Letters from Henry Miller to Hoki Tokuda Miller

Book excerpt: 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.