Reading My Way to NaNoWriMo: Henry Miller

One of my favorite authors is Henry Miller. I adore his joie de vivre, his explicitness, his vehemence, and at times his aggression-- at least his aggression towards the written word. It seems that he has a frustration with the English language, with the way it has been used traditionally, and every sentence he writes is a slap in the face to the stodgy Victorians and Edwardians that the American realists and surrealists wanted to badly to undermine.

One time I was talking to an acquaintance about our favorite American authors, neither of us having many, preferring instead the Continental and Latin American ilk. I said, "I simply adore Henry Miller!" She said, "Oh, the only American Surrealist."

I'm still thinking about that one. I don't see HM as being particularly Surreal, except in his illusion of automatic writing and intense psychologism. Still I see him as being a slave to the craft, not whimsical the way surrealists tend to be, and certainly not as disdainful of the real as the surrealists.

HM is exponential realism, coupled with impressionism. I guess I disagree with my acquaintance's assessment of HM, which leads me to believe that 1) she read that comment in some book of lit crit that I'll never find, and 2) that she's never, ever, read a single book by Henry Miller.


So I'm curling up in bed with "Quiet Days in Clichy" which begins with a rollicking sex scene, not the stuff that puts you to sleep. But a fabulous read. And inspiring.

Which isn't to say that what I write will be a HM redux. I just find his honesty refreshing, and I can only hope to achieve something mildly similar in my project.