Henry Miller's Widow - Hoki Tokuda

The Los Angeles Times catches up with Henry Miller's widow, Hoki Tokuda.

From the article...

Reporting from Tokyo — For Hoki Tokuda, the whole crazy affair was like an inside joke her ex-husband, the late author Henry Miller, would have found irresistible — if it weren't all true.

He was the literary satyr of his generation, a famously virile writer riding high on the U.S. publication of his latest scandalous novel, penning passionate letters to a woman nearly five decades his junior.

He described his late-night longing for her: "I am truly at the end of my rope. I can't work, I can't sleep; my mind is on you perpetually, without let-up. It's not a sickness anymore, it's a mania. I am obsessed and possessed."

But here's the part that still makes Tokuda smile: The pursued wasn't impressed with her pursuer's fame or steamy prose. She never even read many of the amorous letters that were later published as a collection, "Letters From Henry Miller to Hoki Tokuda Miller." And she could get through only three pages of his classic novel "Tropic of Cancer."

Stranger still, she says, is that during 11 years of marriage, following her stipulations, they never made love or even slept together. "I kissed Henry just once and he was a terrible kisser," Tokuda says now, her mouth crooked, like she's just tasted a lemon. "It was not romantic. It was all … " she pauses, "wet."

And speaking of Henry Miller: