THE FIRST EXCHANGE OF letters between Henry Miller and me took place in April 1974 and appears in Chapter 2. Sometime during the early summer of 1974, Henry Miller sent me an essay he had written—“Fear and How It Gets That Way”—which he was planning to submit for publication. I had not asked for this boost and its effusiveness embarrassed me. He prefaced it with this letter:
5/6/74
Dear Erica—
Please let me or Bradley know as soon as you can if you want any changes or deletions made. He has a copy which he will send to some editor soon as you give the OK.
This in haste.
Henry Miller
TWO WRITERS IN PRAISE OF RABELAIS AND EACH OTHER
Certainly anyone whose book is on the best-seller list (even if at the bottom), needs no review, no boosting. These few words, therefore, are gratuitous, or, if you like, homage from one writer to another. Above all, a warm, heart-felt tribute to a woman writer, the likes of which I have never known.
In some ways, this book—Fear of Flying—is the feminine counterpart to my own Tropic of Cancer. Fortunately, it is not as bitter and much funnier. The author has quite a gripe about shrinks, which most of us share with her. I say the author, but in my head I cannot separate the author from her chief protagonist, Isadora Zelda. In the case of Tropic of Cancer, on the other hand, critics and readers alike were inclined to think I had invented Henry Miller. To this day many people refer to it as a novel, despite the fact that I have said again and again that it is not.
Erica Jong, the author, said to me in a letter that she thought it silly to make distinctions regarding the genre or category of a book. A book is a book is a book, to paraphrase Gertrude Stein. However, people do seem to concern themselves unnecessarily over this question of identity. As a rule, the autobiography is not as popular as the novel, unless it is sensational. I think, on the other hand, that publishers are always fearful of autobiographies, because of the threat of libel and slander, or defamation of character suits. But then publishers, in the main, are a timid lot, full of fears of every sort.
The wonderful thing about Erica Jong’s book is that she or Isadora is full of fear, all kinds, but makes no bones about it and makes us laugh over her tragic moments.
The book is definitely therapeutic, not only for women but for men too. It should be read for one thing by every shrink, every psychiatrist, every psychologist. It should also be read by Jews. They take quite a drubbing in this book. It’s hard to call the book “anti-Semitic”, since the author herself is Jewish and knows whereof she speaks. In her biting humor and sarcasm she is merciless toward her own people. Of course she is not unique in this. One has only to think of Swift, O’Casey, Knut Hamsun, Shaw, Celine, and Henry Miller. Yet all of us were writers who loved their country. We merely despised our country’s inhabitants.
Yes, I know that of all the peoples in the world the Jews are reputed to be foremost in their ability to make fun of themselves, acknowledge their shortcomings. But if someone other than a Jew does this he is immediately called an anti-Semite.
It’s silly to go on pretending that under the skin we are all brothers. The truth is more likely that under the skin we are all cannibals, assassins, traitors, liars, hypocrites, poltroons.
Do not misunderstand. Erica Jong is far from being a misogynist or a misanthropist. I get the impression that she loves life, and people too. But her intelligence does not permit her to overlook their glaring faults. It is this gusto of hers which supplies us with some of the funniest and raciest passages. One is tempted to say—“She writes like a man”—only she doesn’t write like a man but like a 100% woman, a female, sometimes a “bitch”. In many ways she is more forthright, more honest, more daring than most male authors. That’s what I like about her. In short, she is a treat for sore eyes.
Parenthetically, I wonder when or if Germaine Greer is going to give us a book on this order. Germaine Greer is another woman writer who tickles my fancy and elicits my admiration. Certainly, when I read her interview in Playboy, was it, I could scarcely believe my eyes. Men are no match for women of this sort.
The interesting thing is that these two women are endowed with strong intellects, they are cultured, they have read well, and have excellent taste. But above all, they are fearless.
I cannot help but wonder how Women’s Lib. regards this book of Erica Jong. Here is a liberated woman who tells of her need for men, or, as she sometimes puts it, her need for a lay. She admits to being horny, and how! We don’t hear enough from women on this subject. With all this, and she goes the limit, this book can scarcely be called “pornographic”. It is full of obscenity, whatever that means, but underneath it all, there is a most serious purpose. The book is full of meaning and a paean to life. The death-eaters are the shrinks, teachers, parents, and so on.
What is most intriguing of all to me is that she has made a British shrink, who is really a first-class scoundrel, a delightful character. He makes an awful lot of sense, despite his propensity for handing out one-liners, like Henny Youngman.
This lousy bastard turns out to be the saviour of Isadora Zelda, though he may not have meant to be. It’s he who, by his unabashed treachery, opens her eyes, makes her face herself, makes her accept reality. He is certainly an “anti-hero.” Bastard though he is, he knows how to get along, or, I suppose I should say, “he knows on which side his bread is buttered”.
I dwell on this character because too few of us are ready to acknowledge that we can learn (as much or more) from an evil character as from a good one. We know that the do-gooders wreak a lot of havoc, but we do not seem to know that the evil-doers can work a lot of good in this fucked-up world. If they accomplish nothing more than to shatter our idealistic dreams, they have done enough.
But I am exaggerating somewhat, as regards Adrian, the British shrink and no. 1 bastard. He is not truly evil, he just doesn’t give a fuck if he happens to ruin a few lives in the course of his having his way.
I had a most intense feeling of joy, of liberation, when the bandages finally fell from Isadora’s eyes. Thought it was a bit of a let-down to see her return to her husband (another shrink, but an Oriental one), I felt that she would remain on her own two feet. Once the bandages are removed you don’t put them on again. Maybe she, author or protagonist, still has a fear of flying—who hasn’t?—but she can cope with it.
I feel like predicting that this book will make literary history, that because of it women are going to find their own voice and give us great sagas of sex, life, joy and adventure.
Henry Miller
When Henry Miller first wrote to me last April to declare himself my loyal and “devoted fan,” I was delighted. Feminist critiques of Miller notwithstanding, he is our modern American Rabelais—always as drunk with language as he is with sexuality; as much in love with words as he is with women.
Long before I began hearing from Miller in the morning mail, I loved the sheer energy of his writing, the rollicking, headlong power of his sentences; the way he could make language mimic the inner turmoil of thoughts.
Miller has been the most misunderstood of writers. Because he dared call for “a classic purity where dung is dung and angels are angels”—he managed to incur the hostility of countless critics, post office authorities and censors who had never read Sappho, Catullus, Petronius, Rabelais, Chaucer (or even Shakespeare or Donne, for that matter) and therefore saw the frank sexuality in his work as an instance of modern depravity—when in truth it represented the resurrection of an ancient tradition.
In dealing with contemporary literature, we tend to lose historical perspective. Sexuality in literature is not new. In fact, it could be argued that the last 150 years have been aberrant in this regard. There was greater open sexuality in the arts in Fielding’s time, Swift’s time, Shakespeare’s time, Chaucer’s time than there has been in the last century or so. Until very recently, publishing was still governed by the aesthetics of a post-Victorian age which was more comfortable relegating sexuality to pulp fiction (and keeping so-called “high art” free of it) than about realizing that sexuality should be an organic part of literature.
