Henry Miller

[Adam J. Thornton]

> 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. 

And yet, there are some really fine passages in _Tropic of Cancer_, a
couple in _Tropic of Capricorn_, and _Opus Pistorum_ particularly, which
may be the finest piece of pornography ever written.  It manages to be vile
and screamingly funny, and still preserve that Milleresque "I don't really
want to hurt anybody" tone of fuddled benevolence, all at the same time.

His later work is turgid and, IMHO, quite boring.

> 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.

Or maybe it's simply that Henry Miller grew to take himself awfully
seriously and lost the element of play present in the _Tropics_ and _Opus_.
Bukowski never did get schmaltzy--maudlin drunk, perhaps, but that's a
slightly different thing.  And Bukowski never pretended to be other than
vicious to the mass of humanity, which rings truer than Miller's professed
benevolence.  The element of sex-worship in each resonates nicely with much
of the imagery in _GR_; particularly the "stout rainbow cock" and Geli
Tripping come to mind.

Adam

P.S.  My apologies to Andrew Dinn.  My comment about the C compiler was
meant, like the first sentence in the paragraph, to use "you" in the
impersonal, rather like "one."  That's what I get trying to write before I
drink coffee.  On the whole Sokal thing I think we're talking at cross
purposes.

I would certainly not argue that the law of gravity we have now--by which I
mean a set of equations that describe the way things fall--is final in any
sense.  However, I also believe that there is, well, something not all that
far from a Platonic Idea that ensures that things _do_ fall in a particular
manner.  So maybe it comes down to being an Academician rather than a
Peripatetic.

Further, I'm certainly not a good scientist.  I'm not even sure I'm a good
historian.

P.P.S.  If we start talking about Miller and Bukowski I'm going to have to
drag Tom Waits into it.  Speaking of which, isn't it odd that we have a
woman named "Kathleen Brennan" on the list?  Or have I misremembered the name?
-- 
adam at phoenix.princeton.edu | Viva HEGGA! | Save the choad! | 64,928 | Fnord
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