A book I've always enjoyed since buying it on its first publication in Britain in 1979 is Jay Martin's Always Merry and Bright, a biography of Henry Miller. I've practically lived in this volume and still dive in and savour the episodes over again. There are the various tales: about little Henry and his horse Dexter, about the candy-selling racket in New York and then the mezzotint caper, when his wife peddled single sheets of coloured card with printed-up articles and prose poems he had composed. I sympathise with the penniless Miller in Paris sleeping in the projection room of the abandoned Cinéma Vanves, terrified that the celluloid in its cans would combust spontaneously. I relished the tales about the friendly humiliations and 'pranks', pickpocketing included, inflicted on his mentor Michael Fraenkel by Miller and his crony, the cultured Austrian guttersnipe Alfred Perlès. About the love tortures endured at the hands of the maddening, mythical June who nonetheless regarded Henry as her god--for a time. This chunky hardcover I have fondled for years. Something of Miller's life must have filtered into my own day to day consciousness.
Though Miller said he didn't like Always Merry and Bright--which he refused to read!--it is a real page turner and well written too, in the chatty Miller vein, with shrewd insights. It also shows a reasonableness towards Miller and his scrounging ways that I would not myself be inclined to subscribe to today. Robert Ferguson's Henry Miller, a life is a bit of an antidote to Jay Martin's book.
Miller hated the thought of anyone writing his life story, claiming he'd done the job himself. Though he didn't prevent Jay Martin from looking at piles of material in USCL files, he gave him no encouragement. Seems to me that Miller might have realised that the fact by fact retelling of his life would prove a rather unedifying spectacle which wouldn't reflect a lot of credit on its subject. (A factual account was what Martin was attempting. He wished to chart Miller's life by reference to his cheque stubs, receipts and bills as it were, rather than compile a 'literary biography').
Miller kept afloat largely by loans and handouts from friends, relatives, or anyone who adopted, for a time, a friendly approach. Someone in a similar position and with the same attitude today would be taking the dole--in Britain, at least.
It is true that Miller was by no means tight with money when he had it--when a generous donor, himself not a rich man, bankrolled him for a time, Miller immediately set about sending a great proportion of it out to other needy artists.
This week I've been reading Steven Berkoff's Free Association. This could be another book to live with for years, to inhabit via the silent hours of reading and rereading. The quality of it certainly seems as if it would stand up to many visits.
Berkoff is of a different stamp to Miller. Up against the indifference of the hierarchy that runs British theatreland he has not been afraid to work and fight without crawling off to find help either from parents or friends or from the nipple of state subsidy. (Though glad of financial help when he could get it, he'd go ahead without if necessary. He's also had to claim his share of dole--though without seeing 'claiming' itself it as a viable way of life.)
Many of the producers and managers Berkoff came in contact with were getting hefty grants from the Arts Council but they didn't see it as part of their remit ever to hire or in any way support the anarchic Berkoff and his ideas. He describes British theatre as being stuck in a naturalistic soapy rut which he with his penchant for brilliant, expressionistic display, detests. (Many times reading these comments I had to gasp at parallels with the whole buttoned-up establishment side of British publishing. Stodgeville.)
Berkoff comes over as a man with huge talent, stickability, energy and an enormous quantity of cheek. Also as endearingly vulnerable and capable of nervousness.