Nexus: International Henry Miller Journal - Vol. 8

The 2011 edition of the annual Nexus: The International Henry Miller Journal is now available. The 281-page, book-sized journal contains ten articles relating to Miller, plus a few pages of additional notes.

CONTENTS

Letter From Henry Miller to Alfred Perlès - Henry Miller

A previously unpublished letter from Miller to his friend, Alfred Perlès, circa 1936. Miller announces the completion of some of Black Spring and makes a self-assessment about his place in the American writing scene. Not a modest sentiment to be found!

The Face of Richard Osborn – Eric. D. Lehman

One of Miller’s least-known friends from his golden romp in Paris in the 1930s was Richard Galen Osborn, disguised as ‘Fillmore’ in Tropic Of Cancer. Intrigued by the fact that Miller scholars have never seen a photo of Osborn, nor have they known the details of his death, English professor Eric Lehman set out on a quest to fill in these blanks. The task was made all the more convenient by the fact that Lehman’s current home base, Bridgeport, Connecticut, was also the hometown of Osborn. Lehman brings the reader step-by-step along his logical trail, as he follows leads in old school yearbooks. Not only does the hunt produce photographs, but Yale alumni records (updates on the activities of graduates) contain a wealth of information—including short autobiographies by Osborn himself, in which he references Miller. Finally, Lehman uses the new photographic evidence to make a comparison to an iconic Brassaï picture, which may very well prominently feature an image of Richard Osborn in 1930s Paris.

Nothing But Light—Notes on Henry Miller’s Birthday Gift for Anaïs Nin & The Tranquility of Struggle – Karl Orend

Between 1937 and 1940, Miller created several hand-written books for friends, some of which have been published (i.e. The Waters Reglitterized), and some which have been hidden away in private collections. In 1939, Miller composed a hand-written book as a gift for Anaïs Nin, called The Heaven Beyond Heaven. In the meaty “Nothing But Light,” Orend uses text from this book to illustrate the lives and minds of both Miller and Nin during the period of writing (1939/40), which includes Miller’s Greece and Nin’s New York. Miller’s personal offering for Nin came at a time when she and Miller had reached the end of their relationship; Miller’s critical words in Heaven may have helped seal this fate. Orend draws from numerous sources to explore the divide in philosophies and personalities between the two writers, from Nin’s fears and literary deceptions to Miller’s insensitivities and immense egotism. For good measure, Orend includes some intriguing paragraphs on Miller’s affinity with China and feeling that he was himself somehow Chinese.

The Genius and Mr. Nobody – Joe Kishton

One of things I like about Miller as a research subject is the way his life intersects with so many other fascinating individuals. In the case of Joe Kishton’s contribution to the journal, that person is Salvador Dalí, and his wife Gala. The Dalís and Henry Miller had shared Caresse Crosby’s Virginia mansion for several months in 1940. It was an uneasy time for Miller, who disliked Dalí. An account of this time is pieced together mostly from interview transcripts of Miller, from documentaries he’d done in the late 1960s. This article, in fact, is a documentary script, in script format, for a recently completed film on this very specific subject. Includes a detailed anecdote about the crazy event that drove Miller and the other guests to leave Caresse Croby’s home.

Miller and Seferis: A Mutual Portrait From One Mythologist to the Other – Finn Jensen

In 1963, George Seferis became the first Greek to win the Nobel Prize for Literature. 24 years earlier, Seferis gained the admiration of Henry Miller, who had met the Greek poet in his home country in 1939. Finn Jensen, in this essay, provides a biography of Seferis, and considers the reasons for the personal connection between he and Miller, suggesting that a shared perspective of life through a mythical lens helped form the bond. Includes a couple of Seferis poems, including one dedicated to Miller (“Les Anges Sont Blancs”).

Love, Pain, Big Sur, and Life as a Bedbug – Harry Kiakis

The latest instalment of Kiakis’s diary entries takes us back to a day in May 1970, when Henry was entertaining Harry and other guests, including a beautiful USC student making a short film about Henry. Kiakis captures many quotes from Miller, on the subjects of old movies on TV, Japan, old age, death, a revelation he had in 1933 about failure, visitors at Big Sur, and freedom. Miller’s final anecdote is very interesting, as he goes into detail about the way he freaked-out when he found the note from June (in their basement apartment in Brooklyn in 1927) saying that she and Jean had run off to Europe without him.

