Henry Miller

From Philosopedia

Henry Miller (26 December 1891 - 7 June 1980)

Miller, who was born in New York City Yorkville section, was the son of a tailor, Heinrich Miller, and a housewife, Louise Nieting Miller. His parents were of German Catholic heritage.

For one monthly only, he attended City College of New York. Self-schooled, he was active with the Socialist Party.

In 1917 he married Beatrice Sylvas Wickens. In 1928 and also 1929, he vacationed in Paris with his second wife, June Edith Miller Smith. Until the outbreak of World War II, he continued to live in Paris but with the financial help of Anaïs Nin, one of his many lovers, who financed his first printing of Tropic of Cancer in 1934.

In 1931 he worked with the Chicago Tribune (Paris edition) as a proofreader, and it was a time when he was influenced by the French surrealists.

Tropic of Cancer, which in 1934 was published by Grove Press, resulted because of its graphic depiction of sex in an obscenity trial that tested the laws on pornography. Now considered a masterpiece of 20th century literature, it was written partly in stream-of-consciousness style and describes in detail and in the first person the author's sexual escapades. Anaïs Nin, who financed the work, wrote the preface (although some say Miller himself did).

In 1964, the U.S. Supreme Court, in Grove Press, Inc., v. Gerstein, cited Jacobellis v. Ohio (which was decided the same day) and overruled state court findings of obscenity.

George Orwell thought the novel was "the most important book of the mid-1930's" Norman Mailer, in Genius and Lust, called the work "one of the ten or twenty greatest novels of the century". The Modern Library named it the 50th greatest book of the 20th century.

Pennsylvania Supreme Court Justice Michael Musmanno, however, wrote

• Cancer is not a book. It is a cesspool, an open sewer, a pit of putrefaction, a slimy gathering of all that is rotten in the debris of human depravity.

In 1944 Miller married Janina Martha Lepska and in 1953 married the artist Eve McClure.

Miller, who was an amateur pianist, also was a painter and wrote about his painting.

For producer Warren Beatty, Miller appeared as one of the "witnesses" in Red, an epic film about the life of John Reed the Communist - he told of his memories of Reed and Louise Bryant.

Upon his death in Pacific Palisades, California, Miller's cremains were scattered off Big Sur.

(See The Henry Miller Library website.)