The Happiest Man Alive: A Biography of Henry Miller

by Mary V. Dearborn

The first comprehensive, objective biography of Henry Miller, one of the major literary figures of the 20th century. Drawing on Miller's vast correspondence as well as interviews with friends and associates, Mary Dearborn takes a fresh and objective look at the writer as she evaluates his achievements and his many lesser works and provides penetrating critical insight into his attitudes and philosophy.

Lover, luster, painter, domineering husband, encyclopedia salesman, voyeur, massive egotist, self-proclaimed holy man, autocrat, iconoclast--Henry Miller's disparate selves are not readily reconciled. In this revelatory, incisive biography, his real life turns out to be even more fascinating than the fictionalized autobiographies he wove about himself. With a mixture of critical detachment and sympathy, Dearborn ( Love in the Promised Land ) explores a man of contradictions. A romantic Don Juan, Miller (1891-1980) was also a misogynist who married five times. A pacifist anarchist, he advocated violence and espoused a Nietzschean apocalyptic politics in the 1930s. Until World War II he harbored a strong anti-Semitic streak, although the great obsessional love of his life, second wife June Manfield (nee Juliet Edith Smerth) was Jewish. In Paris, penniless but rejuvenated at age 39, Miller learned how to write by making his own suffering and rebirth the subject of his art. The theme of his best books is not sex, Dearborn suggestively argues, but personal and artistic survival.

Genres: Biography, Collections, Nonfiction

368 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1991

About the author

Biographer and author.

Reviews

[Jeff Russo · Rating 4 out of 5]

When reading about someone like Henry Miller, I think maybe there's hope for me. I figured he was just some young buck when he moved to Paris to try writing, but he was 40 years old. Before that it was just some weird marriages, poverty, and aimlessness.

So maybe I still have some artistic achievement hiding in me. When Burroughs was my age, 37, he was just kicking off his writing career by shooting his common-law wife in the head.

[Ami Boughter · Rating 3 out of 5]

“I have no money, no resources, no hopes. I am the happiest man alive..."

[Jim Beatty · Rating 5 out of 5]

I thought, when I came upon her, that I was seizing hold of life....Instead I lost hold of life completely. I reached out for something to attach myself to--and I found nothing. But in reaching out, in the effort to grasp, to attach myself, left high and dry as I was, I nevertheless found something I had not looked for--myself.
Henry Miller-Tropic of Capricorn

[Janet · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thought this was a terrific portrait of Miller, showing what a complex man he was, and examining the relationship of that person with the rough and crude persona he developed in his writing. It has a great cover, too bad you can't see it here.

[Huma Malika · Rating 2 out of 5]

Henry Miller aimlessly wandered most of his life. His novel was banned in the US so he didn’t achieve fame until the end of his life. The lesson is to grow your soul, find pleasure in the little things, so much is outside of our control.

[False · Rating 2 out of 5]

I started reading Henry Miller as a teenager: the Tropic books, the Nexus, Sexus, Plexus books, then later Quiet Days in Clichy, The Air-Conditioned Nightmare and other offshoots like Black Spring or Big Sur. There was always disgruntlement in the books, an anger and belittling of women and the overriding sense of poverty, yet it's easy to forget that Henry Miller came from a well-heeled family with the comfort of clean, heated rooms and good clothing and watching over his education.

By the time he reached old age, the damage had been done. He was a writer of "dirty books." Cartoons appeared of his as a leering bedroom voyeur peeking into bedrooms, the patron saint of the "Playboy" interview. While a younger generation embraced his seemingly sexual freedom, they overlooked his multiple marriages because he viewed cooking and housework as "women's work," and it should be done by a woman. He didn't like the Beats, except for Kerouac, He thought by viewing his work as the bible of the sexual revolution, they were overlooking his deeper thoughts and not a true artist at all, but rather a character.

I'm not sure who would read Miller in this day and age, other than adolescents again seeking out sexual passages in the earlier work. I have a hard time in terms of his poverty issues, self imposed for the most part, and in his treatment of women.

[Douglas · Rating 4 out of 5]

I will always be grateful to Henry Miller for shocking me out of a stupor and giving me a giant kick in the ass to live life fully and with intensity.

Sadly, like most humans, he was not infallible, nor "happy" all the time.

I didn't read the last ten pages as I didn't want to experience his death.

The book is very well researched and written with an enjoyable style.

[John Purcell · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a very good biography of Henry Miller. Far more critical of the man, his writing and his beliefs than other pieces I have read about him. Dearborn recognises Miller's few successes as an artist but, rightly, dismisses much of what is published under his name. Miller is deservedly held to account for disgraceful shortcomings and rebuked for his unforgivable beliefs. Dearborn presents the man in the spirit Miller set out for himself, warts and all, and in doing so, has given Miller fans much to think about.

[Alexis Lewis · Rating 3 out of 5]

Gorgeous novel and a fantastic story teller. No matter how many times the Holocaust is written about it is still horrifically raw in each of the different voices that tell it and this is another beautiful testament to a disgusting horrendous time in our not so distant history

[Ashleigh Evans · Rating 5 out of 5]

INCREDIBLE
Everyone should read!!

[Wallace · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed this book b/c Henry Miller is such a unique guy. The author found a way to express Miller's sharp dry wit in his own writing style without seeming cheap. I thought it was well-written and informative.

[Karin · Rating 3 out of 5]

This became painful in the last chapters, alot of information to digest. Important read if you are a fan, I had a new appreciation for the artist.