The Victorian, after all, does not give up sex; he only gives up open sex. He does not practice abstinence, but only hypocrisy. He will abhor any trace of sexuality in a book of poems, yet drool over a porno novel in private. It was this hypocrisy that Miller set out to challenge. Why relegate sex in the outhouse, the whorehouse, the 42nd street bookstore? Boccaccio, Villon, Rabelais and countless others recognized the awesome power of sexuality in life; why should a modern writer have to write around it?
Yet Miller was banned for years because of his refusal to practice this hypocrisy (and so were Lawrence and Joyce). Quite recently, attempts were made in Vermont to ban Ms. magazine on the grounds of having published an allegedly obscene excerpt from my novel, “Fear of Flying.” And the British reviews of the same novel have been full of outrage and apoplexy about its frank sexuality. (This from the country of Blake and Lawrence and Fielding and Chaucer!)
Sexual censorship is still with us and is not likely to go away until sexual openness and health become the norm in society. (I expect, never.) Even though it has been proven again and again that censorship accomplishes nothing, that it in fact creates interest in a book rather than disinterest, there continue to be outraged parents and school officials who press for censorship. One can only interpret this as their need to censor their own prurience. They are not “sparing their children,” for no sooner is a book banned than children become more avid than ever to get their hands on it. Besides, no one has ever proven that sexuality in literature promotes sexuality in life—any more than books about diet promote weight loss. In fact, the analogy holds true to this degree: people seem to read about sex rather than engage in it, just as they tend to buy diet books rather than to diet.
Perhaps Miller was censored, not because he advocated sex, but because he fought hypocrisy. He is one of the relatively few modern authors whom we can speak of as a liberator. His autobiographical novels recount the vicissitudes of a soul in search of itself. The energy of the struggle, the honesty with which the struggle is depicted—lead one to identify deeply with Miller even when one’s own experience has not been precisely parallel.
Unfortunately, we do not have a recognized tradition of this kind of novel in America. The first-person mock-memoir is often misunderstood as a roman à clef or an autobiography and critics waste their time trying to pry the moustaches off characters to discover their “real” identities. We forget that Proust, Colette and Celine wrote this kind of book before Miller, and that the intermingling of fact and fiction is the stock-in-trade of the novel—that most undefinable of forms. What matters is not what we call a book—but whether or not it awakens us, jolts us, makes us see the world through new eyes. Sex can be part of that jolting, but it need not be. And that should be for the writer to decide—not the censor.
5/24/74
Dear Erica Jong—
Just a little word to say I am recommending your book to all and sundry and getting hearty “thank you’s” for it. I even recommend the book to foreigners … Which reminds me—have your publishers submitted it to French, German and Italian publishers? If not, I would recommend their trying Rowohlt in Germany, Editions Stock in Paris, and Longanssi in Milan, Italy. Use my name just as strongly as you wish.
Today I am reading a book about one of my favorite playwrights—Sean O’Casey. Did you ever read or see his “Juno and the Paycock?” or Synge’s “Playboy of the Western World?” or, from another angle—“The Dybbuk” (Eye bothers me—excuse spelling.) I’m curious about certain books and authors—if you have read them or not? For instance—“A Glastonbury Romance” by John Cowper Powys—“Mysteries” (and the others) by Knut Hamsun, Isaac Bashevis Singer’s books and that epic novel by his brother—wrote something about “Ashkenazi???”
I always see you in my mind reading. A voracious reader. (“Boulimique”) How about “She” by Rider Haggard? or “Charles Dickens” by G. K. Chesterton? (a beauty!) or Sean O’Casey’s plays? or “The Playboy of the Western World” by Synge?
You must have liked the Dadaists! What a pity that so few of the good, but less well-known French writers have not been translated.
Well, I really have nothing much to tell you. By the way, did you find Bradley Smith a pain in the ass? He’s not “a great friend” of mine, just another publisher. Bores me to tears often all ego. And that tone of voice! I hope it wasn’t too painful. I didn’t recommend that they call on you, you know. Despite what Time wrote last week, I don’t like visitors, except unusual ones. And normally not writers. Painters are better. Writers are mostly like ingrown nails. Do you agree? Worse than shrinks some times!
Cheers now!
Love from all your new fans!
Henry Miller
May 28, 1974
Dear Erica Jong—
The enclosed is from my son Tony’s wife. (They are splitting up after 6 months of marriage. She needed your book like poison. I hope it did the trick!) To tell you the truth, it did me a world of good too, upon a second reading. Now Tony, my son, is reading it. Everyone I have lent it to or bought a copy for has flipped. Mostly women. They all intend to write you and thank you. It hits women hard—and it should do the same for men.
This time, on rereading, I find Adrian even more delightful. A lovable bastard. I wonder that you ever got him out of your hair.
I think you have done, for men and women, in this book, what I did in Tropic of Cancer. Those last scenes in your book—the room in the rue de la Harpe (I think my “Max” actually lived in that street), the missing Tampax, the toilet in the hall, all are wonderful, like those vast boisterous reliefs O’Casey gives you after a heartrending scene. You really give the illusion of being free at last. It’s quite wonderful. Absolutely therapeutic. And the way you treat your own people—only you and Isaac Singer have dared be so honest about the Jews. (He lives near you, I think. Ever meet him?) I did, once, and what do you suppose we talked of for an hour or more? Knut Hamsun. He was Singer’s idol, as he was and still is, mine. I wish I could write like him. I have read “Mysteries” at least 5 times—and will reread it some more doubtless. Must stop.
my best,
Henry Miller
P.S. I’m even recommending your book to Europeans (who read English.) Do let me know which foreign publishers have taken it. Wouldn’t you like to see it in Turkish?
P.S. No analyst could have thought up a better “cure” than Adrian by his betrayal. That was a marvelous bit!
1 June 1974
Dear Henry (if I may),
I am up to my ass in Miller! Your absolutely wonderful letters—& now two books sent me by Noel Young (ON TURNING EIGHTY & THE WATERS REGLIT-TERIZED)—& Bradley Smith’s gift to me: MY LIFE & TIMES BY HENRY MILLER. I think your great gift is having learned to write with all the naturalness of speech—& having learned to put your whole personality into your writing—to make a generous gift of yourself in your work. Most writers never learn this. They are niggardly. They try to conceal themselves (which no artist can ever do), & what comes across is forced & stingy. What you have—in your books, in your letters, in your watercolors—is generosity—a greatness of spirit that cannot be taught; one is born with it. But most people are born without it. I think I like ON TURNING EIGHTY as much as any essay of yours I’ve ever read. I love what you say about youth being “premature old age.” I get younger too, as I get older. Whenever I feel really lousy, I look at your example & think—“I can always look forward to being eighty!” Maybe by then I’ll have learned to stop suffering & to live in the present. ONWARD! I also love your line, “One of the big differences between a genuine sage & a preacher is gaiety.” I want to use that somewhere—maybe as a quote for my next novel. Literary critics—especially here in America—have a real prejudice against humor. They tend to feel that great books are gloomy books. They’ve never really absorbed the lesson of Rabelais. A few weeks ago a woman I know (a fan of my poetry & a practicing gestalt therapist) called me to tell me about FEAR OF FLYING. “Very amusing,” she said, “but now I think you have to drop the humor & write a really SERIOUS book.” “But my humor is serious,” I said. “Oh,” she said.
