The Henry Miller Reader

by Henry Miller, Lawrence Durrell (Editor)

In 1958, when Henry Miller was elected to membership in the American Institute of Arts and Letters, the citation described him as: "The veteran author of many books whose originality and richness of technique are matched by the variety and daring of his subject matter. His boldness of approach and intense curiosity concerning man and nature are unequalled in the prose literature of our times." It is most fitting that this anthology of "the best" of Henry Miller should have been assembled by one of the first among Miller's contemporaries to recognize his genius, the eminent British writer Lawrence Durrell. Drawing material from a dozen different books Durrell has traced the main line and principal themes of the "single, endless autobiography" which is Henry Miller's life work. "I suspect," writes Durrell in his Introduction, "that Miller's final place will be among those towering anomalies of authorship like Whitman or Blake who have left us, not simply works of art, but a corpus of ideas which motivate and influence a whole cultural pattern." Earlier, H. L. Mencken had said, "his is one of the most beautiful prose styles today," and the late Sir Herbert Read had written that "what makes Miller distinctive among modern writers is his ability to combine, without confusion, the aesthetic and prophetic functions." Included are stories, "portraits" of persons and places, philosophical essays, and aphorisms. For each selection Miller himself prepared a brief commentary which fits the piece into its place in his life story. This framework is supplemented by a chronology from Miller's birth in 1891 up to the spring of 1959, a bibliography, and, as an appendix, an open letter to the Supreme Court of Norway written in protest of the ban on Sexus, a part of which appears in this volume.

Genres: Fiction, Essays, Short Stories, Literature

397 pages, Paperback

First published May 1, 1959

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

[Beth in SF · Rating 4 out of 5]

I started off reading Henry Miller and became angry. I thought he was loose and overly self indulgent by getting off subject to proselytize about something that had just popped into his head. I still think that, but I'm not angry about it anymore. There were moments of poignancy in his uniqueness that struck heavy notes in me. I ended up realizing that perhaps it is I that am stuck; on structure. I love reading things that shake up the pieces in my brain.

[Marya · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoy Henry Miller's writing. I savored the letter/essay that he wrote to the high courts in Oslo when his books were being banned there. The essay is titled "Defense of the Freedom to Read".

[Michael]

The flights of fancy...the bursts of non sequential, original thought....yes Henry is a genius...maybe a cranky genius but a genius nonetheless.

[Brendan · Rating 5 out of 5]

There wasn’t very much in here that I hadn’t read before, but this is an excellent collection of Miller’s prime material. Reading some of these excerpts without the context of their larger origin works definitely gave me a new insight and perspective on them. Aside from just jumping right in to Tropic of Cancer, this may be the best introduction available to Miller and his genius.

[R.K. Cowles · Rating 3 out of 5]

3 1/2 stars

[Daniel Romero Vargas · Rating 3 out of 5]

A good guide to understand who Henry Miller really was. You'll need to read the novela though.

[Tom Schulte]

Miller himself introduces this collection as well as each piece in the collection, generally tying it to where he was in life at that time and the inspiration for the writing. It was done at a time when Miller's career was hampered by bans on his art in Norway, the U.S., etc. WW II was another setback to the ex-pat slumming in Paris. On a return home to Brooklyn, he eloquently marks what I unfortunately sense whenever "catching up". Why is our instinct to bring others up to date on all our setbacks?

...Listening to their recital I got the impression that the whole neighborhood was crippled and riddled with malignant diseases.

Everybody with whom they had any dealings, friend, relative, neighbor, butcher, letter-carrier, gas inspector, every one without exception carried about with him perpetually a little flower which grew out of his own body and which was named after one or the other of the familiar maladies, such as rheumatism, arthritis, pneumonia, cancer, dropsy, anemia, dysentery, meningitis, epilepsy, hernia, encephalitis, megalomania, chilblains, dyspepsia and so on and so forth. Those who weren't crippled, diseased or insane were out of work and living on relief. Those who could use their legs were on line at the movies waiting for the doors to be thrown open. I was reminded in a mild way of Voyage au Bout de la Nuit. The difference between these two worlds other- wise so similar lay in the standard of living; even those on relief were living under conditions which would have seemed luxurious to that suburban working class whom Céline writes about. In Brooklyn, so it seemed to me, they were dying of malnutrition of the soul. They lived on as vegetable tissue, flabby, sleep-drugged, disease-ridden carcasses with just enough intelligence to enable them to buy oil burners, radios, automobiles, news-papers, tickets for the cinema.

I was surprised to read of Miller's interest in astrology. Perhaps it was a symptom of his own vulnerabilities during these difficult years.

“Someone might struggle to admit they’re feeling vulnerable, but can more easily acknowledge ‘my Cancer moon is really sensitive today,’” Solas ["an Irish psychic intuitive"] says.

- "Why are so many people into astrology?"

Toward the end of this largely autobiographical anthology is a detailed timeline and a collection of his aphorisms taken from his writing. This sone encapsulates his live-in-the-moment ethos:

Life moves on, whether we act as cowards or as heroes. Life has no other discipline to impose, if we would but realize it, than to accept life unquestioningly. Everything 1 we shut our eyes to, everything we run away from, everything we deny, denigrate or despise, serves to defeat us in the end. What seems nasty, painful, evil, can become a source of beauty, joy and strength, if faced with 2 open mind. Every moment is a golden one for him who has the vision to recognize it as such. Life is now, every moment, no matter if the world be full of death

-The World Of Sex

[Jason Pym · Rating 4 out of 5]

'And who would arise to emancipate them? You laugh. But do we not regard the machine as our slave? And do we not suffer just as indubitably from this false relationship as did the wizards of old with their androids? Back of our deep-rooted desire to escape the drudgery of work lies not only freedom from sin but freedom from work, for work has become odious and degrading. When man ate of the Tree of Knowledge he elected to find a shortcut to godhood. He attempted to rob the Creator of the divine secret, which to him spelled power. What has been the result? Sin, disease, death. Eternal warfare, eternal unrest. The little we know we use for our own destruction. Wee know not how to escape the tyranny of the convenient monsters we have created. We delude ourselves into believing that, by means of them, we shall one day enjoy leisure and bliss, but all we accomplish, to be truthful, is to create more work for ourselves, more distress, more enmity, more sickness, more death. By our ingenious inventions and discoveries we are gradually altering the face of the earth - until it becomes unrecognizable in its ugliness. Until life itself becomes unbearable...‘ from Plexus, 1953

[EIJANDOLUM · Rating 3 out of 5]

He was like an engraving by Albrecht Dürer—a composite of all the dour, sour, morose, bitter, unfortunate, unlucky and introspective devils who compose the pantheon of Germany’s medieval knights.

[Eric · Rating 4 out of 5]

A perfect reading guide through Miller's bibliography from 1929-1975

[Hans Ostrom · Rating 5 out of 5]

A wonderful collection of writing from the mischievous, exuberant, sex-obsessed, and funny Miller.