[ilds] TLS article on Henry Miller

[Bruce Redwine]

Many people don’t know what to make of Henry Miller.  I certainly don’t.  He’s essentially an anarchist and rebel, someone like Arthur Rimbaud who became a sensation in France and then disappeared into remote Abyssinia.  So we have Miller’s Time of the Assassins.  (Except that Miller’s ego was too big to allow him to disappear anywhere.)  In American letters he might follow in the footsteps of Walt Whitman and his “song of myself.”  Both writers have tremendous self-regard.  Whitman, however, during his country’s greatest crisis, the Civil War, went to work as a nurse caring for the Union wounded.   Those conditions were worse than anything Miller wrote about.  Whitman also bemoaned the death of Lincoln.  Can you imagine Miller ever doing anything similar?  No.  Miller would run away from any call to arms and fantasize about living as a Taoist in the mountains of China.  There’s something deeply anti-social about him.  There’s that.  And there’s also his great generosity on a personal level, as pointed out below.  He was full of contradictions.

Bruce



> On Jun 4, 2016, at 2:35 AM, William Apt <billyapt at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> I don't know what to make of Miller's anti-semitism: he loved Nietzsche, who admired the Jews,  and his best friends and some of the artists he most admired were Jews: Rattner, Perles, Brassai, Soutine, Zadkine. (Singer, too, though not, I believe, a friend.) As far as his racism, in one of his last - and in my opinion best - works, Mother, he has his mother express how she wishes, if I am not mistaken, she could be reincarnated as a black person to because they are so joyous. 
> 
> And the there is LD who made anti-Semitic remarks in Pied Piper, only to wind up marrying not one but two Jewish women.
> 
> My only conclusion is that Miller and Durrell were products of their times when such comments about "the Other" were more commonplace, but were not anti-Semites. Much in the same way that, when I was a youngster in Texas, many white people who referred to black people as "niggers" and to Hispanics as "spics" and "greasers" would be appalled at the thought today. 
> 
> WILLIAM APT
> Attorney at Law
> 812 San Antonio St, Ste 401
> Austin TX 78701
> 512/708-8300
> 512/708-8011 FAX
> 
> On Jun 3, 2016, at 7:39 PM, Bruce Redwine <bredwine1968 at earthlink.net <mailto:bredwine1968 at earthlink.net>> wrote:
> 
>> I’ll have to add a dissenting voice about Henry Miller.  James is right to point out that Campbell’s review is contradictory, but 
>> Campbell’s criticism of the man’s tremendous egotism is well taken.  He’s not as Coleridge said of Wordsworth, an example of the “egotistical sublime,” more like the egotistical wretched.  His sexism, racism, and anti-Semitism were not unusual during his era (Pound and Eliot no doubt approved of the latter), but they don’t wear well today.  I really don’t buy that Miller’s writings can be justified as a writer playing with various personae.  Miller as writer is what you see is what you get.  My opinion, of course.
>> 
>> Bruce 
>> 
>> 
>>> On Jun 3, 2016, at 3:14 PM, William Apt <billyapt at gmail.com <mailto:billyapt at gmail.com>> wrote:
>>> 
>>> Would love to respond in more detail but about to board my flight for Athens - am coming to Greece early - and will of course raise a glass to you, David, once we all converge in Rhthemno, for there is much to discuss! 
>>> 
>>> WILLIAM APT
>>> Attorney at Law
>>> 812 San Antonio St, Ste 401
>>> Austin TX 78701
>>> 512/708-8300
>>> 512/708-8011 FAX
>>> 
>>> On Jun 3, 2016, at 4:26 PM, Kennedy Gammage <gammage.kennedy at gmail.com <mailto:gammage.kennedy at gmail.com>> wrote:
>>> 
>>>> Cheers James and Billy. To me this TLS article was agenda-driven character assassination through selective [mis]reading, and please consider how easy it would be to accuse Durrell of many of these same crimes by employing the same tactics. Sexist? Yes of course – Miller is the poster child for sexism. Racist? I think this is wrong. He was a humanist. Miller is in trouble now because he always told the truth – and the truth was often ugly in those racist times of terrible poverty. But here’s why people liked him, and why his loyal readers continue to like him: because in _Capricorn_ when his bosses at the Cosmodemonic Telegraph Company told him ‘Be firm! Be hard!’ instead he said to himself ‘I’ll be generous, pliant, forgiving, tolerant, tender. In the beginning I heard every man to the end; if I couldn’t give him a job I gave him money, and if I had no money I gave him cigarettes or I gave him courage. But I gave!’ And he continues to give. I have read widely in Miller but he was prolific and I have only scratched the surface, but if I may, I can always recommend _Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch_.
>>>> 
>>>> Thanks - Ken
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> On Fri, Jun 3, 2016 at 1:36 PM, William Apt <billyapt at gmail.com <mailto:billyapt at gmail.com>> wrote:
>>>> James:
>>>> 
>>>> Perhaps the problem is that, like Kerouac, Miller did nothing publicly to dispel the image of what appears to be himself that he projected in his books. Perhaps he did not care enough to do so. Kerouac, though, had much to veil. But it was not until years later, and only when biographies began to be issued, that I realized the extent of the difference between their real and fictional personas.
>>>> 
>>>> Cheers, Billy
>>>> 
>>>> WILLIAM APT
>>>> Attorney at Law
>>>> 812 San Antonio St, Ste 401
>>>> Austin TX 78701
>>>> 512/708-8300 <tel:512%2F708-8300>
>>>> 512/708-8011 <tel:512%2F708-8011> FAX
>>>> 
>>>> > On Jun 3, 2016, at 12:51 PM, James Gifford <james.d.gifford at gmail.com <mailto:james.d.gifford at gmail.com>> wrote:
>>>> >
>>>> > Hello all,
>>>> >
>>>> > This piece by James Campbell on Henry Miller from the /TLS/ might be of interest -- Durrell comes up several times, and part of the critique likely parallel some of the critical challenges Durrell's works face:
>>>> >
>>>> > http://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/public/millers-fail/ <http://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/public/millers-fail/>
>>>> >
>>>> > The part that strikes me the most is that the piece opens with an invocation of Durrell recognizing that Miller's books aren't actually the same as the author, then the article's author proceeds as if we're not supposed to see any of it as ironical.  That strikes me as a superficial reading.  Certainly several good points, but at the same time missing the point...
>>>> >
>>>> > All best,
>>>> > James
>>>> >

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