Henry Miller

Biography

Henry Miller was born from Heinrich Miller, a modest tailor and of Louise Marie Neiting, in Manhattan, New York where it grows in a catholic German environment. The youth of Miller is marked by the wandering: it connects the odd jobs, starts off short studies with the City College New York, then decides in 1930 to leave for the France where it lived until the Second world war bursts. It is at that time that Miller decides to devote himself completely to the Littérature. Its first years of Bohème to Paris were miserable, Miller having to fight against the cold and the hunger whereas he lived with the bell. Sleeping each evening under a different porch, running after the meals offered; the chance will arise in the person of Richard Osborn, an American lawyer, who offered to him a room of his own apartment. Each morning, Osborn left a ticket of 10 francs with its intention on the kitchen table.

With the autumn 1931, Miller obtained a first use of corrector of tests to the newspaper the Platform thanks to her friend Alfred Perlès. It benefitted from it to subject articles signed under the name of Perlès (since only the members of the leading team could propose a paper). He writes the same year his Tropic of Cancer to the Seurat Villa of Montparnasse, which will be published in 1934. It is this novel which involved in the United States of the lawsuits for obscenity, according to the laws against the Pornographie into force at the time.

This choice of Miller to fight against the puritanism made much to release the sexual taboos in the American literature; at the same time from a moral point of view, social, and legal. It continued to write novels, all censured in the United States for obscenity. It published Black Printemps (1936), then Tropic of Capricorn (1939) which managed to be diffused in the United States, sold under the coat, contributing to forge its reputation of writer underground.

It turned over to be installed in the United States in 1940, with Big On (California) where it continued to produce a powerful literature, coloured and socially critical.

The publication of its book Tropic of Cancer in 1961 cost him a whole series of lawsuit for obscenity, so much its book had put to the test the American laws and morals on the pornography. In 1964, the Supreme court broke the judgment of the Court of State for obscenity by affirming the literary value of the work of Miller. This judgment represented an major advance in the birth of what would be later known under the name of sexual revolution. Elmer Gertz, the lawyer who had brilliantly defended the case Miller at the time of the publication of the book in Illinois thereafter became one of the closest friends of Henry Miller. Whole volumes their correspondences were published.

Beyond her undeniable talents of writer, Miller also devoted himself to painting. He wrote some books besides on his paintings. He was very close to the French painter Gregoire Michonze and was also a pianist amateur.

Henry Miller is deceased in Pacific Palisades in California. With her death, Miller was incinerated and her ashes dispersed with Big On. There exist two museums in which one can go to admire his works: The Henry Miller Museum off Art with Nagano in Japan and The Henry Miller Art Museum in Coast Gallery in Big On.

Quotations

It is not one of us who is not guilty of a crime: that, enormous, not to live the life fully| Sexus

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