Henry Miller: A Life

by Robert Ferguson

Overview

Bohemian, egoist and prophet of sensualism, Henry Miller remains to many writers and readers a literary lion. Born in Brooklyn in 1891, son of a tailor of German extraction, Miller would embrace a freewheeling existence that carried him through umpteen jobs and sexual encounters, providing rich source material for the novels he would write. Greenwich Village and Paris in the 1920s offered rich pickings, as did Miller's ten-year affair with Anais Nin. But he was 69 before Tropic of Cancer was legally published in the US and made him famous, almost 30 years from its composition and long after his peers had devoured it in contraband French editions.
Robert Ferguson reveals Miller as a amalgam of vulnerability and insouciance, who endured thirty years of official opprobrium but won the respect of Orwell, T.S. Eliot and Lawrence Durrell, and readers by the thousand.
'This impressive biography [is] good, dirty fun.' Observer
'Engaging and perceptive.' Economist
'Lively and entertaining.' J.G. Ballard

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780571294848
Publisher:	Faber and Faber
Publication date:	04/17/2012
Sold by:	Bookwire
Format:	eBook
Pages:	430
File size:	6 MB
Age Range:	7 - 9 Years

About the Author

Robert Ferguson

Robert Ferguson was born in Blackpool in 1948. After completing Norwegian studies at University College in London, he took up a state scholarship in Norway in1983, and has since then lived in Oslo.
Ferguson is an award-winning dramatist and has translated and adapted several of Ibsen's plays for the BBC. Apart from Henrik Ibsen: A New Biography he is also the author of two other highly acclaimed biographies, Enigma: The Life of Knut Hamsun and Henry Miller: A Life.

Editorial Reviews

In this engrossing biography Ferguson measures the cheerful amoralist of Tropic of Cancer and The Rosy Crucifixion against the guilt-ridden, insecure male in revolt against his bourgeois Brooklyn family. As a struggling writer Henry Miller worked as a Western Union manager, then ran a speakeasy in Greenwich Village. In Paris he discovered psychoanalysis and Anais Nin, his muse, patron, astrological counselor and adulterous lover, ``shadow wife and shadow mother''; he hoped in vain she would divorce her husband. Rebelling against the materialism of the American way of life, the writer pursued ``a religion of instinct, subjectivity and willed simplicity,'' observes Ferguson, biographer of Knut Hamsun. The Miller in these pages is neither the macho bully portrayed by feminists nor the adolescent sexual philosopher dismissed by the academic establishment, but a ``unique . . . and necessary literary figure,'' a popular American sage. More ploddingly workmanlike and more admiring than Mary Dearborn's ``The Happiest Man Alive'' (reviewed above), this portrait is nevertheless richly rewarding. Photos. (May)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

These biographies mark the 100th anniversary of Miller's birth. Both describe fully the events of his life, drawing on his autobiographical fiction, nonfiction, and letters, to tell the same basic story with slightly different emphases and interpretations. Dearborn discusses Miller's experiences in terms of his development as a writer. She provides thorough descriptions of how and when various works were written and their publishing history. In her version, Miller turned his life into literature. Ferguson, however, sees Miller's writing as the therapy he needed to come to terms with his life. He takes a psychoanalytical approach, often telling us what Miller felt and what his motives were in particular situations. He is unfortunately sometimes intrusively judgmental. Neither author provides in-depth literary criticism, and they make us aware that a serious critical evaluation of Miller's work is overdue. Dearborn's book is somewhat better written, and while the largest and most specialized collections may want both, hers is the more highly recommended. Both books previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 1/91.-- Judy Mimken, Cardinal Stritch Coll., Milwaukee

Library Journal

An entertaining, well-researched biography of the controversial and influential author (1891-1980), disentangling the many versions (including those self-created in the autobiographical fiction) of his life. Includes 51 b&w photographs. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

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