Kilomètre Zéro: Paris Revisited, through the Palimpsest of George Whitman’s Shakespeare & Company – Karl Orend

Anaïs Nin returned to Paris in 1954, for the first time since fleeing the city in 1939. From this visit, came her Paris Revisited, which would not be published until 1972. Here, Karl Orend compares both the departures from and returns to Paris for both Nin and Henry Miller; success (Miller) or lack thereof (Nin) coloured the experiences of each return visit. Orend also examines factual inaccuracies found in Nin’s account, including some about George Whitman, whose Parisian English-language bookshop, Mistral, would later re-brand as the famous Shakespeare & Company. Includes an interesting overview of the support of Whitman and S&Co on people like Miller and Lawrence Durrell, and the lack of support for Miller's associates by the owner of the original S&Co, Sylvia Beach.

“One sits in the middle of a river called nostalgia”: The Henry Miller Research Collections at Southern Illinois University Carbondale. – James Bantin

While this article is in part exactly as the title implies—a run-down of materials relating to Henry Miller, as found in this university’s Miller archive (which you can review online)—James Bantin also describes each group of papers in an enticing way by including quotes from holograph notations and personal letters from the archive. Bantin talks about the hand-written book, Heaven Beyond Heaven, the correspondence with Caresse Crosby, the Lawrence Durrell Papers, letters from ex-wife Eve McClure, publishing records for New Directions, what sounds like an amazing archive of audio recordings made with Miller by Robert Fink, and much more.

Close Your Beautiful Eyes: The Denigration of Louis-Ferdinand Céline—a Prelude to his Evisceration & Inquiry into the Fate of his “unfortunate plagiarist,” Henry Miller, “The American Céline.” - Karl Orend

“Celine’s anti-Semitism is, like sex in Miller’s writing, the red herring. It is neither the core of his writing and philosophy nor the main thrust of his attacks on civilization or humanity,” writes Karl Orend, in this engaging defense of French author, Louis-Ferdinand Céline, who had been an influence on Miller’s writing style. While not absolving Céline of all charges of anti-Semitism, Orend challenges some of the most-damning, prevalent myths about Céline’s activities and sympathies during WWII. (Orend had done a great job, in The Brotherhood of Fools & Simpletons, of shedding new light and offering defense for Conrad Moricand, whose negative reputation has been biased due to Miller’s unflattering and previously unchallenged portrayal of him in “Devil In Paradise”). This essay is part one of a forthcoming sequel, which will explore Céline’s influence on Miller, and will compare the charges of anti-Semitism launched against both authors.

On an Old Book about Henry Miller – D.A. Pratt

D.A. Pratt takes the reader on an enthusiastic tour of his favourite Miller biography, The Happy Rock. Starting with the story behind its creator/editor/scientist, Bern Porter, Pratt then gives context to Miller’s career and reputation at the time of publication in 1945. Next, the reader is treated to summaries of the major contributions to the book (of the 30 in total) with generous excerpts provided; special attention is given to the in-depth essay by Michael Fraenkel, Miller’s Villa Seurat flatmate and thematic inspiration for Tropic Of Cancer. Finally, Pratt examines the reception of Happy Rock, from a brutal critical thrashing by Lawrence Durrell to its general neglect by the big Miller biographers. 65 years later, however, this book has proven to be a gem for its ability to introduce us to Miller through the immediacy of those who knew him personally.

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This volume of the Nexus journal is available for $20 (U.S.) or $24 (International)

from the Nexus journal website.

Is This A Portrait of Henry Miller?

On September 26, 2011, a private art collector in New York State will be auctioning work by artist John Nichols (1899-1963). One such painting will be a portrait that the collector(s) believe is meant to be Henry Miller, or based on Miller.

American painter John Nichols spent some time with the artists’ colony at Woodstock, New York, before going to Paris in 1930. There, the 31-year old painter befriended Henry Miller. That year, a bearded Miller (a temporary experiment) sat as a model for Nichols. He may have posed for other paintings, as well. Nichols left Paris in 1932, but his time there would be permanently recorded as the character Mark Swift in Tropic Of Cancer. For an overview of the relationship between Nichols and Miller, see my blog posting from a few years ago, “John Nichols and Miller’s Beard.”

NICHOLS COLLECTION

Although a few Nichols paintings are apparently owned by the Woodstock Guild and Art Association, the largest collection of his works (120) are owned by a collector (or collectors) in the Woodstock area, where Nichols used to live in a “shack.” My information comes mostly from the Nichols collector via email. Nichols is said to have been a colourist who experimented with several styles, including abstract expressionism, drips, and primitive minimalism. After leaving the art shack in Woodstock, he went to New York City to teach Art, then was eventually committed to the Bellevue Hospital where he died in 1963, in his sixties.

IS THIS A PORTRAIT OF HENRY MILLER?

