The Devil at Large: Erica Jong on Henry Miller

The author of Fear of Flying chronicles the life of Henry Miller, drawing on her own six-year friendship with him, as well as his works and correspondence, to discuss Miller's life and writing. 40,000 first printing. $50,000 ad/promo. Tour.

In 1974 Jong received a letter from Henry Miller in which he praised her novel Fear of Flying ; she befriended the 83-year-old novelist and saw him intermittently until his death in 1980. In Jong's view, Miller was a misunderstood prophet, a shaman, a transcendentalist in the tradition of Thoreau and Whitman, and a provocateur whose pagan embrace of sexuality was a potentially liberating force. In this gushing panegyric--part biographical sketch, part literary analysis--Jong argues that Miller, though "trapped in a misogynistic world-view," grasped the spirituality in women and honestly confronted the imaginary rapist in himself. Readers familiar with Miller's virulent anti-Semitism in his early novel Crazy Cock will not be impressed by Jong's belabored attempts to explain it away. She also psychoanalyzes Miller, calls him a great literary innovator (he "invented spiral time , structured like the DNA molecule, time that curves back on itself") and presents an imaginary dialogue between Erica and Henry, a mawkish ending to a cliche-ridden book. Author tour.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Jong (Any Woman's Blues, 1989, etc.) recalls her friendship with Henry Miller (1891-1980), and writes a critical biography of him and an annotated bibliography of his works. Also included are letters between Miller and Jong and companion pieces they wrote for The New York Times's Op-Ed page, praising each other's spirit. Spirit is the keynote here, with Miller's life force billowing up in quotations from his works and flattening Jong's commentary. Jong is at pains to avoid academicism: ``Since I long ago gave up the Ph.D. program for the life of a professional author, I approach Miller with a writer's rather than a scholar's point of view.'' Too often, though, it's the hand of the academy that speaks: ``Henry was so enthralled by women that he sought to demystify their mysterious parts through the violent verbal magic of his books. The violence is rooted in a sense of self-abnegation and humiliation before them. He is, as the Freudians would say, counterphobic.'' Jong makes many good points, though, showing that, midway through his life, Miller had already written everything of his that would last. Surveying university courses, she finds Miller missing, although she ranks him as America's greatest force of nature since Whitman. And Miller is remembered, Jong thinks, for all the wrong reasons, while his best work (the ``luminous'' and ``transcendental'' The Colossus of Maroussi and certain essays) goes begging for readers. Jong's defense of Miller against charges of anti-Semitism comes off better than her cotton balls against feminists, whom she praises while attacking them, using dated rhetoric (``Millett makes a brilliant case for Henry Miller's autobiographical protagonist as a textbook study of patriarchal attitudes, but she fails to go farther, to explore the source of those attitudes, namely the male terror and envy of female power''). Backfire brains markswoman, but not fatally. -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Henry Miller was an enthusiastic fan of Fear of Flying ( LJ 10/1/73) and subsequently befriended its young author, who repays the favor in this lively study--one of the best yet written about Miller. Jong probes the author's love/hate relationship with his mother and his tumultuous marriage to the enigmatic June Mansfield. She offers insightful comments on Tropic of Cancer , "a book blocked off to readers by its incendiary reputation," and praises The Colossus of Maroussi (1941) as Miller's "central work." Perhaps most important, Jong parries the attacks leveled on her friend by feminist critics. If you must limit yourself to one book on Miller, this is the one to have.
- Grove Koger, Boise P.L., Id.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.