Remember to Remember
The 1947 collection that brought the essay into Miller’s larger postwar retrospective.
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Murder the Murderer
by Henry Miller
Miller’s wartime antiwar argument: an open letter to Alfred Perlès followed by a demand that violence be confronted first within the self.
- 1944
- 61
- Savage
- political
- voice-driven
- challenging
About Henry Miller
The story, briefly
Spoiler-freeMurder the Murderer is Henry Miller’s two-part antiwar polemic, written and revised between late 1941 and 1944. Its first movement is an open letter to his friend Alfred Perlès; its second expands the title’s paradox into an ethical challenge. Miller refuses the fantasy that killing designated murderers can end murder. Unless the murderous impulse is confronted within individuals and societies, he argues, victory merely reproduces the structure of violence. The essay later became one of the major pieces in Remember to Remember.
The story, in more detail
The opening address to Perlès gives the argument the pressure of private correspondence during a world war. From there Miller widens his target: armies, nations, slogans, and official enemies are symptoms of a deeper readiness to solve human conflict through destruction. His pacifism is uncompromising and deliberately uncomfortable because it refuses to let moral responsibility stop at the border of one’s chosen side.
The Harry Ransom Center preserves a sixty-one-page typescript assembled from sections dated between December 1941 and June 1944. A separate edition appeared under Bern Porter’s imprint around 1944, commonly described as a thousand-copy printing, before New Directions incorporated the work into Remember to Remember in 1947.
Themes and analysis
What the title asks the reader to destroy
The title directs its command toward the impulse to kill, including that impulse in oneself. Miller argues that identifying an enemy as a murderer does not make one’s own violence a route beyond murder. The essay turns the language of righteous punishment against the person who uses it.
Its epistolary beginning matters. Addressing Alfred Perlès during the Second World War, Miller is not writing from a peaceful world in which nonviolence has no immediate cost. The conflict tests the extremity of his position and exposes the difference between rejecting a general principle and answering a particular aggressor.
The consequence he does not evade
Miller goes as far as proposing voluntary surrender to Hitler, reasoning that power would lose its force without resistance and collapse under the problems it inherited. This is not merely a plea to avoid another war after victory. It is a refusal of armed resistance during the existing one.
That proposal demands critical scrutiny. Its argument places faith in the disabling effect of nonresistance without adequately answering what happens to people already targeted by a violent state. The essay’s humane desire to end killing does not settle the moral and practical objections to the means it proposes.
Against the righteousness of one’s own side
Miller attacks Allied leaders and the language of a just war as well as the familiar dictators. His objection is to the permission political ideals give ordinary people to participate in organized killing. The result is a polemic, not a balanced history of the war or an assessment of competing military strategies.
The surviving manuscripts show composition and revision across the early 1940s. The separate Bern Porter publication and the essay’s collection in Remember to Remember gave the argument a life beyond its original letter. Its place beside portraits of artists makes Miller’s desired alternative visible: creative life rather than organized destruction.
Why we recommend it
A difficult ethical paradox
The title’s command turns back on itself, asking whether violence can ever abolish violence.
Private address, public stakes
The letter to Perlès makes a global argument feel like an urgent conversation between separated friends.
What this book explores
The people in its pages
Alfred Perlès
Miller’s closest Paris friend and the addressee of the essay’s opening section, written during their wartime separation.
Timeline
1941–1944
Miller writes and revises the two-part wartime essay.
1944
Bern Porter issues Murder the Murderer separately.
1947
New Directions collects it in Remember to Remember.
Book editions
Paperback
- Paperback
- Bern Porter
- 1944
Hardcover
- Hardcover
- New Directions
- 1947
Reader reviews
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The American travel book from which the separate edition identifies this argument as an excursus.
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What Are You Going to Do About Alf?
An earlier open letter centered on Miller’s friendship with Alfred Perlès.
Read our takeMurder the Murderer: frequently asked questions
Is Murder the Murderer an antiwar essay?
Yes. Miller argues that war cannot eliminate murder because organized killing reproduces the very impulse it claims to defeat.
Who is the open letter addressed to?
Alfred Perlès, Miller’s Austrian-born writer friend and former Clichy flatmate.
Where else was the essay published?
New Directions included it in Miller’s 1947 collection Remember to Remember.
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References
References
The sources below include the primary text, editions, scholarship, archival materials, and other records that informed this page. They document Murder the Murderer, its publication, and its place in literary history.
1Murder the Murderer
EssaysHenry Miller, 1944Used forThe primary text represented by this page, used for descriptions of the work’s contents and for any quoted passages shown here.
2Henry Miller and the Pull of Gravity — quotation and criticism of Murder the Murderer
WebsiteNew English ReviewUsed forWeb source consulted for documented facts and historical context presented on the Murder the Murderer page.
3Henry Miller: An Inventory of His Collection
ArchiveHarry Ransom Center, The University of Texas at AustinUsed forArchival evidence used to document the historical record connected to Murder the Murderer.
4Lost and Found: The Work of Bern Porter
Official recordThe Museum of Modern ArtUsed forOfficial record used to verify names, dates, institutional details, or other factual information on this page.
5Remember to Remember
Official recordNew DirectionsUsed forOfficial record used to verify names, dates, institutional details, or other factual information on this page.
6Henry Miller: A Life
BiographyW. W. Norton, 1991Used forBiographical evidence used to verify chronology, relationships, and historical context connected to Murder the Murderer.
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Why these sources are here
The primary text is the baseline reference for every book page. Additional references document publication history, interpretation, and historical context where that evidence is available.
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