The book begins with a question: Why Henry Miller? "Miller remains
among the most misunderstood of writers - seen either as a
pornographer or a guru, a sexual enslaver or a sexual liberator, a
prophet or a pervert. All the questions his life and oeuvre raise
about the role of the writer in society, the impact of books on
sexual politics, the impact of sexual politics on books, the threat
of censorship to free speech and written expression are,
unfortunately, as fresh today as they ever were". Part biography,
part memoir, part critical study, part exploration of sexual
politics in our time, The Devil at Large is an event: a book that
promises to rescue Miller from the facile charges of misogyny,
anti-Semitism, and titillation that have been lobbed at him over
the years, and brilliantly captures the exuberance, audacity, and
energy that defined his life and art. More than that, it is a
reunion between a young writer and her mentor. In 1974, while Fear
of Flying was still a relatively obscure first novel, Erica Jong
received an enthusiastic fan letter from Henry Miller, then an old
man of eighty-three. Miller credited himself with "discovering"
Jong, and his faithful correspondence guided her through a year of
enormous change. The two writers - chastised and celebrated for
their lusty prose, accused of conflating autobiography with fiction
in their respective generations - found they were kindred spirits,
and began a friendship that would last until Miller's death in
1980. "Make it all up!" was Miller's appeal to Jong to become his
biographer. But in reexamining Miller, Jong has not had to
fictionalize. She has imparted a deeper understanding of a life
whose dramatic particulars have longsince been mythologized,
dramatized, and cannibalized by those in search of a lusty life
story. Jong puts the works, the letters, the loves through a prism
that clarifies the creative impulse, making this slim book a
quintessential chronicle of a writer's life and a mirror of our own
times. "Always the flesh and the vision together", Anais Nin said
of Miller. The Devil at Large asks its readers to look anew at
these elements and come to a new appreciation of a
twentieth-century visionary and prophet.
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