Henry Miller is a Good Friend of Mine

In the years of their correspondence with each other, Merton mentioned Miller and his growing friendship with him in a number of letters to others. In August 1962, in that first summer of their correspondence, Merton tells Ernesto Cardenal that he has been in contact with Miller who "has written some extraordinary essays recently, especially a book called The Wisdom of the Heart" (August 17, 1962. CFT p.134).

The following year in June 1963 he tells Miguel Grinberg, "Henry Miller is a good friend of mine" who has a very good insight into the world that "is falling into a state of confusion and barbarism, for which the responsibility lies, perhaps, with those who think themselves the most enlightened." He tells Grinberg that Miller has said "many really urgent things about the modern world and where it is going," and that the problem is the "dehumanization of man" (June 21, 1963. CFT p.196). A year later, after Grinberg has visited Merton at Gethsemani and had pictures taken together, Merton tells Grinberg that he had sent one of the pictures of the two of them to Miller who had responded that Grinberg looked like "a pugilist and a vagabond" and Merton an "ex-convict" as well having resemblance to Genet and himself (July 12, 1964. CFT p.199). Merton comments, "only ex-convicts and vagabonds have any right to be moving about and breathing the air of night which is our ordinary climate."

In a letter dated October 6, 1965, Merton tells Chilean poet Hernan Lavin Cerda, "Miller is a very good friend of mine and has much to say, but he is old." Miller would have been almost 74 years old at this point. Merton tells Cerda that Miller is "very famous but he is read, above all, for 'kicks' because he has a reputation of being pornographic." Merton continues, "Actually he is a kind of secular monk with a sexual mysticism" (CFT p.205). There is undoubtedly truth and insight in Merton's assessment of Miller, particularly in the essential life he had begun to live on the remote Californian coast at Big Sur, but one wonders what exactly he meant by the phrase "sexual mysticism" - though reading some of Miller's work (particularly the Tropics which Merton had not read) one can recognize this in Miller. But what exactly did Merton mean by it? And one wonders whether there is some projection going on, and whether Merton perhaps identifies himself with, and aspires to be, a "kind of secular monk" perhaps even with a "sexual mysticism."

Sources:

Merton, Thomas. The Courage for Truth: Letters to Writers [CFT], selected and edited by Christine M. Bochen. New York: Harcourt Brace (Harvest edition), 1994.