In my personal opinion, if I were considering a venture with my own money, I would say that I lack the confidence to conclude that the man in this Nichols portrait is in fact Henry Miller. You may come to a different conclusion. What is lacking is a date on the canvas to aid speculation, or a clue-embedded title, or any documentation (that I know of) that suggests that Nichols or his wife Frances had personally identified this as Miller.

It would have also been helpful if there was a more convincing resemblance to Miller in the painting itself. The pale blue eyes, and maybe the lips, are suggestive of Miller, but the hair is a complete fiction. Miller was bald in his 20s (he was around 40 when he had his portrait painted, and his beard had spots of grey). No amount of testosterone-evident beard growth could have sparked the youthful mane that we see in this Nichols' painting.

The name “Henry Miller” has been written on the back of the wooden frame, but only after “Man With Beard – John Nichols” and in different handwriting. I would need to know more about the provenance of this artwork to be able to evaluate who added this identification and when. After 40 years of painting, I imagine that Nichols' had plenty of opportunity to paint any number of bearded men. I will, however, offer some considerations to support the arguement that this could be Miller.

A CASE FOR POSITIVE SPECULATION

1. Nichols was not obligated to, or didn't necessarily intend to, paint a portrait in the likeness of Henry Miller. Henry may have been posing simply as a human object. As such, Nichols could take liberties, such as adjusting features to achieve a certain dramatic look, or adding hair (a bit more romantic than baldness). The title on the frame backing, “Man With Beard,” also suggests the intent of a general image than a specific individual.

2. Nichols painted Miller more than once, and each a little differently. In March 1931, Miller wrote that Nichols and his wife Frances were working on “more portraits of him.” The collector from Woodstock says that he has a few other portraits from the “Man with a Beard” series, each done in a different style. This one is said to be the most “masterful” (if he has just a single bald one, that would go a long way to suggesting the model was Miller).

3. Nichols was not exactly the king of capturing likenesses. According to the collector, he owns self-portraits of Nichols that are “completely different.” In Miller’s description of Nichols’ portrait of him in Tropic of Cancer, he does mention that his head is “out of proportion” but was still a “man with a beard” (p.221).

THE MILLER PAINTING FROM TROPIC OF CANCER



John Nichols,
Standing Female Nude
(c. 1930)

Although I reference Cancer in the passage above, the painting therein is not the one under review here, because Miller adds that Swift (Nichols) added a typewriter and Eiffel Tower within the portrait (not seen in this one). The one under review is also not the portrait Nichols made of Miller in February 1931 (possibly the same as the one in Cancer?) which Miller describes as having “a slight element of the caricature, a la Grosz--if that conveys anything to you. The underlip is very prominent and the dome bulges out eloquently, very like the Invalides" [Letters To Emil, p. 71]. The baldness clearly rules this one out.

There is a Nichols portrait of Miller at the UCLA Archives, although I have never seen the image. It would be fascinating to compare. Interestingly, the item mentions that it was signed by "Kate Nichols for Henry Miller.”

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Anyhow, there is still an association between Nichols and Miller, and that makes Nichols a significant character in the Miller universe. Do your own research, contact the seller/auction house if you are interested. Sorry for the short notice, but the auction for this particular John Nichols “Man With Beard” painting is September 26, 2011, at Hudson Valley Auctioneers.

I welcome your opinions in the Comments section. What’s your take on this?

The Henry Miller Memorial Library Bio Project

If you’ve ever surfed the Web looking for Henry Miller related content, you’ve no doubt come across the website for the Henry Miller Memorial Library in Big Sur. Way back before I started this blog, its website was virtually the only Internet space that provided a centralized presence for Miller content. While the website mostly featured notices about outdoor concerts, film festivals, poetry and other projects that fulfilled (and continue to fulfill) its mandate as a “public performance space for artists, writers, musicians, and students,” it also provided a message board on which people could chat about Miller (the board ceased several years back) and a simple “About Henry” section. This section contained a chronology of Miller’s life, as written by the author for the 1971 autobiography by Playboy Press, called My Life And Times.

A couple of months ago, the Memorial Library decided to beef up Henry’s self-written biography. And you can help. As announced in this blog posting, Library staff are looking for people to submit a “hearty paragraph” about several subjects and people relating to Miller’s life, especially those referenced in his timeline. The idea is to make the chronology as interactive as possible, with each word of interest having its own pop-up box or link to further information. They’ve already started by adding several images to the timeline.

Topics covered include Mezzotints, Villa Seurat, Lawrence Durrell, Greece, watercolours, Time of the Assassins and dozens more—basically any subject relating to Miller’s long and fascinating life. As I’ve learned on my blog, these sub-categories are nearly endless. If you think you’ve got the skills of concision, read the blog posting and get in touch with Laura.

They’ve also added a very helpful guide to Henry Miller archival collections and research sources.

