“In this engrossing biography Ferguson measures the cheerful amoralist of
Tropic of Cancer
and
The Rosy Crucifixion
against the guilt-ridden, insecure male in revolt against his bourgeois Brooklyn family. . . . The Miller in these pages is neither the macho bully portrayed by feminists nor the adolescent sexual philosopher dismissed by the academic establishment, but a ‘unique…and necessary literary figure,’ a popular American sage….Richly rewarding.” —
Publishers Weekly
The only biography Henry Miller ever wanted was the one he himself wrote in the brash, life-affirming fictions of
The Tropic of Capricorn
,
The Tropic of Cancer
, and
. But Robert Ferguson’s new biography tells a different tale; for where the novels are sexually explicit and brutally frank—woundingly so to those close to Miller—they are also the fantasies of a man escaping from his past, and from himself.