To answer your questions about foreign publishers, Fear of Flying is due to be published in Denmark & Sweden, in Holland, in England.* So far, no French-publisher has taken it—though someone has an option, at present. Don’t know who. Laffont in France had it for months. All their “scouts” loved it; but the final decision was “too American.” I met the editor who finally turned it down. He said something about how the French weren’t interested in psychiatry. I think he had the wrong idea about the book entirely. Maybe you know a French publisher who would understand the book. If so, please tell me where it should be sent. So far—no German publisher either. Maybe they think the book too anti-German: I’d love to have your ideas. There is a British agent working on selling the book in Germany & France, but I’m starting to distrust all agents. My current NY agent is screwing me royally on the movie rights (an enormous mess at the moment). All too absent-minded to keep trace of it. How do you manage????
I don’t usually compose at the typewriter (la macchina?); like you, I feel more honest when I spill it all out in ink on the page. But I just bought a new typewriter that lets me change the ribbon colors easily & quickly & I’m having so much fun with my new toy that I wanted to write to you on it. Still, the typewriter constricts me, changes my style. I don’t type fast enough. I keep using the same one finger—like masturbating instead of fucking. (Writing in script being like fucking).
Adrian was a bastard—& not that lovable, after a while. He was really very bourgeois, very much the pater familias, very un-free. He had a kind of magnetism (what is modishly called) charisma nowadays. There was a post-script to the Adrian story which I never wrote. Shortly after leaving Isadora, he knocked up his girlfriend, & when I visited them both (en famille) in London, last year, they had a little girl (with a squint eye like her Daddy) & they called me her “godmother.” It was really awful. I ought not to write this. I always deny that any of the characters have any basis in reality—but how can I lie to you? Writer-to-writer, the truth can be understood. You know how characters change when one tries to capture them on the page. Even if you want to tell the truth, the truth escapes.
Please thank your daughter (& her friend) & your daughter-in-law for their good wishes. I’m delighted to have Diane’s letter. I feel a little guilty for being a home-wrecker…. Did my book do it? You seemed to imply that. I seem to have become the patron saint of adulteresses. Last week, a young woman told me “I’ve just read your book & loved it. Spent last night with a beautiful man & now I’m going home to my husband. Thank you!” I stood there with my mouth open. I guess people are so tight-ass about their sexuality that this book (all about IMPOTENCE & unfulfillment) is seen as a ticket to liberation. I do mean to have Isadora survive at the end—& be an inspiration to women who want to survive. There are too damn many books about women who commit suicide, women who go mad, women who destroy themselves over men…. I wanted it to be clear (especially in the last chapters of the book—the tampax scene, etc.) that humor was Isadora’s survival tool. I myself need to laugh at least 3 times a day or I get sick.
I could go on & on with letter, but I have to get ready to go to a convention of goddamned booksellers in Washington. Thousands of book-salesmen in pinky rings & I am being sent by my paperback publisher (NAL) to sign books & blow kisses & all the rest of it. So I’m off to Washington for three days. If I come to California this summer (to see about the supposed movie of Fear of Flying) I want to meet you & the Miller menage. Especially Val & Diane—& friends. I promise not to be boring & literary. I hate visits from writers too. They always WANT SOMETHING. Blurb me! they cry. Or grant me! Or Guggenheim me! You must get lots of fans wanting to touch you like the magic man. It must be awful for you at times.
Lots of hugs & good wishes……….
Erica
*& In Italy by Bompiani
6/5/74
Dear Erica—
I wrote a few pages about your book which Connie is typing for me. Will send it late today or tomorrow, so that you may suggest changes or deletions, if necessary. Bradley will place it for me.
I wrote Christian de Bartillat of Editions Stock—6, rue Casimir Delavigne—75006, Paris, France today, urging him to give your book serious consideration. I told him you would send him a copy of the book.
I also write H. M. Ledig-Rowohlt of Rowohlt Verlag—Hamburger str. 17, 2057-Reinbek-bei-Hamburg, West Germany—same thing.
Rowohlt is more than my publisher, he is like a brother to me. Bartillat I only know since a year or so. He is very friendly and has a great regard for me. He listens or pays heed to my suggestions, which is more than my American publishers do.
I’m worry I never saw that review of your book by Updike, or any review for that matter.
About Singer, yes, he is one of the very few Jews I know who is not afraid or ashamed to tell the whole truth about the Jews. Some of the episodes he relates are fabulous. I hope my remarks about your treatment of the Jews won’t prove injurious to you. Some people will start calling me an anti-Semite again, but you must know that I am not. I simply can’t swallow that stuff about “the Chosen People.” (Unless it is meant—“chosen to suffer.”) Yes, you are a liberator. But Diane, who loved your book, is not yet liberated. To be honest, she’s a pain in the ass. Always a long face, sad, mournful. Always concerned with herself Can bore the shit out of you. I’ve given her up, as hopeless. No. Your book had nothing to do with the divorce….
Can you give me Bompiani’s add. in Italy? I want them to send a copy of the Italian version to a woman I correspond with in Sicily. Must be tough to be a woman there.
Well, I must stop now. Write me from Washington or anywhere when you have the impulse.
Cheers!
Henry
P.S. Bradley thinks you are coming soon. Finds you very attractive.
Saturday—6/15/74
Dear Erica—
Hugs and kisses to you too. No, I am not Aries, I am Capricorn (Dec. 26, 1891)—really ancient, what! But Aries is my rising sign. I have been in love several times with Aries women—always disastrously. (Sic) So, don’t let me fall in love with you!
About my review…. Bradley took it and thinks to place it with the Saturday Review. (We did think of the others you mentioned.) I have almost no traffic with American mags, nor British. Bradley inserted two sentences, with my permission, which supposedly help clarify my thinking. (Maybe that’s what’s wrong with par. 2. (?)
Listen, don’t waste time on Diane Miller. Not worth it. I know this sounds bad on my part, but I have good reason to talk thus. She is an egotist and worse. She seems to listen, is very grateful and all that, but goes her own sweet way just the same. She’s a real (Gentile) neurotic. She thinks highly of me, because I paid attention to her and read her poems. She fucked Tony up good and proper. His own fault, of course. He doesn’t seem to do too well with women. Quite an ego too, very handsome, and outwardly very sure of himself. (Bad combination.) I think he has talent for writing. He just got a job as book reviewer for the Hollywood Reporter—five dollars a review! I read his first two and must say I couldn’t have done better myself. By the way, he too loves your writing—has just finished your novel. You think I am loose—but that’s precisely what every one says about your writing. I think I’m best when I’m running on endlessly—sort of Dada style. I wish I were crazier! “Madness is all”, to paraphrase the bard.
