In 1934, he published, Tropic of Cancer, his first book. It was banned for obscenity in the United States. His following works, Black Spring (1936) and Tropic of Capricorn (1939) would also have to be smuggled into his home country.
Of all the lists I've read over the years from other writers, and creatives, Mr. Miller's stand out as the most likely to do me good.
- Forget the books you want to write. Think only of the book you are writing.
- Work on one thing at a time until finished.
- Start no more new books, add no more new material to Black Spring.
- Don’t be nervous. Work calmly, joyously, recklessly on whatever is in hand.
- Work according to Program and not according to mood. Stop at the appointed time!
- When you can’t create you can work.
- Cement a little every day, rather than add new fertilisers.
- Keep human! See people, go places, drink if you feel like it.
- Don’t be a draught-horse! Work with pleasure only.
- Write first and always. Painting, music, friends, cinema, all these come afterwards.
Henry met Anaïs Nin in Paris in 1932. Both already married, American novelist Henry Miller and Franco-American diarist Anaïs Nin began an intense love affair leading to some of the most passionate letters ever written…
August 14, 1932
Anaïs:
Don’t expect me to be sane anymore. Don’t let’s be sensible. It was a marriage at Louveciennes—you can’t dispute it. I came away with pieces of you sticking to me; I am walking about, swimming, in an ocean of blood, your Andalusian blood, distilled and poisonous […] I saw you as the mistress of your home, a Moor with a heavy face, a negress with a white body, eyes all over your skin, woman, woman, woman.
I can’t see how I can go on living away from you—these intermissions are death. How did it seem to you when Hugo came back? Was I still there? I can’t picture you moving about with him as you did with me. Legs closed. Frailty. Sweet, treacherous acquiescence. Bird docility. You became a woman with me. I was almost terrified by it. You are not just thirty years old—you are a thousand years old.
Here I am back and still smouldering with passion, like wine smoking. Not a passion any longer for flesh, but a complete hunger for you, a devouring hunger. I read the paper about suicides and murders and I understand it all thoroughly. I feel murderous, suicidal. I feel somehow that it is a disgrace to do nothing, to just bide one’s time, to take it philosophically, to be sensible. Where has gone the time when men fought, killed, died for a glove, a glance, etc? (A victrola is playing that terrible aria from Madama Butterfly—”Some day he’ll come!”)
