The Art of Fiction No. 28
“I believe in saying the truth, coming out with it cold, shocking if necessary, not disguising it. In other words, obscenity is a cleansing process, whereas pornography only adds to the murk.”
Henry Miller
Henry Miller
Henry Miller was born on December 26, 1891, in New York City. In the introduction to a 1962 interview with The Paris Review, Miller is described as “a folk hero: hobo, prophet, and exile, the Brooklyn boy who went to Paris when everyone else was going home, the starving bohemian enduring the plight of the creative artist.” His autobiographical, often stream-of-consciousness novels laid the stylistic groundwork for the Beat Generation. Miller wrote frankly and graphically about sex and sexuality, and his novel Tropic of Cancer (1934) was famously banned for obscenity in the United States until 1964. Miller’s narratives chronicle his residencies in America, France, and Greece and include Black Spring (1936), The Colossus of Maroussi (1941), and The Air-Conditioned Nightmare (1945). He was awarded the Légion d’honneur in 1975 for his contribution to modern literature. Later in life, Miller settled in Big Sur, California, and then the Pacific Palisades, where he died on June 7, 1980.
Illustration by Henry Miller