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Erica on Henry, this ought to be very good, curious what she has to say about Anais!!!
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The Devil at Large: Erica Jong on Henry Miller
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The book begins with a question: "Why Henry Miller?"
Miller remains among the most misunderstood of writers - seen either as a pornographer or a guru, a sexual enslaver or a sexual liberator, a prophet or a pervert. All the questions his life and oeuvre raise about the role of the writer in society, the impact of books on sexual politics, the impact of sexual politics on books, the threat of censorship to free speech and written expression are, unfortunately, as fresh today as they ever were." Part biography, part memoir, part critical study, part exploration of sexual politics in our time, The Devil at Large is an event: a book that promises to rescue Miller from the facile charges of misogyny, anti-Semitism, and titillation that have been lobbed at him over the years, and brilliantly captures the exuberance, audacity, and energy that defined his life and art. More than that, it is a reunion between a young writer and her mentor. In 1974, while Fear of Flying was still a relatively obscure first novel, Erica Jong received an enthusiastic fan letter from Henry Miller, then an old man of eighty-three. Miller credited himself with "discovering" Jong, and his faithful correspondence guided her through a year of enormous change. The two writers - chastised and celebrated for their lusty prose, accused of conflating autobiography with fiction in their respective generations - found they were kindred spirits, and began a friendship that would last until Miller's death in 1980. "Make it all up!" was Miller's appeal to Jong to become his biographer. But in reexamining Miller, Jong has not had to fictionalize. She has imparted a deeper understanding of a life whose dramatic particulars have long since been mythologized, dramatized, and cannibalized by those in search of a lusty life story. Jong puts the works, the letters, the loves through a prism that clarifies the creative impulse, making this slim book a quintessential chronicle of a writer's life and a mirror of our
Miller remains among the most misunderstood of writers - seen either as a pornographer or a guru, a sexual enslaver or a sexual liberator, a prophet or a pervert. All the questions his life and oeuvre raise about the role of the writer in society, the impact of books on sexual politics, the impact of sexual politics on books, the threat of censorship to free speech and written expression are, unfortunately, as fresh today as they ever were." Part biography, part memoir, part critical study, part exploration of sexual politics in our time, The Devil at Large is an event: a book that promises to rescue Miller from the facile charges of misogyny, anti-Semitism, and titillation that have been lobbed at him over the years, and brilliantly captures the exuberance, audacity, and energy that defined his life and art. More than that, it is a reunion between a young writer and her mentor. In 1974, while Fear of Flying was still a relatively obscure first novel, Erica Jong received an enthusiastic fan letter from Henry Miller, then an old man of eighty-three. Miller credited himself with "discovering" Jong, and his faithful correspondence guided her through a year of enormous change. The two writers - chastised and celebrated for their lusty prose, accused of conflating autobiography with fiction in their respective generations - found they were kindred spirits, and began a friendship that would last until Miller's death in 1980. "Make it all up!" was Miller's appeal to Jong to become his biographer. But in reexamining Miller, Jong has not had to fictionalize. She has imparted a deeper understanding of a life whose dramatic particulars have long since been mythologized, dramatized, and cannibalized by those in search of a lusty life story. Jong puts the works, the letters, the loves through a prism that clarifies the creative impulse, making this slim book a quintessential chronicle of a writer's life and a mirror of our
352 pages, Paperback
First published January 1,1993
This edition
- Format
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352 pages, Paperback
- Published
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January 1, 2001 by Vintage Uk
- ISBN
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9780099449218
- ASIN
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0099449218
- Language
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English
About the author
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Erica Jong—novelist, poet, and essayist—has consistently used her craft to help provide women with a powerful and rational voice in forging a feminist consciousness. She has published 21 books, including eight novels, six volumes of poetry, six books of non-fiction and numerous articles in magazines and newspapers such as the New York Times, the Sunday Times of London, Elle, Vogue, and the New York Times Book Review.
In her groundbreaking first novel, Fear of Flying (which has sold twenty-six million copies in more than forty languages), she introduced Isadora Wing, who also plays a central part in three subsequent novels—How to Save Your Own Life, Parachutes and Kisses, and Any Woman's Blues. In her three historical novels—Fanny, Shylock's Daughter, and Sappho's Leap—she demonstrates her mastery of eighteenth-century British literature, the verses of Shakespeare, and ancient Greek lyric, respectively. A memoir of her life as a writer, Seducing the Demon: Writing for My Life, came out in March 2006. It was a national bestseller in the US and many other countries. Erica's latest book, Sugar in My Bowl, is an anthology of women writing about sex, has been recently released in paperback.
Erica Jong was honored with the United Nations Award for Excellence in Literature. She has also received Poetry magazine's Bess Hokin Prize, also won by W.S. Merwin and Sylvia Plath. In France, she received the Deauville Award for Literary Excellence and in Italy, she received the Sigmund Freud Award for Literature. The City University of New York awarded Ms. Jong an honorary PhD at the College of Staten Island.