Thank you for the Updike review. It is good, a bit slick here and there, but…. Wish there were more like this. By the way, I never read him—I don’t read any Americans, it seems, except Isaac B. Singer. But I saw on T.V. “The Ugly American” with Brando. Wasn’t that based on his book?
(Detour: Do you know I blushed for Brando when I saw “The Last Tango in Paris”. When he gives his first fuck, with overcoat on, all hunched up by the door—he reminded me of The Hunchback of Notre Dame. I thought the film cheap, vulgar. Would you believe that I hate vulgarity?)
I hope you are reading Céline—either “Journey to the end of the Night” or “Death on the Instalment Plan.” I don’t know if you read French or not. In the case of Cendrars, you should read him only in French. (To translate Céline, by the way, is a feat!)
The truly magnificent writer is John Cowper Powys, now virtually forgotten. If you have the time and the patience for it, “A Glastonbury Romance” will do wonders for you. I paid a visit of homage to him in his old age. He was living in a small town in Wales. Have had only two or three such meetings in my life:—with him, with Cendrars, with Chaplin, for example.
I am getting a lot of fan mail from “cunts”, especially in France, where a wonderful documentary on me is now showing. As a result of it, the French government (M. de Peyrefitte) has written to ask if I would accept the Legion of Honor. He writes—“I know you despise such things….” But I’m accepting it. Why not? It’s nice to be despised by the intellectuals and made a Chevalier by the Establishment!
Well, here’s a good hug for you. I love to hear from you. Hope you visit me when you get to the Coast, yes?
Henry
June 29, 1974
Dear Henry,
I loved your letter about my “Sexual Guru” piece. I myself had some misgivings after I wrote it. Of course, a writer is seen as a liberator and a giver of truth, and one should not mock that very deep response from people—however nutty they are. I am grateful to have a gift that goes straight to people’s hearts and guts—but at the same time I know how impossible it is to deal with all these outpourings of emotion. If I were to get involved in even one-fourth of the people who write to me, my life would consist of nothing but that. Each one seems to think he is unique and that I have received no other letter but his. This week I’ve been plagued (by telephone and mail) by a young man who is having an adulterous affair in New York (his wife is in Indiana). For some reason he feels that I must meet his beloved and cast blessings upon them both. I told you I was becoming the patron saint of adulterers! I should write this man what Oscar Wilde is purported to have said about homosexuals: “I don’t care what people do as long as they don’t do it in the streets and frighten the horses.”
I loved your letter from Lady Jeanne and I am returning it to you for your files after many mirthful readings and rereadings. In general I used to think that it was men who were preoccupied with penile size. Women know better. It’s not the size but the skill and the hardness and the passion and etc. I tend to think the talk about size is myth, too, but up to now I always thought it was a male myth. As for racial differences between penises, what can I tell you?! The number of Arabs and blacks I have known could be counted on the fingers of one amputated hand! I don’t know much about vaginal passages, either. I do think people differ a lot in their love-making, but very little of that comes from anatomy. The movement of the body in some way mirrors the movement of the soul.
Enough of sex! On to money!! Yes, New York magazine pays for articles. Everything from $400 to $700 for a short piece, to $1,000 and up for a longer piece. Do you have something to send them? Or maybe we could some day do an article together? Possibly a discussion of sex?! (Or maybe that would be better for Playboy.) I raise this possibility half in jest, but maybe it would appeal to you, and if so, let me know.
About the nut mail, I value it too, and certainly agree with you that it’s more interesting than the academic drivel. I get a little frightened of nuts from time to time, though, because I never know how far they’re going to go. Sometimes they actually show up on the doorstep. Once last summer I was dashing into the house with arms full of grocery bags, an umbrella over one arm, a briefcase, a shoulder bag, and a shoe that had a broken heel, and as I stood there struggling with the locks, looking very ungurulike, hassled and distraught, a young man came forward and said, “Are you the poet?” “I’ve never felt less like a poet in my life,” I said. The question is, do poets shop for groceries? And are you a poet while choosing groceries? I leave these great existential questions to you.
I always have a feeling I will disappoint my admirers. If they expect me to be serious, I usually wind up making a million wisecracks and acting like a clown. If they expect me to be beautiful, I show up in old bluejeans and my slobbiest clothes. I don’t really know why I do this—maybe to emphasize the gap between the writer and the writing. In one way, you know, the writer and the writing are one, but one hates to have a reader make literal equivalences. I think we are also afraid because when these strangers come to us, they come to us with a very intimate knowledge of our souls and we have no knowledge of theirs. They have read our books, but they have no books we can read. The relationship is unequal from the start. So often I have had the experience of being kind to a person only to discover that I was the only person to tolerate him in so many years that he interpreted my kindness as an invitation to deep, passionate love. At such times I feel like the Pied Piper or a seductress. But what’s the alternative? Becoming cold, formal and Edmund Wilson-ish? It’s just not in my character to be that way. (Edmund Wilson, as you know, used to have a famous card he sent to correspondents. He would check off one of numerous answers, all of them “no’s.” Edmund Wilson does not dance, Edmund Wilson does not speak, Edmund Wilson does not read manuscripts, Edmund Wilson does not sing, etc. John Updike told me about a month ago (I met him for the very first time after his review of my book) that he had designed for himself a series of “repellent rubber stamps” to stamp his correspondence—but then he chickened out and didn’t have the heart to use them. He gets mostly Jesus freaks, he says. The rubber stamps are interesting to me because in one of Updike’s books, a writer named Henry Bech does actually stamp all of his correspondence with things like “It’s your Ph.D. thesis, please write it yourself” or “Henry Bech is too old and doubtful to submit to questionnaires. “It’s the sort of fantasy a writer would have, but it’s very hard to go through with it. I myself love writing letters when I have a good correspondent like you, someone who doesn’t measure words, but writes straight out of the heart.
I got a lovely letter from Twinka, who sounds delightful. Haven’t answered it yet. If she wants to play the part in Fear of Flying she ought to get in touch with the producers, Julia and Michael Phillips, who live in Malibu and whose office is at Columbia Pictures in Burbank. Not having met her, I have no idea whether she’d be right for the part, but I suppose she would know the method of making her interest known.
I loved your description of “Last Tango in Paris.” Yes, Brando did look like “The Hunchback of Notre Dame” in that first fucking scene. I must say that the film was far too anal for my taste. Writing about it in The New York Review of Books, Norman Mailer said the film proved that “love is not flowers, but farts and flowers.” Typical Mailer line. The sex seemed terribly violent and crude to me—scarcely tender or erotic at all. One good thing about it was that anonymous room bathed in amber light where the lovers met. But as lovers they seemed very unlikely to me. I didn’t like either of them very much.
I congratulate you on the Legion of Honor and I congratulate you on being “despised by intellectuals.” There is no surer sign that a writer will live. There are certain super-intellectual writers of puzzles who appeal immediately to academics (I am thinking particularly of Pynchon). They are admired at least in part because they provide such good material for doctoral theses. There are so many puzzles to unpuzzle. A writer like you who defies all categories, who is at once straightforward and passionate yet crafty and clever will always confound the academic critics.