Finally, congrats the site managers and workers past and present: 2011 marks the 30th anniversary of the Henry Miller Memorial Library.

Katy Masuga: A New Way of Reading Miller

“Having been marginalized on moral grounds since first publication in 1934, Miller’s works require reexamination in order to bring new attention to his unwritten connections to other writers during this period, including Ezra Pound, T.S. Eliot, and James Joyce. Miller is not often thought of in academic circles in studies in modernism, despite the innovative and influential style of his work. The aim of this book is to suggest a new way of reading Miller that is alert to the aggressively writerly and self-conscious form of his work, and to undertake an examination of his texts without integrating him into another socially constructed, literary category.”

– Katy Masuga, “Introduction,” The Secret Violence of Henry Miller.

Essays by scholar Katy Masuga have twice appeared in the annual Nexus: The International Henry Miller Journal; these include “Transgressing the Law of Literature” (vol. 6) and “Crossing Brooklyn Bridge: An Ekphrastic Correspondence between Walt Whitman, Hart Crane and Henry Miller” (vol. 7). In each essay, Masuga made use of her Ph.D. in Comparative Literature to analyse both the power and intent behind Miller’s use of language. Recently, Masuga, currently a researcher and adjunct Professor at Sorbonne University in Paris, has built upon her analysis of Miller with the release of two new published books: Henry Miller And How He Got That Way (Edinburgh University Press, 2011) and The Secret Violence of Henry Miller (Camden House/Boydell and Brewer, 2011). Below are summaries of each book (promotional blurbs from the publishers, not by me), with links to the publishing houses.

Henry Miller and How He Got That Way

Edinburgh University Press - Introduction; 1. Leaves of Letters // Walt Whitman; 2. The Dream of a Ridiculous Writer // Fyodor Dostoevsky; 3. Through the Jabber // Lewis Carroll; 4. The Drunken Inkwell // Arthur Rimbaud; 5. In Search of Lost Allusion // Marcel Proust; 6. Writers and Lovers // D. H. Lawrence; Conclusion; Works Cited; Index. [208 pages].

Identifying six significant writers - Whitman, Dostoevsky, Rimbaud, Lewis Carroll, Proust and D. H. Lawrence - Katy Masuga examines their influence on Miller's work as well as Miller's retroactive impact on their writing. She explores four forms of intertextuality in relation to each 'ancestral' author: direct allusions, unconscious style, reverse influence and participation of the ancestral author as part of the story within the text. The study is informed by the theories of polyvocity from Bakhtin, Barthes and Kristeva and of language games and the indefatigability of writing in the work of Blanchot, Wittgenstein and Deleuze. By presenting Miller in intertextual context, he emerges as a noteworthy modernist writer whose contributions to literature include the struggle to find a distinctive voice alongside a distinguished lineage of literary figures.

The Secret Violence of Henry Miller

Camden House/Boydell and Brewer - Introduction; 1. A Denial of Categories; 2. Reflecting the Galactic Varnish; 3. The Fleshly and the Angelic; 4. Material Trifles; 5. Our Changing Geography; 6. The Illusion of Force and Speed; 7. Developing a Painter’s Eye; 8. The Book of Life; Conclusion; Index. [230 pages].

Henry Miller is a cult figure in the world of fiction, in part due to having been banned for obscenity for nearly thirty years. Alongside the liberating effect of his explicit treatment of sexuality, however, Miller developed a provocative form of writing that encourages the reader to question language as a stable communicative tool and to consider the act of writing as an ongoing mode of creation, always in motion, perpetually establishing itself and creating meaning through that very motion. Katy Masuga provides a new reading of Miller that is alert to the aggressively and self-consciously writerly form of his work. Critiquing the categorization of Miller into specific literary genres through an examination of the small body of critical texts on his oeuvre, Masuga draws on Deleuze and Guattari's concept of a minor literature, Blanchot's "infinite curve," and Bataille's theory of puerile language, while also considering Miller in relation to other writers, including Proust, Rilke, and William Carlos Williams. She shows how Miller defies conventional modes of writing, subverting language from within.

A Book For Emil

Henry’s wife, June, had not see her husband for seven months, until she surprised him in Paris with a visit at the end of September 1930 [1]. They were both broke, and drifted from hotel to hotel (five in all) as financial circumstances dictated [2]. Finally, with no prospects for June to make money in Paris, it was apparent that she had no choice but to return to New York.

