The Devil At Large: Erica Jong On Henry Miller (2001) - Plot & Excerpts
Most of what Erica Jong, author of the controversial '70s novel Fear of Flying, is saying in The Devil at Large can be summed up as follows: "If we have trouble categorizing Miller's 'novels' and consequently underrate them, it is because we judge them according to some unspoken notion of 'the well-wrought novel.' And Miller's novels seem not wrought at all. In fact, they are rants -- undisciplined and wild. But they are full of wisdom, and they have that 'eternal and irrepressible freshness' Ezra Pound called the mark of the true classic."Jong asserts that "it is not unusual to hate great writers before we love them," and Miller was such a mass of contradictions in both his personal life and his writing, that he's often misunderstood. "The Devil At Large" is a defence of Miller by someone who started out loathing him, and who grew to respect him when she was around his "magnetic life-force." When Miller unveiled his now-famous Tropic of Cancer, it was banned nearly everywhere, and only found its audience decades after being written. Jong says that "The four-letter words in Tropic of Cancer distracted everyone but the most diligent from the truth of Miller's discovery: peace only comes to a mortal creature when he starts to see himself as part of the flow of creation."I'm not a huge fan of biographies, but this one flows like prose. Jong is intelligent, and she can't suppress the vitality that was there in Fear of Flying, even when focused on a narrow and singular question: "Why Henry Miller?" I loved this and highly recommend it.
This is a one-of-a-kind kind of book on the writer Henry Miller - it is part biography over Miller, part literature analysis of the role he has played, but also what has happened after him, and part a description of Jong's own relationship with him (as friends, admirers and writing colleagues). What comes out is a picture of a complicated man, that you can both love and hate (even at the same time), and it all adds up to quite an interesting read. You don't have to love Miller's books to read this one - but if you are uncomfortable reading about sex it would be best to stay away.
What do You think about The Devil At Large: Erica Jong On Henry Miller (2001)?
I've always loved the Henry Miller and when I discovered that a woman I consider to be pretty goddamn fierce took on the man often (mis-)labeled "misogynist" I had to read it.From the jacket:"Biography, memoir, critical study, The Devil At Large captures the exuberance, audacity and energy that defined Miller's life and art...Jong has taken advantage of her intimacy with her subject to impart a deeper understanding of a life that's been mythologized, dramatized, and cannibalized." --Fodder (The Hungry Mind Bookstore)
—Dena
"Most people are not free. Freedom, in fact, frightens them. They follow patterns set for them by their parents, enforced by society, by their fears of 'they say' and 'what will they think?' and a constant inner dialogue that weighs duty against desire and pronounces duty the winner.""First we must see the problem inside ourselves; then we must see it in society; then we must fight to change it.""Honesty is the beginning of all transformation.""In 5 minutes some men have lived out the span of an ordinary man's life. Some men use up numbers of lives in the course of their stay on earth.""The struggle of the human being to emancipate himself, that is, to liberate himself from the prison of his own making, that is for me the supreme subject.""Fling yourself in the flow. Don't be afraid. The whole logic of the universe is contained in daring. I had to throw myself into the current, knowing that I would probably sink. The great majority of artists are throwing themselves in with life preservers around their necks! And more often than not it is the life preserver that sinks them.""Fear is a sign - usually a sign that I'm doing something RIGHT.""I lost myself so I could find myself."
—Olivier Goetgeluck
