The Durrell-Miller Wartime Correspondence
Listen to the radio programme (Australian ABC Radio National) here
Lots about pre-War Corfu. Very evocative production. I really enjoyed it. Great radio. Catch it before it disappears.
"From 1935 to 1980, Lawrence Durrell and Henry Miller sustained one of the most lively and remarkable literary correspondences in modern history. This program dips into those letters. They're raunchy, sexist, insightful and competitive. They also reflect how different these two writers were in their reaction to WWII. One ran away, while the other stayed and found a new depth in his experience of life.
Henry Miller is best known for his notorious, and for a long time banned, Tropic of Cancer. Lawrence Durrell, on the other hand, is remembered for his intriguing Alexandria Quartet which made a splash in literary and bohemian circles in the 1960s and ‘70s. The first and most famous of these four novels, Justine, was depicted in 1986 by Brett Whiteley, who painted his wife, Wendy, sprawled on Bondi Beach in a blue bikini reading the book Justine through dark sunglasses.
A Wartime Correspondence: Lawrence Durrell & Henry Miller is written and narrated by David Green, who spoke with two Durrell specialists, Ian MacNiven and Michael Haag, as well as Durrell’s step daughter, Joanna Hodgkin. Reading the letters are William Zappa (as Henry Miller) and David Tredinnick (as Lawrence Durrell)".
Justine, Trailer (YouTube)
Miller and Durrell (YouTube)
Meet Lawrence Durrell (YouTube)
Previous posting (Durrell and Miller)
Did Gerald Durrell Have the Corfu Blues?
Sometimes I wonder whether Henry Miller really enjoyed Greece as much as it would appear from The Colossus of Marousi. He doesn't seem to have much respect for most Greek women, men or (Corfiote) cats, to judge from these pages from "First Impressions of Greece" (Village Press, London, 1973), which he wrote in 1939 and gave to George Seferis in manuscript form.
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