On October 17th, the day before June was to leave, Henry thought about his old friend Emil Schnellock, to whom he’d been writing diligently since his arrival in Paris. He wanted to send back a gift that was within his means: a book from his own collection. He and Emil used to discuss literature, back in Brooklyn. “… [O]ur tastes were quite divergent,” wrote Miller, years later. “[He] had a most lovable way of deprecating his knowledge and understanding of books … [but] he not only knew a lot more than he pretended but [he] sometimes knew much more than I did myself. If he read far less than I, he read with much greater attention and, as a result, he retained much more than I ever did” (The Books In My Life, p.172).

Henry decided upon his 1924 Paris edition of Rodolphe Bringer’s Trente Ans D’Humour (Thirty Years Of Humour), a book of literary criticism [3]. French writer Rodolphe Bringer was primarily a journalist who wrote, it seems, mostly non-fiction [4]. Although Bringer appears to have had little future influence, his Trente Ans book was absorbed at the time by Miller, who had underlined certain passages and written notes in the margins.

Opening the book to its title page, Henry wrote: “Dear Emil: Here’s one fairly easy to read and quite entertaining. Try it! Henry, 10/17/30.” Miller also added a postscript: The day previous, he had been strolling down the Boulevard Raspail, when he “[s]aw a peach of a Huysmans […] called 'Croquis de Paris.' So much to buy -- so much -- if one only had the dough!” [in 1951, Miller would list Huysmans’ Against The Grain (A Rebours, 1884) as one of the 100 books that influenced him most] [5].

The next morning, Saturday, October 18th, Henry saw June off at the train station. “Believe me, it was hard to put her on the train. Seemed like the end of the world,” he would write Emil a few days later. June had arrived in Paris with nothing, but left with Henry's copy of Trente Ans D’Humour. Five days later, Henry wrote to Emil and let him know to expect the book.


Above: The actual inscription page from the Bringer book. From the Ken Lopez Bokseller website.

“I gave June a book by a humorist, Rudolf Bringer, for you. Be sure you get it! But don’t ask for June at the Pot. She doesn’t want them to know yet that she has returned. Sorry I couldn’t send you anything more than that, but I just couldn’t. June arrived without a cent and left the same way. I had 50 fr. when we parted.”

80 years later, this book still exists, with Henry’s original handwritten note on the title page, even if the cover wrappers are missing and the pages have become brittle. Ken Lopez Bookseller is/was offering it for $1,000 [6]. But the provenance of this book is not clear. Considering the fact that other books from June’s collection have been available for sale on the antique book market, but none from Emil that I’ve noticed, I wonder if June had actually delivered this book to Emil as planned.

NOTES

[1] Jay Martin's Always Merry And Bright, pp.211-212; [2] ibid pp. 212-214, plus Miller's own quote in Letters To Emil, p.63; [3] I couldn't find any online summaries about this book, but a few French book websites have categorized it as being "journalist and literary crticism"; [4] I make this assumption based on my interpretation of the bibliography and biography on French Wikipedia; maybe I'm wrong; [5] Miller's The Books In My Life, Appendix I; [6] The book is listed on their website, with a price, implying that it is available. FYI, I have no relationship with this bookseller; this posting is neither an advertisement nor an endorsement. Do your own purchasing research.

The Underground Life – Henry Street Basement: Part 1 - Location

“Henry Street joint – setting like a lunatic asylum, only worse.”
-- Henry Miller, c. 1928/1929 [1]

Some time during the winter of 1926/1927, Henry Miller moved into a Brooklyn basement apartment with his wife, June Mansfield, and her female companion, Jean Kronski. The exact address of this apartment has never been specified. Instead, it has been vaguely identified as being on Henry Street, near the corner of Love Lane. Their co-habitation was marked by several months of psychodrama that Miller would describe at the end of Sexus and throughout Nexus (with a parallel account in Crazy Cock). By summer 1927, the dank basement was abandoned, first by June and Jean, then by Henry, who, at age 35, had to endure a humiliating return to his parents’ home.


ABOVE: Excerpt from Henry Miller’s “Schema For Nexus” c. 1945-1950s [PBA Galleries]


LOCATION

Henry Street is located in Brooklyn Heights. Love Lane intersects with Henry Street, one block north of Pierrepont. Henry Street buildings number in the 160s south of Love Lane, and the 150s to 120s north of it (the 130s being midway between Love Lane and the next northern intersectiuon, Clark Street). I assume, then, that Henry and June lived within this property number range, as they’ve been described as living “one door down” from Love Lane [2] and “at Henry St. & Love Lane” [3]. Let’s say somewhere in the range of 134 -161 Henry Street.

ABOVE: A contemporary Google Street View of the intersection at Love Lane (left) and Henry Street.

WHICH BUILDING?