By the way, I have a good friend named David Griffin (he recently married the lady to whom Fear of Flying is dedicated), and many years ago, when he was at Columbia, he wrote a master’s essay called the Possibility of Joy: Henry Miller’s Role in the American Tradition. I think he sent the essay to you years ago and corresponded with you about it. He’s just given me a copy of it, which I have not yet read, but I can tell you that he loves your work and understands it. He has particularly interesting notions about why your work was banned for so long—not because of the four-letter words only, but because of the liberating effect of the work. If everyone were to soar as you do, civilization (Joyce calls it “syphilisation”) would crumble. Anyway, David wants to be remembered to you, and is terribly fond of you, though he’s never met you. He feels that your books have changed his life and changed all his ideas about writing. I’m sure that many, many people feel that way. I myself have met dozens who do.
I may be coming to California next week (if not, we’ll be there some time this summer) and I will call you. I’d love to take you to dinner and talk. Helen Smith says you are hard to reach by phone, but maybe she will do the phoning for me.
With love,
Erica
P.S. I am enclosing a copy of my newest poem, which is written in the style of Whitman, whom I adore.
July 4, 1974
Dear Erica—
Tell David Griffin to get in touch with me. He’s faded out of my memory. And thank you for the dope for Twinka I don’t think it’s a part for her, but who knows? She’s got the makings of a real actress in her.
I’ve often wanted to ask you, then forget, what is the meaning of that word “menarche”, which occurs somewhere about middle of your book. Can’t find it in the dictionary, English nor French. Did you make it up.
I enjoyed your homage to Walt Whitman, who was truly the greatest, greater, I mean, than Dostoievsky or Tolstoi? On page 2 on top of page, are 4 lines about molars of corpses that baffle me. Am I stupid or did you write it unthinkingly? Forgive me if I put it to you this way, but I have often found on rereading something I wrote the day before a phrase or paragraph which makes no sense to me. I had something in mind but lost it in trying to express it. I know about “poetic license”—but is that what this is?
Your publisher (secretary) wrote me again. They are all out of those blue blurbs, which you wrote and which I like to enclose in my letters. They seem happy that you sold the movie rights (6 figures!) but I am not so sure if it will do the book good or kill it. It may make money, yes. All my movie ventures lose money!
This is my 20th letter today. Must stop. Hope to see you later in summer. I take it you are now adapted to your marriage. Good for you! Cheers & hugs.
Henry Miller
P.S. I have no planets in Aries but three on conjunction in Scorpio, facing Aries. A bit lop-sided. (Mars, Moon, Uranus.)
7/7/74
Dear Erica—
You’re right—there is a similarity in our handwriting. Only yours is still more free and open, I feel. Since I lost the sight in my right eye I make mistakes, mis-spell words, leave others out, etc. It’s a tribulation.
Your interview was wonderful to read. I would have answered in much the same way. You have a wonderful memory for what other writers have said. Do you keep these phrases in a notebook for ready reference?
I can see from your answers what “teaching” has done for you. I lack all that. I always feel that I am a bit stupid when I talk. (One of the men I greatly admire is______? can’t think of it now! He wrote short books on St. Francis of Assisi, Charles Dickens, Robert Louis Stevenson. Also the “Father Brown” series. He was a converted Catholic and could always make Shaw or any of them look like dummies in a debate. Whom am I thinking of? When he wrote his column for the papers (in a pub or café) he laughed aloud over what he was writing. He could make me swallow the Virgin Mary and all that shit. He was a “believer” and a great wit. Now I remember—Gilbert K. Chesterton! If you never read his little book called “Charles Dickens”, please do. I know Dickens is a pain in the ass—but not this book about him. It’s a gem.
I am full of thoughts today; could write you a dozen pages but don’t want to impose on you. Just gave Val the New York review to read and share with Twinka….I wrote a savage letter to my New Directions man. Imagine—they have 17 books of mine in circulation and my royalties on them for the last 5 years have not exceeded $6,000.00 a year!!! And they think I should be happy and grateful! I am furious. I am going (at last) to get myself an American agent (probably Sydney Oman’s agents—I know them quite well). Last night I gave Oman (and his agent’s wife, a Frenchwoman) the blurb (blue) you wrote about Fear of Flying. I always carry one in my pocket to hand out. (Like Rimbaud carrying that belt around his waist with 40,000 fra. in it—gold francs!)
Why doesn’t your publisher reprint your blurb? Have they stopped their print of you now that you have been sold to the movies? They seemed so proud of that achievement. As I said somewhere—“The publisher, whether good or bad, is the natural enemy of the author.” (Like that little critter—Riki—Tike—Tabi—which always kills the cobra. What’s its name again?
Octaroon. Do you know that word? No one in my family seems to know it. I was once in love with an octoroon—she was my secretary and assistant in the Western Union—Camilla Euphrosmia Fedrant. What a name!When I read your poem on Whitman (who for me is the one and only!) I meant to urge you to look up a chapter in “Books in My Life.” It is called “A Letter to Pierre Lesdiam.” He was a Belgian poet, who wrote in French. I had a long correspondence with him. He was a wonderful person (almost a saint) and a great reader. He was also my champion in Belgium, a Puritanic country somewhat like Norway.)
I am fond of that chapter because of the comparison or sous I made between Whitman and Dostoievsky. When you find time, do read it. I beg you. It’s the nearest I come to you in your critical language. ( You have, at least, two languages—one, the poet (whether novelist or poetess), the other the teacher-critic. I love both.
Another book I can’t help recommending to you is Maurice Nadeau’s book on “Gustave Flaubert”. Flaubert may seem like a dead horse to you but not this book. It’s another gem. Should keep you awake nights and pissing in your pants all day. Put out by a small publisher in Long Island. I think it was the Library Press, or something like that. Consult a guide book—or Publishers’ Weekly.
The last I have to tell you today is this. You made a “reader” out of Connie, my secretary. That girl hardly ever cracked a book. She hadn’t even read my books, even though she was my secretary. Finally she did read two—with much effort. Anyway, I persuaded her to go out and buy your book. She did. She read it. She rejoiced and she suddenly wants to read. Promised me she will now tackle “Mysteries,” “The Idiot” and “Tropic of Cancer”. Never knew that reading could be such a pleasure. Says you opened her eyes. For which the bard be praised. Hallelujah! Erica Go Bragh! Nam myo ho renge kyo. ( Yes, I say the latter every night before falling asleep. I am going to add you to the list tonight).
One last thing. In my last letter I forgot to answer your question about collaborating with you on something for a mag. The truth is, I’m a bit timid. I could do better probably, if we discussed some writer we both liked, as I did with Pierre Losdam.
As for sex, I don’t think I have another word to say on that subject. You are only 32 or 33—you can still tackle it. I am 83. Makes a difference.
