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Henry Milller
Henry Valentine Miller (December 26, 1891 – June 7, 1980) was an American novelist. He broke with existing literary forms and developed a new type of semi-autobiographical novel that blended character study, social criticism, philosophical reflection, stream of consciousness, explicit language, sex, surrealist free association, and mysticism.[1][2] His most characteristic works of this kind are Tropic of Cancer, Black Spring, Tropic of Capricorn, and the trilogy The Rosy Crucifixion, which are based on his experiences in New York and Paris (all of which were banned in the United States until 1961).[3] He also wrote travel memoirs and literary criticism, and painted watercolors.
Miller was born at his family's home, 450 East 85th Street, in the Yorkville section of Manhattan, New York City. He was the son of Lutheran German parents, Louise Marie (Neiting) and tailor Heinrich Miller.[5] As a child, he lived for nine years at 662 Driggs Avenue in Williamsburg, Brooklyn,[6] known at that time (and referred to frequently in his works) as the Fourteenth Ward. In 1900, his family moved to 1063 Decatur Street in the Bushwick section of Brooklyn.[7] After finishing elementary school, although his family remained in Bushwick, Miller attended Eastern District High School in Williamsburg.[8] As a young man, he was active with the Socialist Party of America (his "quondam idol" was the black Socialist Hubert Harrison).[9] He attended the City College of New York for one semester.
The publication of Miller's Tropic of Cancer in the United States in 1961 by Grove Press led to a series of obscenity trials that tested American laws on pornography. The U.S. Supreme Court, in Grove Press, Inc., v. Gerstein, citing Jacobellis v. Ohio (which was decided the same day in 1964), overruled the state court findings of obscenity and declared the book a work of literature; it was one of the notable events in what has come to be known as the sexual revolution. Elmer Gertz, the lawyer who successfully argued the initial case for the novel's publication in Illinois, became Miller's lifelong friend; a volume of their correspondence has been published.[62] Following the trial, in 1964–65, Miller's other books, which had also been banned in the US, were published by Grove Press: Black Spring, Tropic of Capricorn, Quiet Days in Clichy, Sexus, Plexus and Nexus.[63] Excerpts from some of these banned books, including Tropic of Cancer, Black Spring and Sexus, were first published in the US by New Directions in The Henry Miller Reader in 1959.
Miller is considered a "literary innovator" in whose works "actual and imagined experiences became indistinguishable from each other."[80] His books did much to free the discussion of sexual subjects in American writing from both legal and social restrictions. He influenced many writers, including Lojze Kovačič, Richard Brautigan, Jack Kerouac, Norman Mailer, Vitomil Zupan, Philip Roth, Cormac McCarthy, Paul Theroux and Erica Jong.
Throughout his novels he makes references to other works of literature; he cites Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Joris-Karl Huysmans, Balzac and Nietzsche as having a formative impact on him.
Tropic of Cancer is referenced in Junot Díaz's 2007 book The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao as being read by Ana Obregón. Miller's legal difficulties, Tropic of Cancer and Tropic of Capricorn are mentioned in Denis Johnson's 2007 novel Tree of Smoke, in a conversation between Skip Sands and his uncle, Colonel Sands. Miller is mentioned again later in the novel.[82] Miller's relationship with June Mansfield is the subject of Ida Therén's 2020 novel Att omfamna ett vattenfall.
Miller died of circulatory complications at his home in Pacific Palisades on June 7, 1980, at the age of 88.[60] His body was cremated and his ashes shared between his son Tony and daughter Val. Tony has stated that he ultimately intends to have his ashes mixed with those of his father and scattered in Big Sur.
courtesy--wikipedia

- Henry Milller

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