Before trying to guess which building they may have lived in, we need to figure out how much this intersection has changed since 1927. According to building construction dates provided by City Data, all buildings on the west side, north of Love Lane, from #150 – 156 (CVS Pharmacy), and south of the Lane (#160) existed in 1926. On the east side of this intersection, #139 – 161 existed in 1927, except for the apartment building at #155, which stretches all the way from Love Lane to Pierrepont, and eats up lot numbers 153-159—this was built in 1928. However, a 1925 photograph shows that the 1928 building had replaced a type of stone edifice that was unlikely to have a residential basement apartment, thus ruling it out (see April 1925 photo further below). By comparing old and new photos, it doesn't looked like much has changed. My conclusion? The building they lived in in 1927 still exists in some form on Henry Street.

CLUE #1: STOOPS

It's possible that the stoops we see on Henry Street today are the same as they existed in 1926. With this in mind, consider Miller’s description of the exterior of the apartment as he creeps up on it in Sexus: “I tiptoed into the areaway and looked for a gleam of light … I would go in upstairs by way of the stoop … I opened the door softly, walked to the head of the stairs, which were enclosed, and quietly, very quietly, lowered myself step by step. There was a door at the bottom of the steps” (p.497).

Then later: “I went up by the stoop, and slid lightly down to the hallway. Not a sound. I put my ear to the door of the front room and listened intently” (Sexus, 503). And in Crazy Cock: “It was noon when the three of them marched down the stoop …” (CC 153).

Based on these descriptions, it seems to me that the basement tenants had access to their apartment by walking up the stoop steps to the parlor floor, opening the front door into an enclosed vestibule area, then walking down a staircase that led to their front room door. However I interpret it, it’s clear there was a stoop. This rules out some of the apartment buildings on Henry Street without stoops.

CLUE #2: PROXIMITY TO LOVE LANE

Earlier, I had quoted a reference to the apartment being “one door down” from Love Lane. This phrasing comes from Mary Dearborn (Miller biographer) [2], not Miller himself, so I don’t want to get hung up on that as a literal description. However, Miller has described it as being “at Henry St. & Love Lane” [3]. As well, in Sexus, Miller phrases it like this: “… Love Lane, which was at the corner” (500). Also, when Henry takes a taxi home, he asks to be dropped off at Love Lane (Sexus 503). These details situate the basement apartment very close to Love Lane, and not to Pierrepont (which is close-by to the south), and not to Clark Street (which is a 2-minute stroll to the north of Love Lane).

CLUE #3: PROXIMITY TO LUTHERAN CHURCH

North from Love Lane, on the east side of Henry Street, almost all the way up to Clark Street, sits the German Zion Lutheran Church at 125-129 Henry Street. In Crazy Cock, the church is referenced in relation to their basement apartment, as being “[a] little way down the street” (135) – this again places them closer to Love Lane than to Clark. Most importantly, in Sexus, Miller locates the church as being “across the way” (498). Across. I take this an encouraging sign that the location of this church as an east-side landmark, logically places the Miller basement apartment across, on the opposite side: the west side. As Miller writes that the Lutheran church is “across the way,” he goes on to describe how it looks at night. The fact that he could see it in his view, suggests that it was on an opposite side from him ("across the way"). There was/is a Presbyterian church directly across from the Lutheran one, but this would not be in his view because it is on the same west side as him, and is therefore not mentioned.

To clarify, I'm not saying the Lutheran church was directly across from him, because he's also stated that it's "a little way down." So, across and a little way down.

ABOVE: This is a view of Henry Street in 1929, facing the east side, with the Lutheran church in the middle at #125. Since Miller describes this church as being “a little way down the street,” I would say you’d have to back away further than this camera position to be considered a “little way” and not just across the street.
Photo: New York Public Library Digital Collection.

So, with much speculation, I say we are looking for a house on the east side of Henry Street, with a stoop, in close proximity to Love Lane, and old enough that it was around in 1926/1927 when the Millers lived there.

Ok, now stick with me here, as I do something I admit is very subjective. Below is a view of what I would consider to be “a little way” from the Lutheran church, which I've marked with a yellow X. During the winter, which was the season for the scene quoted above from Sexus, Henry would have had a better view of the Lutheran church through the naked trees.

Below the "X" photo, is my view turning left, to face the west side.

Definitely some basement apartment entrances here. But where’s the stoop? Look to the left of the photo. Here it is below:

SPECULATIVE GUESS #1: 150 HENRY STREET

Here is a current view of 150 Henry Street (with the stoop), from Google Street View. It’s notable that this is closer to Love Lane than any other stoop on the street. Love Lane is two doors to the left (just out of frame). Another compelling clue: look at the doorway to the right of the person in the blue shirt, where stairs lead downward. Here’s a better view:

This gated passage is part of the 152 Henry Street building, but is along what would be the basement wall of 150 Henry Street (which you can see to the right of it). Perhaps windows for #150 exist, or existed, in this areaway? “I tiptoed into the areaway and looked for a gleam of light …" wrote Miller. Even the gate on this areaway offers a potential clue. Miller: “The thing was to sneak in while they were out, so that they couldn’t shut the gate in my face” (Sexus 495). [note: it’s possible he meant “gate” figuratively].