Her works have appeared all over the world and are as popular in Eastern Europe, Japan, China, and other Asian countries as they have been in the United States and Western Europe. She has lectured, taught and read her work all over the world.
A graduate of Barnard College and Columbia University's Graduate Faculties where she received her M.A. in 18th Century English Literature, Erica Jong also attended Columbia's graduate writing program where she studied poetry with Stanley Kunitz and Mark Strand. In 2007, continuing her long-standing relationship with the university, a large collection of Erica's archival material was acquired by Columbia University's Rare Book & Manuscript Library, where it will be available to graduate and undergraduate students. Ms. Jong plans to teach master classes at Columbia and also advise the Rare Book Library on the acquisition of other women writers' archives.
Calling herself “a defrocked academic,” Ms. Jong has partly returned to her roots as a scholar. She has taught at Ben Gurion University in Israel, Bennington College in the US, Breadloaf Writers' Conference in Vermont and many other distinguished writing programs and universities. She loves to teach and lecture, though her skill in these areas has sometimes crowded her writing projects. “As long as I am communicating the gift of literature, I'm happy,” Jong says. A poet at heart, Ms. Jong believes that words can save the world.
In her groundbreaking first novel, Fear of Flying (which has sold twenty-six million copies in more than forty languages), she introduced Isadora Wing, who also plays a central part in three subsequent novels—How to Save Your Own Life, Parachutes and Kisses, and Any Woman's Blues. In her three historical novels—Fanny, Shylock's Daughter, and Sappho's Leap—she demonstrates her mastery of eighteenth-century British literature, the verses of Shakespeare, and ancient Greek lyric, respectively. A memoir of her life as a writer, Seducing the Demon: Writing for My Life, came out in March 2006. It was a national bestseller in the US and many other countries. Erica's latest book, Sugar in My Bowl, is an anthology of women writing about sex, has been recently released in paperback.
Erica Jong was honored with the United Nations Award for Excellence in Literature. She has also received Poetry magazine's Bess Hokin Prize, also won by W.S. Merwin and Sylvia Plath. In France, she received the Deauville Award for Literary Excellence and in Italy, she received the Sigmund Freud Award for Literature. The City University of New York awarded Ms. Jong an honorary PhD at the College of Staten Island.
Her works have appeared all over the world and are as popular in Eastern Europe, Japan, China, and other Asian countries as they have been in the United States and Western Europe. She has lectured, taught and read her work all over the world.
A graduate of Barnard College and Columbia University's Graduate Faculties where she received her M.A. in 18th Century English Literature, Erica Jong also attended Columbia's graduate writing program where she studied poetry with Stanley Kunitz and Mark Strand. In 2007, continuing her long-standing relationship with the university, a large collection of Erica's archival material was acquired by Columbia University's Rare Book & Manuscript Library, where it will be available to graduate and undergraduate students. Ms. Jong plans to teach master classes at Columbia and also advise the Rare Book Library on the acquisition of other women writers' archives.
Calling herself “a defrocked academic,” Ms. Jong has partly returned to her roots as a scholar. She has taught at Ben Gurion University in Israel, Bennington College in the US, Breadloaf Writers' Conference in Vermont and many other distinguished writing programs and universities. She loves to teach and lecture, though her skill in these areas has sometimes crowded her writing projects. “As long as I am communicating the gift of literature, I'm happy,” Jong says. A poet at heart, Ms. Jong believes that words can save the world.
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مَن يجد في نفسه ميلًا لمؤلفات ميللر ويونغ سيجد في هذا الكتاب متعة خالصة!
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A feminist defends Miller against the charge of misogyny. An antidote to Kate Millet's Sexual Politics, which attacked Miller.
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Review forthcoming
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For all those out there that think Miller is just a mysoginst playboy, here is one of 2nd wave feminism's strongest voices presenting a new perspective. I really enjoyed this perspective on HM and his life.
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The creation of a book is a rite of passage for the author even more than for the reader. It is a way of stripping down to the essential being, a self-analysis far more profound than any professionally guided psychoanalysis and a way of remaking oneself spiritually. It is for this act of self-transformation that writers write. And they are fortunate when they recognize this, because such self-transformation is the only truly dependable reward of writing.
~ Erica Jong The Devil at Large
Nin’s independence both as a wife and as a lover seems beguiling. At first she appears as a beacon of liberation for women, but perhaps she was more enslaved to men than most of us. Anaïs had an independence in her marriage to Guiler that she would have never possessed with Henry. She remained tied to Guiler all her life, but she always needed at least two men to reenact her oedipal drama.
Her freedom came at a very high cost: she was unable to publish her journals freely during her own lifetime. In a way she traduced her art for the sake of her deceptions. She knew that women can have their sexuality as long as they don’t publish it.