Once I wrote about—nothing, though I pretended I was writing about a friend’s drawings. I consider that a feat. Just words. By the way, Hesse speaks marvelously in a posthumous book—as well as in “Siddhartha” of course—about things like immortality and other words we bandy about as being nothing but words. Yet, “nothing but words” can mean so much, n’est-ce pas?
You and I, we have the itch. We eat words, shit words, and fuck them good and proper too, I suppose.
Enough! Cheerio!
Henry
P.S. I am a little melancholy today. My beloved Lisa Liu, the Chinese actress and opera star, has just left for Hong Kong. She took a copy of your book with her. I won’t see her for 3 or 4 months. So, I’ll work!!
P.S. I never read or heard of Roethke, whom you mention several times. Twinka is lending me Sylvia Plath’s one and only novel.
July 20, 1974
Dear Henry,
I’m delighted to have your letters and delighted to have a new fan in Irene Tzu. I also love the photograph of the watercolor you sent me. Seeing your watercolors has made me want to paint again. I haven’t really done it since I was a first-year college student. I painted up a storm the summer I was 18—and that was the last time I really gave myself to it. I was at a writers colony in Massachusetts—had gone there to follow my college poetry teacher, with whom I was in love, of course. He was a pompous little cock-of-the-walk who arranged to have all his infatuated girl students follow him into the mountains where he could seduce them—away from the watchful eyes of the Barnard faculty. He lived (that summer) in a converted chicken coop, which he made a big deal about as a “writing coop.” I was in love with him but too scared to sleep with him. When I finally had my big chance, I blew it by getting so incredibly drunk on two bottles of chianti that I puked red puke all over him (and me). He carried me home, put me tenderly into bed, saying, “This is what friends are for.” I think he was probably relieved at never having to fuck me. It turned out later that he was all swagger and talk and very little action. Besides, I had a boyfriend at home to whom I was being unbelievably loyal. I still believed in romantic monogamy in those days. (The boyfriend at home turned out to be the Madman in Fear of Flying.)
Anyway, during all the imagined sexual upheavals of that summer, I painted, (though I was at the colony as a student of writing). I used to set up my portable easel in a seventeenth-and eighteenth century cemetery and do portraits of people out-doors—in or near the graveyard. I was very melancholy and adolescent and thought myself the most sensitive young woman in the entire world—like everyone else. My paintings were always full of high, brilliant color, but my drawing was never up to my grandfather’s Old Master standards. My grandfather draws with all the expert technique of an Ingres, and one of the reasons I suppose I became afraid of a career as an artist was because I knew that my drawing would never measure up to those family standards. Now I begin to realize that the freedom and color sense that I had was very valuable in itself and ought to be reexplored. Your splendid new watercolor reminds me of the fantastic vision of life which is so much more important in painting than sheer draughtsmanship. I have never done watercolors on wet paper, but seeing yours and the joy they embody, I feel I would like to try it. I used to paint in oils on scarcely primed canvas. Sometimes I would make the oil and turpentine into a very thin wash and use it like watercolor, bleeding into the canvas, and sometimes I would use the paint very thickly with a palette knife. (All this is very distant recollection at this point). Also, I seem to have given away nearly all of my paintings. Whenever somebody asked me for a painting, I’d give it, as long as they promised to have it so people would see it. They are scattered now in the homes of friends I never see anymore. Tant pis: Someday I’ll do some real painting again.
I thought it would fascinate you to see the shit my paperback publisher is using to promote Fear of Flying. I read with great empathy and shared fury your remarks about being ripped off by your publishers. I agree that the publisher is a natural enemy of the author. It can’t be otherwise, really. The kind of openness to experience that one needs to be an author has to be antithetical to the selective blindness of the businessman (or even businesswoman). The woman who is doing the movie of Fear of Flying is a case in point. Utterly ruthless, with a kind of foxy brilliance about films, but ready to sacrifice everything and everyone—including her husband, lovers and me—for the project at hand. I used to think that I was one-track minded about writing. I used to think that writing made me “selfish” (my mother always called me “selfish” because I was sitting in a room and writing). But these movie people make me realize that I haven’t even begun to understand the meaning of the world “selfish.” They make the publishers appear like holy saints.
Yes, you are absolutely right: we eat words, shit words and fuck words, too. There is nothing more comforting than writing. One of the more intelligent of my shrinks once said, “It makes you feel good to write because in your writing you tell the truth whereas in your life you have to lie to keep people from getting mad at you.” It is true that I find it very hard to express anger directly and that I seem to express it through my writing. I feel exhilarated after a morning’s work because I have been telling the truth to myself, and what can be better than that?
I spoke to Helen and Bradley last week and I expect to come to California either at the beginning of August or in the first week of September. I can’t wait to see you and talk to you. I don’t give a shit whether we write anything together (on sex or writing or anything at all). I just want to talk and share and get to know you. I keep reading your books—Black Spring particularly delights me. I am mad about “A Saturday Afternoon” and your cry for “a classic purity, where dung is dung and angels are angels.” I promise to get a hold of Books in My Life, which I confess I’ve never read, and your other long reading list, too! I sure as hell have a lot of work to do. Give Connie a hug for me, and tell her I’m glad I turned her on to words, words, words.
I send you a big hug, too, and hope to see you before too long.
Erica
P.S. Tell Twinka (who sounds like a darling girl) that I will write to her one of these days. I have been working all week at the Sherry Netherland Hotel here with the producer of the movie of F of F. It’s where you see famous movie stars talking on telephones plugged in behind the tables while they sip at their gazpacho, eye each other, overhear conversations about deals (“I know I can get him for you, but you better not bother him while he’s on location”) and watch the roaches crawl over the banquettes. With all that Hollywood opulence, the Sherry Netherland still has roaches!!!
Saturday—7/20/74
Dear Erica—
The Bradleys were here today. Suggested I write and tell you you can stay here in my house while in L.A. Erica, I’d gladly do that, but it all depends on how long my son will be absent. He has just taken on a job which will keep him traveling about the country, but I can’t be sure how long the job will last or he will last. In any case, there’s a nice place only about 2 miles away—The Santa Yenez Imo—at which you could stay if this is unavailable. I take it you can make your own breakfast, yes?
Did I tell you that I showed or lent your book to my heart doctor—Jewish, very serious and all that—and he liked it immensely. Then he said—“I can tell you what’s the matter with her!”
I said—“What’s that?”
He replied—“She can’t accept romantic love.” (sic) Curious observation, no?
I’m going out tonight to appear before about 100 people in an Actor’s Laboratory and answer questions—on anything (double sic)
Look for Playboy next month.
Cheers now! Henry
P.S. We have a well-heated pool here—bring your bikini, if you have one. You can also go in in the raw, if you prefer.
July 27, 1974
Dear Erica—
I am in a lousy mood today, so forgive me if I don’t respond in kind. The publicity the NAL are giving you is fabulous. Good for you! The bastards won’t even reprint my books. Can’t get anywhere with them, even thru my astrologer friend Sydney Ommar who is very close to some one at the top. (Incidentally he blames his multiple sclerosis on his women clients. Says they all made him go to bed with him! (Another sic.) “Oman’s complaint. “Anyway I took on his literary agents the other day. Maybe they can do something about my fading royalties. Strange about the royalties, because I seem to get more fan letters than ever—from all over the world. ( Yesterday I got 6 albums of Stockhausen’s music from an unknown fan in Iceland.)