Click on this Flickr link to see a current photo of the heavy front door of 150 Henry Street. And here's a bit of history from the Brooklyn Historical Society about 152 Henry Street (with the areaway).

Hey, look, I’m just trying to fit some pieces together here. Your cynicism and scrutiny of this speculation is very much welcome. Some research that may help confirm or deny things: the basement apartment is said to have been a laundry business some time before 1926 [4], then became, in the 1930s, a "chop suey" joint [5].

It's also worth noting that (as you will see in the old photos below), there were lots of buildings with stoops on the west side of Henry Street, between 150 and 124 (#124 is opposite the Lutheran church). But the closer we get to the church and the further away from Love Lane, the more we stray from other existing clues.

SOME VIEWS OF THEIR STREET

Regardless my speculation about the exact location, it’s fair to look at period photographs of the stretch of Henry Street around Love Lane, and to know that these were the views that greeted Henry, June and Jean back in 1927.

ABOVE: Henry Street, east side, from April 1925. From the camera position,  I would say the photographer is standing just north of 150 Henry Street by 30 feet or so. Photo: New York Public Library Digital Collection.

ABOVE: View of Henry Street (1932), standing approximately in front of the stoops in the previous picture, facing north towards Clark Street, with the west side of the street in view (130s house numbers).
Photos: New York Public Library Digital Collection.

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REFERENCES

[1] Quote from Miller’s 1928/1929 Rosy Crucifixion notes, as provided by Karl Orend in his article, “Dear Ghost – A Few Fragments on Henry Miller’s Nemesis, Jean Kronski” (Nexus: Henry Miller Journal, Vol. 4 (2007), p. 210; [2] From Mary Dearborn’s Miller bio, Happiest Man Alive, p.106; [3] Henry Miller: “… cellar life at Henry St. & Love Lane.” From Miller’s unpublished Rosy Crucifixion notebook, as described by PBA Galleries. See my post, “Notes On Nexus”: ; [4] Henry Miller in Crazy Cock, p.77; [5] Martin, Jay. Always Merry and Bright, p. 308.

Miller In The Smithsonian

The 164-year Smithsonian in Washington D.C. is a pre-eminent educational and research institution, which stores, displays and disseminates artefacts of American cultural history. Although only a few archival items directly relate to Henry Miller, there are also several oral histories with people in the Arts who make mention of Miller. Most of these interviews are available online.

AUDIO: An Interview With Henry Miller

In June 1962, Henry Miller sat down for an interview at KUOM at the University of Minneapolis. KUOM radio personality Audrey June Booth (host of “Book Chats”) conducted the interview. The recording was released in 1964 by Folkways Records (owned by Moses Asch). When Asch died in 1986, the Smithsonian Institution Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage acquired the entire Folkways catalogue, including the Miller recording.

On the Smithsonian website, you can listen to the first minute of each side, and can also order the 46-minute interview on disk for $17, or order a digital download for $7. Or, for free, you can download the liner notes [PDF], which includes a typed transcription of the interview.

 

Left: LP cover for "An Interview With Henry Miller."

Right: Audrey June Booth circa 1960 (from Ebony magazine, Sept. 1960, p.92)

 

SCULPTURE: Miller bust by Marino Marini

In the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery collection is a 1961 bronze bust created by Italian sculptor Marini Marino (details on the Smithsonian website). See my post, “Busted: Henry Miller In Sculpture” for details about this sculpture commission.

ARCHIVE: Abraham Rattner and the U.S.A. Trip

In the 1940s, Henry Miller drove across America with artist Abraham Rattner. The end result was Miller’s The Air-Conditioned Nightmare. The Smithsonian American Art Museum holds a couple of ink drawings made by Rattner during this journey: “Around The Bend, USA, With Henry Miller,” “Highway, USA, With Henry Miller,” plus a watercolour called “Route To Petersburg, USA, With Henry Miller.”  These drawings are not currently on display at the gallery or online. In the Smithsonian Archive of American Art, one can find the Abraham Rattner and Esther Gentle Papers, which include letters, photos, and at least one watercolour painting from Miller.

