4 belfry
This is, of course, a reference to the “bats in the belfry” metaphor for insanity: the top part of a church steeple (head) is occupied by bats (disprution). “It’s her belfry that needs looking into,” says Kronski regarding Stasia. He offers to look into her belfry, but is not sure what it would prove.

50.5 moral turpitude
Kronski then threatens to have all three of them locked up in an instant, for moral turpitude. This American legal concept is still being used to deny foreign travel or immigration entrance to the U.S., described as “conduct that is considered contrary to community standards of justice, honesty, or good morals,” such as behaviour deemed to involve “inherent baseness or vileness, shameful wickedness, depravity….” Kronski claims they wouldn’t have a “leg to stand on” in defense, but states that his lack of meanness and their friendship prevents him from taking this course of action.

<--- previous page 48 . next page 51-52 --->

Henry Miller In Rock

Rock music is partly characterized by rebellion, so it’s no surprise that a literary rebel like Henry Miller makes an occasional appearance in that world (although not very often—why not?). The following is a listing of Miller references in rock lyrics, titles, artwork, and interviews, by musicians who have been inspired by Miller.

The Beatles
In a recent article in The Times (U.K.), Barry Miles has suggested that it’s possible that Paul McCartney had Henry Miller or Hubert Selby “at the back of his mind” when he wrote the line “the dirty story of a dirty man” in The Beatles’ “Paperback Writer.” Miles attributes this to the fact that a young McCartney had worked at his London bookshop, Indica Books, where they “had imported American paperback copies of a number of popular titles that were not yet published in Britain: these included Henry Miller's Sexus and Hubert Selby's Last Exit to Brooklyn.” Of course, the lyrics don’t hold up that this is Miller, as it mentions that this “dirty man” has a “clinging wife” and a son “working at the Daily Mail.” John Lennon, apparently, was a Miller fan. A biographer writes that, when Lennon was at art school, he and one-time Beatle Stu Sutcliffe (who died at age 21) used to “sit for hours at Ye Cracke discussing Henry Miller and Kerouac and the ‘beat’ poets, Corso and Ferlinghetti …” [1] “We used to go to Paris,/ and everybody would buy Henry Miller books,” wrote Lennon in a poem called “On Censorship And Henry Miller,” which is posted as a Miller tribute on Valentine Miller’s website (although I couldn’t identify the source or context for this poem). In the end, it would be ludicrous of me to suggest that Miller really had much influence at all on The Beatles, especially since they didn’t honour him as one of the collage of famous people on the cover of the Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band LP (yet they chose comedian Max Miller—the nerve!)

[1] Norman, Phillip. Shout!: The Beatles in Their Generation. New York: Fireside, 1981, p. 63.

Bob Dylan
Although Dylan never wrote any songs about Henry, he was inspired by him and wrote about him in a couple of his free-form poems. See my full posting about Miller and Dylan.

Henry Rollins
As with Dylan, I’m not sure of any songs directly about Miller, but punk rocker Henry Rollins is a huge fan who speaks and writes about Henry a lot. See my posting about Miller and Rollins.

Country Joe and the Fish
“Hungry Miller & the Hungry World” (instrumental) is just one of the songs composed by Country Joe and the Fish, for the soundtrack to the 1970 film adaptation of Quiet Days in Clichy. The title track song opens with the lyrics, “Come on people and listen to me, I'll tell you the story of Carl and Joey, The girls they fucked and the women they laid, This is the story of the love they made.” The sequel to this song contains all of the expletives one might find in a few Miller novels (and which the filmmakers exploit with glee), along with French accordion and a chorus of “Oh quiet days in Clichy, Oh quiet days in Clichy.” Add a song about Henry waiting for “Mara,” and you have a group of songs more explicitly about Henry Miller than anywhere else. On the DVD edition of the Quiet Days In Clichy film, there is an interview with Country Joe about the writing of these songs. You can buy the songs right now on iTunes, if you like (if you're already registered with them).

Wilco
Country Joe records may not be flying off the shelves these days, but you can be sure that alt.country rockers Wilco still draw the adoration of thousands of fans. How else to explain how a band can get away with putting out a book? The Wilco Book (2004) helped explosed Wilco fans to Henry Miller with its inclusion of Miller’s art essay, The Angel is My Watermark, along with some of his paintings. Front man Jeff Tweedy told RES magazine about his reason to include it; how it reminds him that they, as artists, are just “making shit up,” shifting the “burden of importance” onto the critics. The Wilco band biography, Wilco: Learning How To Die (Greg Kot, 2004), mentions that Tweedy carried Tropic Of Cancer around with him for eight years. Tweedy approached their album Summerteeth (1999) like a Miller “autobiographical novel” [p. 137], quoting Miller from his Books in My Life, where he states that he is not interested in the “flimsy truth of facts” but instead the “truth of emotion, reflection and understanding, truth digested and assimilated” [Books, p.169; Wilco, p. 138]. In 2004, the Wilco album A Ghost is Born contained a song called “Hummingbird.” Miller is alluded to in the title (for his essay collection, Stand Still Like The Hummingbird), and in the lyrics, which drop lines like “His goal in life was to be an echo,” and “Remember to remember me.”

...And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead
Jason Reece is a member of the Austin band named above (Trail of Dead for short). In interviews, he sometimes talks up Miller, as he did in this 2001 NME Q+A: “When he wrote, he wrote from the gut, he was very visceral. He acted on impulse, but also analysed things, delved in to the truth of the matter. He wanted to feel life.” The following year, Henry’s mug ended up on the back of (and right on the disk of) Trail Of Dead’s album Source Tags & Codes.

The drawing of Miller, by James Olsen (© Interscope Records), that appears on Trail Of Dead's Source Tags & Codes (2002) album.

Jewel
A verse from Jewel’s “Morning Song” (from 1995’s Pieces Of You) goes, “You can be Henry Miller and I'll be Anais Nin, Except this time it'll be even better, We'll stay together in the end, Come on darlin', let's go back to bed.” Can’t find anything with Jewel talking about Henry, but clearly she knew something about his biography.

Interpol
In a Newsday interview with Rafer Guzman from September 13, 2007, Interpol vocalist and guitarist Paul Banks had the following to say: “[Henry Miller] is my absolute favorite. There's a kindred spiritship to it. It's not about his craft or anything. I just identify with his tone."

Mission Of Burma
Post-punk outfit Mission Of Burma named their song “That’s When I Reach for My Revolver” from a Henry Miller essay. The tune appeared on their 1981 EP, Signals, Calls & Marches, and was later covered by bands such as Catherine Wheel and Moby. Bassist/singer Clint Conley admitted in a Jim DeRogatis interview that he “cribbed it from Henry Miller." In Miller’s “When I Reach for My Revolver,” (published in Stand Still Like The Hummingbird), he begins by stating that he had cribbed it himself from John Dudley, who had once “chalked up over my door: “"When I hear the word Culture, that's when I reach for my revolver"." Both Mission of Burma’s Conley and (I assume) Miller did not realize until later that the quote was popularized by (if not originated with) Nazi swine Hermann Göring.

There are a few more minor references, i.e. a Montreal band called Villa Borghese, and a woman named Danielle Lubené with a song called "My Henry Miller." Feel free to add any other references to Miller in Rock in the Comments section. There is also a posting about references to Henry Miller in the Popular Culture, which is still accepting new discoveries.