TWILIGHT WITH VENUS

Henry Miller spent the last four years of his life hopelessly in love with a Playboy model 60 years his junior

Des Power

SUMMER BOOKS SPECIAL AT THE AGE OF 89, HENRY MILLER was still writing. His output included 1,400 letters to Brenda Venus, 60 years younger, an American actress, former ballerina and Playboy model. Miller was besotted. For the last four years of his life, blind in one eye and partially paralysed in one leg, she was his paramour and muse. Lawrence Durrell said of their relationship: “She enabled him to dominate his infirmities and to experience all the Joys of Paradise.” Erica Jong was a little less fulsome: “He had the heart of a child beneath his old man’s infirmities.” Of Venus, Jong wrote: “She depicts herself as the last great love of Henry Miller’s life, and I am sure that is what he wanted her to believe (though I happen…

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The Critic (Digital) - 1 Issue, July 2023

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