Henry Miller

[Andrew Dinn]

Heikki Raudaskoski writes:

> My two cents.

> Around fucking episodes Henry Miller builds a "wildly" sentimentalistic
> and "daringly" eloquent pseudo-philosophy, which, as I see it, is meant
> to justify his cock -- his masculine imagination, his masculine universe. 

Heh heh, I'd spend more than two cents to agree with this opinion.

> One reason why Charles Bukowski is a much better writer than Miller is that 
> there are no such schmaltzy apologetic levels in his books. This makes the
> narrational stance much less authoritarian in Bukowski than it is in Miller.

Don't know anything about Bukowski but I too dislike the authoritarian
tone of Miller.

> _GR_ is impurely involved with phallic powers, sure, but the kaleidoscopic
> reflections of the narrator and characters won't cement any ego-boostings 
> of male individualism. Instead, the text desparately tries to prompt its
> readers to look for ways to subvert institutionalized phallic traditions.

I'll buy that too, in so far as it applies to the male characters.
Pynchon inverts Miller. What is interesting though is how the females
get a very different treatment, or rather no treatment at all. The
subversion is almost exclusively of phallic traditions.  Jessica,
Katje, Geli - they don't really get dissected. Sure, they are used as
stage props - Katje in particular - but it all reflects male concerns,
male perceptions. In this respect (and maybe only this respect) there
is a relation to Miller. But then why single him out.

By the way re the Durrell quartet. Durrell says in the intro to
Balthazar that he has organized the books so that three of them follow
a spatial axis and the fourth a temporal one. Not sure I can see any
of that at present. However, Durrell also puts a wonderful line into
the mouth of the narrator in Justine which rings true of what I have
read so far - I paraphrase `I must try and present events not in the
order in which they happened, for that would be history, but in the
order in which they became significant to me'. For a 1st person
narrative this is like a step into a new space or maybe perhaps a
higher dimension.  all the conventional physical narrative constraints
of time and place are suddenly loosened and weakened and only the
logical constraints of coherence, suspense and drama have to be
obeyed. Just the thing to inspire a budding author.


Andrew Dinn
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And though Earthliness forget you,
To the stilled Earth say:  I flow.
To the rushing water speak:  I am.