I had an amusing encounter with Anaïs once at the Poetry Center of the Ninety-Second Street Y in Manhattan, where she was speaking after her edited diaries had begun to appear. At that point I had published only one or two volumes of poetry and was just writing Fear of Flying.
“Why did you edit the sexual parts out of your diary, Miss Nin?” I asked from the audience.
“Becasue I had observed,” she replied cooly, “that whenever a woman revealed her sexual life, she was never again taken seriously as a writer.” Nin was pragmatic. I was passionate and young.
“But that’s precisely why we must do it,” I said, unwittingly predicting my entire career. Nin did not comment further. I remember being disappointed by her lack of candor and thought she was being hypocritical. Now, I see that I was terribly green and brash and she was wise.
She was right, of course: if a woman exposes her sexuality in print, she is always exposed to attack. It was a situation she was destined to help change, but only after her death. I was to beard that particular dragon with my very first novel, and in many ways my reputation has never recovered.
~ Erica Jong The Devil at Large
~ Erica Jong The Devil at Large
Nin’s independence both as a wife and as a lover seems beguiling. At first she appears as a beacon of liberation for women, but perhaps she was more enslaved to men than most of us. Anaïs had an independence in her marriage to Guiler that she would have never possessed with Henry. She remained tied to Guiler all her life, but she always needed at least two men to reenact her oedipal drama.
Her freedom came at a very high cost: she was unable to publish her journals freely during her own lifetime. In a way she traduced her art for the sake of her deceptions. She knew that women can have their sexuality as long as they don’t publish it.
I had an amusing encounter with Anaïs once at the Poetry Center of the Ninety-Second Street Y in Manhattan, where she was speaking after her edited diaries had begun to appear. At that point I had published only one or two volumes of poetry and was just writing Fear of Flying.
“Why did you edit the sexual parts out of your diary, Miss Nin?” I asked from the audience.
“Becasue I had observed,” she replied cooly, “that whenever a woman revealed her sexual life, she was never again taken seriously as a writer.” Nin was pragmatic. I was passionate and young.
“But that’s precisely why we must do it,” I said, unwittingly predicting my entire career. Nin did not comment further. I remember being disappointed by her lack of candor and thought she was being hypocritical. Now, I see that I was terribly green and brash and she was wise.
She was right, of course: if a woman exposes her sexuality in print, she is always exposed to attack. It was a situation she was destined to help change, but only after her death. I was to beard that particular dragon with my very first novel, and in many ways my reputation has never recovered.
~ Erica Jong The Devil at Large
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This is going to be short. Thanks to Erica Jong, I went out and bought a second hand copy of Henry Miller's The Wisdom of the Heart, and I plan on spending the rest of my day reading it. After that, I may dust off The Tropics of Cancer and Capricorn and give them a second go-around, as well.
So, without going into detail, let me just say, The Devil at Large is the first piece of non-fiction I've read in years, but Jong's 1993 gonzo-biography of the larger than life, (pornographer? mystic?) Henry Miller reads like anything but non-fiction. Never have the facts and somewhat facts ("make it all up," Miller had told her) breathed with so much life. I'm sure, from his ramshackle paradise in some Big Sur in the sky, Miller must be smiling and dancing.
If I knew how to make a half-star, The Devil at Large would receive my highest rating -- 4 and-a-half sparkling astral bodies, just to honour Jong's vivacious style of writing itself.
This is an inspiring book for writers, and for those who wish to write. The letters alone at the end of the book, between Jong and Miller, are worth the price of admission. They're frank, tender and reveal so much about the author and her mentor and, dare I say, muse, during the year or so immediately following the publication of Erica Jong's brave first novel, Fear of Flying.
You won't find this bio on the shelf, so I recommend Amazon or Indigo. If you're lucky, like I was, you may just wind up with a used edition in near mint condition, signed by the author.
So, without going into detail, let me just say, The Devil at Large is the first piece of non-fiction I've read in years, but Jong's 1993 gonzo-biography of the larger than life, (pornographer? mystic?) Henry Miller reads like anything but non-fiction. Never have the facts and somewhat facts ("make it all up," Miller had told her) breathed with so much life. I'm sure, from his ramshackle paradise in some Big Sur in the sky, Miller must be smiling and dancing.
If I knew how to make a half-star, The Devil at Large would receive my highest rating -- 4 and-a-half sparkling astral bodies, just to honour Jong's vivacious style of writing itself.
This is an inspiring book for writers, and for those who wish to write. The letters alone at the end of the book, between Jong and Miller, are worth the price of admission. They're frank, tender and reveal so much about the author and her mentor and, dare I say, muse, during the year or so immediately following the publication of Erica Jong's brave first novel, Fear of Flying.
You won't find this bio on the shelf, so I recommend Amazon or Indigo. If you're lucky, like I was, you may just wind up with a used edition in near mint condition, signed by the author.
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Erica is amazing always
but when she writes about Henry, it is just genious.
but when she writes about Henry, it is just genious.
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