Henry Miller

[davemarc]

At 10:55 AM 5/26/96 -0400, Paul wrote:


>Has anyone ever looked at Henry Miller and his writings in
>relation to TRP?  If there are no direct allusions/parallels, I
>think there is certainly an indirect one, insofar as Miller
>represented a great loosening of the kind TRP describes in
>his SLOW LEARNER intro.  In any case, I was moved to these
>reflections by reading a Miller essay on Nin ("Un Etre Etoilique")
>in which Miller seems almost to presage the arrival of a TRP-like
>figure...

There is at least one direct allusion:  The quote from the beginning of
TROPIC OF CANCER that opens "Entropy."

Here's an indirect literary one:  Miller's satirical description of
Manhasset in ALLER RETOUR NEW YORK is somewhat akin to Pynchon's dissection
of the nearby Five Towns area in V.

Here's a pretty simple, indirect biographical connection:  Both writers grew
up on Long Island (the "geographic" LI that includes Brooklyn), traveled
widely, admired Jack Kerouac's writing, and (apparently) spent significant
stretches of time discovering "alternate lifestyles" in California. 

Here's a near-miss:  Miller apparently was on the verge of attending
Cornell.  But he spent the night before his trip to Ithaca with the "older
woman" Pauline Chouteau, and ended up not going after all. 

Catching up,

davemarc