HENRY MILLER. Money and How It Gets That Way. INSCRIBED TO BUFFIE JOHNSON. Paris: Booster Publications, 1938.

Price: US$607.49 + shipping

Condition: Near Fine

Description: Paris: Booster Publications, [1938]. Small 8vo. Publisher’s wrappers. | The text block starting to part from the spine, though possible to repair nicely. The very fragile and ”acidy” paper with small paper loss to upper edge of first two pages. Though still an attractive copy of this fragile publication. | INSCRIBED by Miller to artist Buffie Johnson to half title, dated 5/7/39. | Buffie Johnson [1912-2006] a painter whose work spanned much of the 20th century and ranged from Surrealism to Abstract Expressionism to larger-than-life hyperrealism. From The New York Times Obituary: A woman of independent means, Ms. Johnson was by all accounts a woman of sociable temperament, and her life was intertwined with those of some of the 20th century’s leading artists, writers and performers. Over the years, she befriended, socialized with or otherwise brushed up against a cast of luminaries including Paul and Jane Bowles, Truman Capote, Willem de Kooning, Lawrence Durrell, Greta Garbo, Patricia Highsmith, Gene Krupa, Gypsy Rose Lee, Robert Motherwell, Jackson Pollock and Lee Krasner, Mark Rothko, Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas, Gore Vidal and Andy Warhol. Buffie Johnson writes about Miller in her ”Personal Reminiscences of Lawrence Durrell”: My principal feeling about Lawrence Durrell, and I am going to speak from the feeling side, is of a personality with an enormous sense of fun, terrific energy and a kind of wildness very evident when he was young. We were the same age, and came to Paris at the same time, Larry from Greece and I from the States. He came especially to see Henry Miller. The little circle that I met him in consisted of Fred Perlès, David Edgar, Henry and Larry. I detested Henry, both the man and his writing. I didn’t like his egomaniacal stance or his attitude toward women. I might say he disliked me quite as cordially. I rather liked the side of his personality that developed later after he came to America. I think he lived a more attractive bohemian style in California. He also had a kind of wildness like Larry’s. Perhaps that wildness came from Larry. I don’t know. But I have never understood Larry’s devotion to what I considered such an inferior personality. Devoted he was, however. Apparently Henry had something Larry needed. In thinking about Larry Durrell, I first realized that the characters in the Quartet are very bizarre, very far out, very baroque. Actually it’s striking because of the similarities to people I’ve met through Larry. He seems to attract and reach out for some of the strangest people I have ever met. They’re very much like characters in the Quartet.

Seller: Antikvariat Bryggen [ILAB, NABF], Skjeberg, Norway