The writings of Henry Miller burned through me like wildfire the other day. I don\u2019t recall what I was doing, possibly gardening, or where I was, perhaps waiting outside the probation office, but key passages from many of his classic novels and overlooked memoirs seared my imagination like never before.<\/p>\n
I always wanted to teach a Henry Miller-themed nonfiction writing workshop but doubted it would have attracted enough interest to fly. I also wasn\u2019t sure how I was going to teach it but I sensed a potential session would produce the most extraordinary writing from participants if they managed to let go of everything repressed and traditional American about them. Moreover, I have also always wanted to write about the only woman I ever met who reminded me of everything I read about Miller\u2019s second wife, June Miller, if June Miller had lived on the Oregon Coast and had come of age in the era of smart phones, rap music, methamphetamine and yoga pants. (I think I\u2019ll leave this project for later.)<\/p>\n
Below are some of my favorite Henry Miller lines, many of which found their circuitous way into the rain and gig books. In fact, Miller\u2019s entire unconventional career provided a section of the literary road map I used to publish my books and hustle up an unlikely audience for them. As I try to reinvent myself and my publishing life, I will have to consult this map again on how to get the writing (on real paper) out. I\u2019ve done it before and believe I can do it again. I must try. This time, however, I don\u2019t have any money to pay for printing. Henry Miller didn\u2019t either, in the early days, none, and yet he managed by inventing new methods. Of course he had June to assist him, somewhat.<\/p>\n
A paragraph from the The Air-Conditioned Nightmare<\/em>:\u00a0\u201cOften, on returning to my studio at midnight, I would stand at the table and register in this celestial sort of ledger the innumerable little items which constitute a writer\u2019s bookkeeping: dreams, plans of attack and defense, remembrances, titles of books I intended to write, names and addresses of potential creditors, obsessive phrases, editors to harry, battlefields, monuments, monastic retreats and so on.\u201d<\/p>\n Lines from Tropic of Cancer<\/em>:<\/p>\n \u201cThese are night thoughts produced by walking in the rain after two thousand years of Christianity.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIdeas have to be wedded to action.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cGet off the gold standard of literature.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThe earth is not an arid plateau of health and comfort, but a sprawling female with a velvet torso that swells and heaves with ocean billows.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThat the task the artist implicitly sets himself is to overthrow existing values.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI have nothing to do with creaking machinery of humanity. I belong to the earth.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cLet us have more oceans, new oceans that blot out the past\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThe great incestuous wish is to flow on\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n Henry Miller\u2019s advice in Big Sur and The Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch<\/em>:<\/p>\n \u201cThe most important thing (for a writer)\u2014how to reach the public, or better, how to create your own public\u2014still remains to be faced. Without a public it\u2019s a suicide. No matter how small, there has to be an audience. I mean, an appreciative, enthusiastic audience, a selective audience.<\/p>\n What few young writers realize, it seems to me, is that they must find\u2014create, invent!\u2014the way to reach their readers. It isn\u2019t enough to write a good book, a beautiful book, or even a better book than most. It isn\u2019t enough to even write an \u201coriginal\u201d book! You have to gig that book with all your heart in order to gain traction.\u201d (I changed one word in the last sentence.)<\/p>\n Lines from The Colossus of Maroussi<\/em>:<\/p>\n \u201cI like men with weather in their blood.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWith this troupe of linguists, jugglers, acrobats, and water nymphs things went whacky right from the start.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThere is no salvation in becoming to a world which is crazy.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019ve got a language<\/em>\u2026we\u2019re still making it. It\u2019s a language for poets, not for shopkeepers.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIt isn\u2019t money that sustains me\u2014it\u2019s the faith I have in myself, in my own powers. In spirit, I\u2019m a millionaire\u2014maybe that\u2019s the best thing about America, that you believe you\u2019ll rise again.\u201d<\/p>\n (If you found this post enjoyable, thought provoking or enlightening, please consider supporting a writer at work by making a financial contribution to this blog or by purchasing an NSP book.)<\/em><\/p>\n\n The writings of Henry Miller burned through me like wildfire the other day. I don\u2019t recall what I was doing, possibly gardening, or where I was, perhaps waiting outside the probation office, but key passages from many of his classic novels and overlooked memoirs seared my imagination like never before. I always wanted to teach […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2587,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,28],"tags":[73,7,31],"class_list":["post-2586","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-meditations","category-writing","tag-henry-miller","tag-writing","tag-writing-workshop","has-post-title","has-post-date","has-post-category","has-post-tag","has-post-comment","has-post-author",""],"builder_content":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2586","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2586"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2586\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2589,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2586\/revisions\/2589"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2587"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2586"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2586"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2586"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}