On Brenda Venus and Immortality
14 November 2008
Part two of Immortality by Milan Kundera is entitled: Immortality. Goethe takes the starring role of this piece and in his shadow, the young woman Bettina. Fictive as it may be, it is based on fact. As cynical as Kundera is, he makes a decisive and truth-unveiling point. In short, Bettina struck up a relationship with the already literarily-known and older, Goethe. Both were married. It was a romantic relationship of sorts, which more or less nailed her face and her name up on the living walls of immortality. Take for instance the Duetsche Mark. Though Bettina had her own talents and charms, it was her relationship with Goethe and lesser Beethoven, that she is known for.
It’s innocent enough, publishing letters of love from someone who has already written their way into the hearts of many. Bettina must have had other motives than the preservation of her own immortality. Whatever immortality one casts by one’s life and by the works which arise out of it, there will no doubt be other immoralities that cling to it, especially with erosion of the sands of Memory. Goethe could exist—and may well does exist—without Bettina; Bettina will never exist without Goethe. Fragile is her place in Time.
This places me before my present agitation. Switch Bettina with Brenda; switch Goethe with Henry Miller. The name of Brenda Venus would have slipped unknowingly through the annals of ripe breasts and and pretty faces if it wasn’t for that letter. The letter was written by the immortal Henry Miller and was forgotten in a book auctioned off. This book Brenda bought. She wrote to him and a relationship, romantic of sorts, ensued. In Brenda’s declining years, facing inevitable death “for death and immortality are an indissoluble pair of lovers”, apart from getting plastic surgery to ward off that horrible disease of aging, she has erected a website to her already dead “mentor.”
In no way do I want to criticize their relationship, their shared words and emotions, for Henry Miller is a great man and stands upon an untouchable column of marble in my mind; he is the genius of our time. But the “father of the SEXUAL REVOLUTION” (Brenda’s capitals)? Did we not use the words fuck or pussy before Henry Miller came along? Has Brenda then never touched the fire in Lady Chatterly’s Lover, in Fanny Hill? Are the letters that he wrote to Brenda in any way comparable to Tropic of Cancer, as she claims? A Literate Passion, I might be able to see on a windier day: letters written between himself and the potent Anais Nin, the bulk written during the writing of Tropic of Cancer. But no, not even. Not in my mind. The Tropic of Cancer is not even comparable to Nexus, to Plexus ; as a work of literary bravado, it stands alone.
Dear, dear Brenda, I think you are grossly mistaken.
This website that she’s put up, when turned around to take a look at its ass, seems more ploy to sell, more an attempt to make that last clinging scribble up on the wall of immortality, direct under Henry Miller’s name. But his grandiosity evades such pettiness. Henry Miller did not “fight” for our sexual rights. He was no “guru.” Money was something that had weight only in that it lent him the freedom to move in the life he enjoyed. Henry Miller strove to be himself. “Kill the Buddha!” He wrote it himself. Do not stifle his name.
Perhaps Brenda Venus does need the money to pay off some mortgage on her L.A. luxury; perhaps she’s in desperate need of immortality. L.A. is not cheap and there run many veins of anonymity. I’m sure Botox costs plenty. And so Henry Miller’s famous blue robe has gone up for sale: $50,000. Any bidders? Maybe a love letter with his name scrawled out below? A watercolor? You would only be out $35,000 and Brenda Venus would be in a new armoire full of clothes. Maybe I’m idealistic, but if I ever came into contact with anything such as these things I would hold onto them until the black wave of death overcame me and then have them donated to that fine Big Sur library. But who can argue with the want of money? Who am I trying to subsist on my words?
Oh, and about the SEXUAL REVOLUTION (Brenda’s capitals), I think it’s still coming. What came about in the sixties may be summed up with birth control Brenda, not words like fuck and pussy, not Henry Miller. Perhaps the SEXUAL REVOLUTION you have mentioned was in reference to your own sexual discoveries and sensual journeys blazed during your relationship with Henry Miller? The liberations that Henry Miller deals go deep. His writings work on many levels and maybe Brenda just got confused. That his books were banned in his own country, that he dared to write sex as it has never been written is a step on an illimitable path; there were those who walked this path before, there will be those to continue. Revolution is a revolution because it moves like a circle: no beginning, no end.
Brenda Venus knew the man; I know the writer. “For me the book is the man and my book is the man I am.” He wrote it himself. Brenda Venus, I challenge your attempts to this immortality.
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