LETTERS TO EMIL

Glorious collection of letters written in 1922-1934 from Miller to his chum Emil Schnellock. Miller and Schnellock, schoolboy buddies at P.S. 85 in Brooklyn (class of 1905), remet in 1921, when Miller was an aspiring writer and Schnellock a world-traveling painter. The cosmopolitan Schnellock soon became Miller's intellectual mentor, but as these letters demonstrate, the pupil dramatically outshone the teacher. What energy courses through these pages, covering Miller's last days in Brooklyn and his years in Paris! Miller declares his savage vocation in the first lines of the first letter: "Ye Gods! The first day of being a writer has nearly broken my back. I have discovered new sets of muscles, new aches, new worries." He rhapsodizes about watercoloring, Paris, whores—whatever grabs his fancy. He inserts dead-on put-downs of Henry James and James Joyce ("I see him as a . . .precious sewer, a medieval stew"). He sends wold-lists, plans for new books (one of a cinema, another on D.H. Lawrence), notes on fading writers, first versions of some of his best essays—including the prototype of "The Angel is My Watermark!" More difficult to cull—Wickes' editorial interjections help considerably here—are autobiographical details. Miller rants for pages about his wife June, but remains curiously reticent about Anais Nin. No matter—the meat here is his explosive, gargantuan, deliriously happy record of life on the gallop.