I made a public appearance a week ago at the Actor’s and Director’s Laboratory here. Apparently it was a huge success! It was a “Question & Answer” evening. No lecture, no reading. I can’t do those things. Nor could I teach lit!
Tony is still away, so if you come soon, I can put you up in his room.
Forgive me for suggesting you read all those books—I can’t help it—you’re a born reader. May I add one more (to read only when you have plenty of time!)—
“A Glastonbury Romance” by John Cowper Powys.
That’s it for now. Cheers and a good hug. Je t’embrasse.
Henry
P.S. Did you know that the Japanese are not allowed to show the pubic hair? Witness the enclosed. And have you observed the difference between the Chinese and the Japanese erotic pix?
Dear Erica—
Enclose p.c. from my old friend Emil White of Big Sur who I persuaded to buy a copy. Forgive me for answering you by p.c. yesterday but I am overwhelmed with work.
I think it’s too bad you are giving so much time to writing script for your book. You know what those bastards usually do? At first they say—“Bravo, just what we wanted.” After a couple of months they write—“Sorry, but we deemed it best to turn over your script to our own script writers in view of their greater experience. They may make a few slight changes.” Which means that when you see your script again you won’t recognize it. It will be a professional piece of pure Hollywood shit! Think on it! Ask your Julia if I’m not right? Don’t listen if she says no. Ask around!
Cheers and a good warm hug.
Henry
September 10, 1974
Dear Henry,
Hope you’ll forgive the long delay in answering. To tell you the truth, I’m embarrassed to write you because of all the time I’m spending on the screenplay. I think you’re probably right that it’s a waste, and it is delaying my new book. It’s also delaying my trip out West and my meeting with you. At this point I expect to come more towards the end of September, September 25 or thereabouts. I will bring my rough draft of the screenplay and spend some time out there visiting you and the producers. As I said before, you don’t have to put me up.
Allan and I spent two weeks in Italy trying to recover from all the upheavals of this last year. We had been having a lot of problems coping with the book and each other and the demands of millions of new people entering our lives via Fear of Flying. Ours has been a rocky marriage from the start, but sometimes I think that rocky marriages are the only kind that survive at all. We scream and yell at each other and get all the shit out, and we’ve been doing a lot of that lately. One thing that seems particularly remarkable about our relationship is that we really do change towards each other—not merely in the sense of putting up with stuff silently—but really altering our expectations of each other. With all the crises, it’s been a good summer.
I was delighted that the Times ran your Fear of Flying piece and I thought their changes and deletions were hilarious. WHAT DID THEY HAVE AGAINST THE WORD HORNY? And what’s wrong with that good old-fashioned word “lay”? The Times is really antediluvian. Their little note under your piece made their exclusions all the more funny. Thank you for approving of mine. I thought you might not necessarily like my linking you with ancient tradition, but your link with Rabelais is clear and indisputable. One of my very favorite of your books is Black Spring and one of my favorite chapters in Black Spring is “A Saturday Afternoon” where you talk about dung and angels and Rabelais rebuilding the walls of Paris with cunts. From 1964 to 1969 I used to teach English literature to various college students. I taught a survey course of English lit from Chaucer to the eighteenth century, and my students always used to be astonished at how much sex there was in the poems I made them read! Of course I always chose the stuff that tickled my fancy. Year after year students used to say to me things like, “Wow, before I met you I never realized English literature was so dirty.” They were surprised to find out that farting existed in Chaucer’s time and that Shakespeare knew about cunts.
Monseiur Henry, I almost forgot to tell you how much I loved your “Insomnia” piece from Playboy. I love what you say about belonging to that tribe of human beings who never learn from experience. Me too. What you write about the devil rings absolutely true and your characterization of the entertainer needing that sea of silly drunken faces is brilliant. The piece starts in lightness and ends in profundity. It’s very moving—particularly imagining you writing on the walls at 5 A.M. I know that impulse. You’re wrong, though, about women not liking to hear about the soul. Only some women are bored by soul. Where the devil comes in is that he always makes us fall in love with our opposite numbers—those people who will inevitably cause us pain. You could find any number of steadfast, beautiful women who would not keep you awake at night with their antics. But that would bore you because part of the fascination is the unattainability, and part of the intensity comes from pain. What you say about Buddhas and Christs being born complete is probably true, but the very idea of it bores me. They would also get down on their knees and talk to ants and cockroaches, but not about love.
After much thought on the matter, I’ve decided the strategy of hiding one’s love—the “good advice” friends always give—isn’t possible. If you’re really gaga for someone, they know it, no matter how you hold back and pretend not to call and pretend not to miss them. How do they know? The devil, I guess.
On this subject: I’m enclosing something that was sent to me by a man who has been pursuing me for about four years and has finally decided to give up the ghost. Of course I love him—but I love him like a great big teddy bear, and that isn’t exactly what he wants. I find myself doing to him all the cruel things that have been done to me so often. Not that I mean to be cruel, but just that when someone is obsessed by you, everything short of total surrender (as you say) seems cruel. But the trouble is, that the lover would be BORED by total surrender and the whole thing goes around in circles.
I can’t wait to read the whole Insomnia book. It’s marvelous.
Love,
Cheers,
Hugs,
Erica
Sept. 10, 1974
Dear Erica—
I hope the enclosed doesn’t dampen your spirits. It’s strange that the only two unfavorable reactions to your work came from women—young women too. I hear your piece and mine appeared the same day (last Saturday) in the N. Y. Times. I haven’t seen the paper.
When are you thinking of getting out here—soon? Tony is back home but his sister is still away—for how long I don’t know. Twinka is eager to meet you and make dinner for us. Did she tell you that her mother fell hard for your book—bought an extra copy to lend to friends. Is quite crazy about you. So is Midori, the Japanese (American) secretary to my Japanese Dr. Watanabe. I haven’t seen or heard from Bradley in several weeks. Have you?
Now I have sciatica, a nasty ailment that hurts like hell. Better see me before I collapse altogether! (Twinka just lent me Sylvia Plath’s novel.)
Hope all’s well with you and that you’re finished with the screenplay.
Cheers now and here’s hoping to see you soon.
Henry
Sunday—27th
Dear Erica—
I’m not surprised that you are thinking of returning soon! I remember how I made the same decision on my air-conditioned nightmare trip. After California nothing looked quite the same. And I never regretted the move from N.Y.
Of course, Big Sur is one place out of a million. You have to see it this trip. Too bad I can’t show you around, but I’m still a semi-invalid. (Sometimes I wonder if I have a good fuck left in me any more! I am full of erotic dreams and desires, if that counts for anything.
