Henry Miller: Stories, Essays, Travel Sketches

by Henry Miller, Antony Fine (Editor)

1992 MJF Books jumbo hardcover, Henry Miller (Tropic of Cancer). The author shares some of his best writings and sketches of his world travels.

Genres: Nonfiction

739 pages, Hardcover

First published July 1, 1997

About the author

Henry Valentine Miller was an American novelist, short story writer and essayist. He broke with existing literary forms and developed a new type of semi-autobiographical novel that blended character study, social criticism, philosophical reflection, stream of consciousness, explicit language, sex, surrealist free association, and mysticism. His most characteristic works of this kind are Tropic of Cancer, Black Spring, Tropic of Capricorn, and the trilogy The Rosy Crucifixion, which are based on his experiences in New York City and Paris (all of which were banned in the United States until 1961). He also wrote travel memoirs and literary criticism, and painted watercolors.

Reviews

[Mary]

Not a book you actually finish, but handy for bedtime reading
and also as a doorstop, if a used copy shows up cheap. Great stuff
about the stages of his life: Brooklyn, Manhattan, Paris (1891-1939);
Greece (1939-40); The Trip Across America (1940-44) by car; then
Big Sur "and after". He is invigorating company. As someone said,
it isn't what you see, but how you see. Best of both worlds in a
book like this one.(Now off to Amazon for an old copy, if I'm lucky.)

[Kris Kipling]

This book contains much incidental material along with what is seemingly the complete texts of Miller’s books THE COLOSSUS OF MAROUSSI and THE AIR-CONDITIONED NIGHTMARE – the former justly acclaimed (by the author himself, among others) as his best book, a travelogue of Greece that is heartfelt and very beautiful, and the latter a frequently hilarious and brutal critique of the US in the late 1940s that is unfortunately marred by a number of lulls and a fair amount of sloppy writing. I say that this volume "seemingly" contains the full texts of these books because I haven't had time to make absolutely sure. A comparison of my copy of MAROUSSI, at least the first half, shows that everything looks to be in place. My first suspicion was that editor Fine had taken generous excerpts of MAROUSSI, as the New Directions paperback is about twice the number of pages that fill this volume; but this probably really only shows how many more pages New Directions is able to squeeze from its copious top, bottom, left, and right margins and fewer lines-per-page. These two texts, fragmented or full, take up the bulk of this book. As a betting man, I'd say both of these books are intact in HENRY MILLER: STORIES, ESSAYS, AND TRAVEL SKETCHES, but the thing is so poorly put together the only way of knowing for sure is to go through paragraph-by-paragraph, which I may on a lark end up actually doing (I’d like to know this book contains all of COLOSSUS before I give my worn paperback copy away).

The rest is the story “Smile at the Foot of the Ladder” along with fragments from other books of Miller miscellany, all of which are published by New Directions (who apparently gave editor Fine across-the-board permission to use whatever they had). But what comes from where? There is neither chronology nor mentions of which excerpts are taken from what books; everything is loosely grouped, as the title indicates, by its designation as travel, essay, or story. All you get is an impassioned if uninspired introductory essay by Fine that defends Miller against the “simply a pornographer” charge, which anyone who’s read anything by the man doesn’t take seriously regardless. Still, I suppose, if it’s true that three complete books that you’d have to buy individually otherwise are included (“Smile” is also published as a stand alone volume) - along with a few choice fragments besides - in a nice, fat, hardback, it’s a good bargain.

As a place to start with Miller, it might be better than the best-known novels (the TROPIC books, BLACK SPRING, the “ROSY CRUCIFIXION” trilogy – none of which are published by New Directions – are excluded here), which can turn people off with their excessive description of sexual encounters and occasional insensitive comments about blacks, women, and Jews that tend to have the “progressives” up in arms against old Hank (oh, the sensitive souls we are!). One might mention that the so-called anti-Semite counted a number of Jewish writers among his admirers, including the poet Karl Shapiro (who wrote an ecstatic, sometimes too ecstatic, introduction to TROPIC OF CANCER) and Isaac Singer (a Nobel-winner who thought Miller deserved the award); or one might excerpt from the piece "Fan Mail" here:

Is it any wonder that John Cowper Powys is forever extolling the Jews and the Negroes? Without the latter, as I have often remarked, America would be a joyless, immaculate, superabundant museum of monotonous specimens labelled "the white race." Without the Jews, charity would begin at home and stay there. Every artist, in America certainly, must be indebted a hundred times over to his Jewish friends...No, the artist - in America at least - cannot avoid coming into contact with the Jew, becoming friends with him, imitating him, imbibing from him the courage, the patience, the tolerance, the persistence and the tenacity which this people has in its blood.

I still consider the man one of the very greatest American writers, despite his deep faults – which, we should recall, Miller never tried to conceal – despite that there are many better “writers” out there. Miller’s failings can be safely ignored, but the lessons – both in the exuberance of the Greek journey and the horror of the trek across the US, as well as the little nuggets sprinkled throughout this book - are well worth meditating on.


*Later addition: COLOSSUS has indeed been pared down - presumably that means NIGHTMARE is also incomplete. In the latter case I cannot compare, but that book could use a lot of pruning. In fact, there isn't a Henry Miller book that couldn't have used a sterner editor. The deletions from COLOSSUS all seem to be in the second section of the book; as Miller's second halves always seem sluggish and repetitive compared to the first halves, often bordering on the unreadable, this isn't a bad thing. Indeed, the by far the worst sections of the book - a detailed description of Miller's diarrhea and fever (featuring the memorable "I made caca in my pants"), and a very embarrassing quasi-surrealist homage to Louis Armstrong - are mercifully excised, along with much unnecessary detail about Miller's troubles with the American embassy. Unfortunately some of the last travel episodes have also been cut. I would suggest to anyone, naturally, that they read the whole COLOSSUS OF MAROUSSI, awful passages or no, but one would certainly get most of the best of it in this collection.

[Ernest Hogan · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is what real writing is like.