Letters from Henry Miller to Hoki Tokuda Miller

About the Book

Henry Miller described himself as a confused, negligent, reckless, lusty, obscene, boisterous, thoughtful, scrupulous, lying, diabolically truthful man...filled with wisdom and nonsense.

These letters, penned by the controversial author of Tropic of Cancer, Tropic of Capricorn and Black Spring, represent Henry Miller's sexual and moral summing-up. They chart the infatuation, marriage and eventual disillusionment of Miller with his fifth wife Hoki Tokuda, a talented Japanese musician almost fifty years his junior. In its almost dangerous candor and its melancholy recognition of love's failure to sustain happiness, this volume deserves to be viewed as the culminating statement of Miller's interior life.

About the Author

Joyce Howard's editing is sympathetic and perceptive, and her brief introduction to the letters clearsighted and moving. She met Henry Miller through her friendship with Anais Nin, when Miller was in his late seventies and living in Pacific Palisades. Some time after Miller's death, Hoki Tokuda Miller asked Joyce Howard to work on the correspondence, and make a selection from the hundreds of letters, cards, photos and articles which Henry had bequeathed Hoki.