There are a number of items relating to the Miller/Rattner Air-Conditioned Nightmare road trip (search the Finding Aid for "U.S.A. Trip"). These include three of Rattner’s notebooks and sketches from the trek (1940-41), a Rattner memoir of the trio, called “When We Were Together,” materials relating to the Our America exhibit about the road trip (1975-1978), something called “The Other Part” (1941), which seems to be about the trip, and a collection of pamphlets he’d gathered from their tour. There are also photographs, including one with Miller, Rattner and Weeks Hall, plus a watercolour of Virginia, made by Miller.

The Rattner collection also includes several writings (drafts?) by Miller on the subject of Rattner. At least one has been published before (“A Bodhisattva Artist”) but there are others, such as “The Rattner Portfolio or For God So Loved the World” (1957), “A Word About Abraham Rattner” (1965) and a few others. See the Finding Aid to the Rattner Papers for references.

ORAL HISTORIES

None of these Smithsonian interviews go on at any significant length about Miller; they are really just passing comments or brief anecdotes.

Jack Stauffacher

Stauffacher (b.1920) is a Californian printer and publisher known for his typeface composition. In his 1993 interview with the Smithsonian, he talks about the avant-garde scene he fell into in Berkeley, and how he came to know Miller through them. Stauffacher had designed a book called Art And Cinema (by his brother, Frank Stauffacher), for which Miller had written the introduction. He describes Miller as being one who enjoys a good conversation, adding “He first was interested in meeting you and talking with you and discussing things and just let it flow out. He had no agenda.”

Lee Mullican

Mullican, an artist, came into contact with Miller through Jack Stauffacher. “Miller was very interested in what I was doing, and I have letters from him, saying that he really felt I was, you know, someone to be reckoned with and he loved. . . . For some reason he thought my name was just the right thing [chuckles]: Lee Mullican. Somehow that kind of turned him on … And I have a postcard. . . . But he lived in Big Sur, and he was struggling. And I have a postcard in my files from him thanking me for the $5 that I sent him! [chuckles] He was actually asking for money from friends and associates and so forth.” (Mullican transcript).

Manny Silverman

Silverman is the founder of the Manny Silverman Galleries in Los Angeles. In his interview from 2004, he briefly mentions that art dealer Riko Mizuno was a friend of Miller’s, and may have put on one of his watercolour shows.

Mary Fuller

Writer and artist, Mary Fuller did not know Miller personally, but she briefly mentions people he knew who did know him, such as Andre and Margaret Moreau in Big Sur, and literary agent Diarmuid Russell: “Henry Miller was his client.”

Joan Ankrum

In her 1997 Smithsonian interview, art dealer Joan Ankrum tells a story of Miller walking into her gallery one day, after spending the day visiting galleries on La Cienaga and not being recognized. When Ankrum recognizes him, Miller has his friend Joe Gray run back to his house to get his paintings. “You can have my show,” said Miller when Ankrum remarked that his watercolours were a lot better than she thought they’d be. She eventually found time to put on the show: “And, of course, that was the big hit of the whole occasion. People were lined all. . . . This was right after Capricorn, after the censorship had been removed.”

Julian Levi

The artist Levi gave his impressions of meeting Miller through Abe Rattner in the 1940s: “everybody who knew Abe at that time would know Miller.” “He was a very warm, very pleasant, a very mild-appearing man.”

Adja Yunkers

In his interview, the abstract painter Yunkers tells of running his own magazine in Sweden, and trying to introduce American authors like Miller to Scandinavia: “They refused to publish him so I sold it to Copenhagen.”

Anaïs Nin

In a 1972 interview, Nin says: “I expressed rebellion by associating with rebels. I did not myself rebel. I associated with Henry Miller who was a rebel against Puritanism” … “As to all that nonsense that Henry and Larry talked about -– the necessity of I am God in order to create -– I suppose they mean: I am God, I am not a woman. Woman never had direct communication with God anyway but only through man, the priest. She never created directly except through man. She was never able to create as a woman. But what neither Larry nor Henry understand is that woman's creation, far from being like a man's, must be exactly like her creation of children and that it must come out of her own blood, enclosed in her womb, nourished with her own milk. It must be a human creation of flesh. It must be different from man's abstractions.”

CORRESPONDENCES

A few Finding Aids make reference to Miller letters or other items held in an archive. Besides the Rattner Papers noted above, these include:

Westwood Art Association: Business correspondence, photographs, slides of artists' works, press releases and clippings, primarily documenting the 1967 exhibitions in Los Angeles and Paris of Henry Miller's 70 watercolors and etchings.

Alfredo Valente papers: Two letters from Henry Miller, dated 1943 and 1945. The letters refer to a "watercolor pad and brushes," and Miller also thanks Valente for a portrait of Abe Rattner; as well, another letter and a sketch from Henry Miller.