There’s no two ways about it. Hen­ry Miller had a way with words. He could be blunt, lewd, cut­ting, all in one short sen­tence. You want a lit­tle case study? Ok, how about the notes Miller scrawled back in 1973, when he called Sal­vador Dalí “the biggest ‘prick” of the 20th cen­tu­ry” (or, in anoth­er instance a “prick of the first water”). What was his beef with the Span­ish sur­re­al­ist? It all start­ed in 1940, when Miller and his lover, the incom­pa­ra­ble Anaïs Nin, spent some time cooped up in the same house with Dalí, who turned out to be an insuf­fer­able pri­ma don­na. Their time togeth­er end­ed in a wild shout­ing match, with Miller and Nin storm­ing out of the home and hold­ing a grudge for decades to come. The sto­ry is nice­ly recount­ed by Book Tryst, a site that has recent­ly become a new favorite of ours.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Illustrated by Salvador Dalí in 1969, Finally Gets Reissued

Des­ti­no: The Sal­vador Dalí – Dis­ney Col­lab­o­ra­tion 57 Years in the Mak­ing

Tom Schiller’s 1975 Jour­ney Through Hen­ry Miller’s Bath­room (NSFW)

Hen­ry Miller Talks Writ­ing and the Expat Life with Anaïs Nin, Lawrence Dur­rell, and Oth­ers (1969)