Did Hoki tell you that I wrote the lyrics for that first song in the cassette? She put it into Japanese, altering it somewhat. I forgot the title I gave it now, but it had something to do with the garden door and in Japanese you never refer to the garden door as that is only for servants and tradesmen. What a people, eh! So it became “Love in Osso Buco” or whatever that South American rhythm is.
Erica, I did receive a slew of publicity material from NAL but not the books as yet. Before I send those beautiful packets out to my foreign publishers I ought to know which foreign publishers have already taken the book. If you can’t tell me, please give me the name of your N.Y. publisher—and address. I have only the British edition here. If you have a literary agent, I’m curious to know why they haven’t done more work with foreign publishers. In any case, I am happy to do things, only I don’t want to duplicate any one else’s work.
Another request—do you mind giving me the names and addresses of magazines in U.S.A. which pay fairly well, including the N. Y. mag.? My agents, the Halseys, sent all my correspondence, problems, wishes and mss. to their “associate” agent in N.Y.—Scott Meredith. He wrote them on receiving these things and I read a copy of his letter. I have the feeling he is not too impressed by the chapters from my book—“not like the Tropics,” etc. Which to me is shit! A writer should evolve, not repeat himself, no? So I may have to place some of my work myself eventually. I don’t have much luck with Americans. (Except the few fans!)
And I need to make more money than I have been. My expenses now just about total my income. The Internal Revenue gets the bulk of it—am paying $40,000 this year. Too, too much!
But enough of this…. I hope to see you soon. Get out of N. Y. as soon as you can. Get into the sunshine and—take up tennis or ping pong. You need some sort of exercise. Of course, if you have a friend who has a warm, indoor pool, that’s the best of all. You’ll probably make a lot of new friends here.
Good luck, good cheer, love and continued admiration.
Henry
P.S. I still haven’t received copies due me of “Insomnia” nor advances from American or French publisher. Doubleday is the American distributor. The book is out, I understand, but I haven’t seen any publicity of any kind about it anywhere. I hate Doubleday!
10/31/74
Dear Erica—
Enclosed is from American writer I hoped would interest a Japanese publisher in your book. Now it seems unlikely. Strange to me that the Japanese tightening up on sex, eh? Anyway, this fellow wrote an article of 15–20 pages on the Japanese attitude toward pubic hair. Rather scholarly and amusing piece of work. Now, as you see, he asks me for editors’ names. This follows on my request the other day for names of good paying mags. (Send both, if and when you find time.) You may like to write Ron Bell (address in margin: Ronald V. Bell
6-8-15 Nakamo
Nakamo-pu
Tokyo 164-Japan)
and see his article on Hair. I feel quite certain he did not send it to Playboy, Oui, Penthouse nor the new one, Gallery. I am going to write one or two good Japanese friends there in Japan for you now.
(Incidentally, P.O. here not accepting any mail for France now. There is a strike there. Japan O.K.)
By the way, Lisa is back for just 3 or 4 days. Phoned from S.F. airport yesterday. She mailed me a big spread in a Hong Kong (British) paper on the film. Seems it’s a 12 million dollar production, with 1,000 extras. She received high praise for her role. Was invited to a preview of film based on Hesse’s Steppenwolf two nights ago. Afterwards we were all invited to dinner in a new Moroccan restaurant on Sunset & Stanley Ave.—you eat with your fingers. Ellen Burstyn was the hostess—big bill! Anyway, we got talking about your book and to my surprise she said she met you. She first played in Tropic of Cancer. (Paris.)
Just heard from Bradley. Things are moving slowly, especially money. But good things are in the offing.
I had a letter (addressed to the Halsey Lit. Agent, his associates) about my work and problems. Rather cool, I thought. I hope he’s O.K.
Best to you, dear Erica. I can hardly see. Must stop now.
Henry
P.S. You should try “The Busy Bee, in Hollywood. I forget—that’s my job!
Hm
11/10/74
Dear Erica—
Mike Wallace of “Sixty Minutes” was here a few moments ago with his producer and latter’s wife. They want to set a date for me on their program soon. I agreed—Wallace is a hale and hearty man, intelligent and earthy. During the course of our conversation your name came up. Wallace wondered how it would be if he interviewed us (separately) on the same program. I told him that for my part it would be fine and that I thought you would also like the idea. (They would put the same questions to us.)
He said he would get in touch with you, so be prepared. He could also change his mind. Be prepared for that too.
Today in the L.A. Times Book Review Section there was a big review of Doris Lessing’s latest novel. After reading the review (which was favorable) I decided never to read her. They also reviewed a new book by Nabokov whom I can’t read either.
I am almost finished with The Bell Jar of Sylvia Plath. I must confess I don’t like her way of writing at all. I have no sympathy for her either. I fail to see the magic in her words. (Myopia on my part, no doubt.)
Now I have 6 plays of Anouilh to read, 3 of Girondoux and six books on Sufi poetry and philosophy. Too much. I wish some one could help me read all these bloody books.
Hope to see you here soon again. Glad to hear you finished work on your film. The new ending sounds good. O.K. now. Take care.
Cheers!
Henry
Dear Erica—
Hurts me to send you this! I’ll fix them yet! I never had a good or intelligent review from them for any of my books. Fuck them!
See you soon, I hope.
Henry
[The review in question has been lost. It must have been a negative one of Fear of Flying. I include Henry’s comments here to encourage the despondent writer. E. J.]
11/24/74
Dear Erica—
This is a feeble reply to your wonderful long breezy letter. First off, yes, the NAL did send the 25 copies. Thank you again. I think I have another letter to enclose from my Japanese friend, Ueno in Ichinoseki. Also a card from Ron_____?, about your book.
I have a hell of a lot of letters to write today and my eye already bothers me. It’s great that you still think of coming to California to live. (If you can, try to get some one to drive you up and down the State and around. There are many wonderful living places. (My Negro nurse, Charles, can’t understand why you would want to live in a shack. My shack (the original one) at Big Sur was the best home I ever had.
I read that piece by some woman in the L.A. Times today. Sometimes I don’t get what these reviewers mean. Yesterday I was interviewed by Joyce Haber, a sort of gossip columnist. Wonder what will come of it?
Too bad you can’t be with us for Thanksgiving. Hope to see you very soon. Love and cheers and all that!
Henry
Love from Twinka of course. Val isn’t coming until after Thanksgiving. My Lisa Liu won’t be back till early February. (But she misses me—that’s the thing!)
2/27/74
Dear Erica—
Enclosed are the letters you forgot. The last one, from Kodansko, just arrived today. Sounds very good. I can scarcely believe it. Now it’s for Japanese language, not English. I can hardly believe it. It would be a good idea, I think, if you are offered a contract that your agent stipulate they are not to censor, emasculate or bowdlerize your language. This would be, so far as I know, the first book in Japanese to use such language. Any way, good luck!
It was marvelous that you arrived in town in time to come to my birthday party. (Have you seen the photos in People mag.?)
You missed my toast last night. I took it from one of Buddha’s sayings. Here it is—“I obtained not the least thing from complete, unexcelled awakening, and for that very reason it is called complete, unexcelled awakening.”
Cheers and see you here soon again, I hope.