Posted ByPierre on September 25, 19101 at 16:33:30:
In Reply to: Re: sex posted byJim on September 24, 19101 at 23:45:35:
: : Just for the record: With how many woman did Henry had sex?
: Miller says in many places that he was not really a Don Juan. He doesn't really try to portray himself that way either. He was actually a sentimental romantic but his destiny was to examine romanticism after and during the act of being scewered over the heat of the great loves of his life (The Rosy Crucifixion.) He never really succeeded in loving women well however, because, like most romantics he was more in love with his own feelings than those of his wives and lovers. He was not callous and misogynistic, however as he has been protrayed by the likes of the dyke left and center such as Kate Millet. I suspect that Miller himself didn't know how many different women he had made love to because in the act of counting he probably got lost in his dreams before he ever got to the end of the list. However if you must have a guess, I would say, not counting prostitutes, no more than 25 or 50. And please take everything I just said with a grain of salt.
Henry was indeed a great romantic. His portrait of Cora Seward (« First Love ») in « Max and the White Phagocytes », for example, is a little masterpiece (full of amorous nobility and veneration) and his letters « Dear, Dear Brenda » are quite unique in their extravagant idealism, especially if one considers that Miller wrote them when he was a frail old man in his late 80s. On the other hand, I think Miller tried to hide this romantic streak in his works, just like he tried to hide his natural timidity. He was not a seducer (the fact that he was bald and only 5`8`` probably didn’t help). He liked to be seduced , that`s for sure, and in « Sexus » he writes bluntly : « I was always a bad suitor. I became discouraged easily, not because I doubted my own powers but because I distrusted them. I wanted the woman to come to me. I wanted her to make the advances. No danger of her becoming too bold! The more recklessly she gave herself the more I admired her. I hated virgins and shrinking violets. La femme fatale! – that was my ideal. » p. 228. His fondness of prostitutes seems to stem also from the easiness, the immediate availability of these women : « A new world opens up. And hers was so lovely up close…I devoured her with my eyes. And then to think that it`s so easy to go with someone you really desire so strongly. Just a little dough. », « Letters to Emil », p. 133. Finally, since our friend Remco is interested in numbers, I`ll have to quote, first, Wambly Bald (the Van Norden of « Tropic of Cancer ») who, unsparingly revengeful, told Kenneth C. Dick : « I think Miller was awed by sex itself. In the presence of genteel ladies he was shy…he preferred some tart that he could shake off when he no longer wanted her. » p. 197. And, second, this comment by Richard Thoma, another American expatriate who knew Miller in the 30s : « I think Miller is basically a religious man. He never had all those women. Maybe ten in his whole life. » p.195 (both from « Colosssus of One » Alberts-Sittard-The Netherlands, 1967).