I was pretty hard pressed about who to go on a date with next. Wasn’t planning on going on a date with anyone but then I left the house and got distracted in a bookshop and ended up with these four in my hands: Philip Roth, Leonard Cohen, Henry Miller and the Marquis de Sade… —don’t try to find a theme, not yet. 120 Days of Sodom was too heavy. Philip Roth sounded chafing. Leonard Cohen seemed political—but Henry Miller? Specifically this Henry Miller with the erotic abstract on the cover? It’s perfect I thought so I took him to eat with me.
I get soup spit on the cover twice but I wipe it off and Henry’s none the wiser. He really spaces his genius nicely, makes me take my time—just abstract enough to make my brain whine
Alone, with eczema of the brain
—he’s meandering, doesn’t hardly bothers to signpost but I’m strangely engaged. Generally tho, too clever for me. I feel as if he’s tricking me. Which is all for the worse because I could swear there are times at which he’s @ing me
They are blind to all but the lure of the flesh
Mmmmm yes but my words seem so dull, flat, lifeless, oblivious in comparison to his. I’m in half a mind to stop reading him & move on—and then, just what I’ve been waiting for: an excuse to discredit him. Page 80. He reveals himself to be grimly and uniformly racist. Ok. Does this explain the boy at the bookshop’s reaction when I placed him on the till? I won’t repeat what you said Mr. Miller but I can’t ignore it either. When I tried to find discussion of it on the internet nothing yielded. But the way you first peeled onto the page Mr. Miller? Felt like a lick of ham getting slapped onto the pavement: meaty, wonderfully random, refreshing—but now look at you. Where the fucks your humanity? I’m afraid I like my authors humane.
To be born an eagle one must get accustomed to high places; to be born a writer one must learn to like privation, suffering, humiliation. Above all, one must learn to live apart.
It’s hard to know what to think. The pages are full of these true to the bone monologues from characters he meets once on the street and you think how the fuck did you remember everything they said? Did you carry a tape-recorder? Clearly he had a knack for ventriloquising voices which weren’t his. A schizophrenic, with a switchboard and a typewriter.
I bow to this double spread: pp.244-245.
Oh god. But it’s also making me … existential. Thank god for good music & sex & family. & friends. Not that I’m not alone here, it’s just reached a pitch where I feel like I’m dying. Where I’m all too aware that Mr. Miller is probably dead. I suppose I’ll have to take the ending slow because it’s so rich & dense—cliché! It’s exploding in sauce. Whatever. It’s making me feel depressed. —or is it about to successfully push me out of the house? In search of life? Yes (feeling so dreary tho. I leave to buy cigarettes.)
To be honest it’s a classic case with Henry Miller. I fancy him. I respect him, from below. I am able to separate the bad bits (his causal racism) from the good bits: his rampant eloquence, his wide & searching vocabulary—his machinistic surrealism—his curfew with meaning, his meandering monopoly of the (American) language (eye roll) but ultimately, as casually impassioned as I am with his descriptions of writing—actually it’s more than that I’m so grateful that he lifts up the curtain on his own artistic practice. Most people (writers) seem to be so secretive, they admit work & lots of it but thus far, in my experience, details are scarce—dearth?—lacking?—found wanting?—no, not really, didn’t realise they weren’t around until now (so that’s the meaning of lack! It’s retrospective.)—yes, Henry Miller made me buy a dictionary.—ah, Henry Miller’s desk. Oh to sit on Henry Miller’s desk and look around, what a romantic place to be—he’s always in the middle of something & he sticks things on the wall like I do except he takes it further…
A long list of words, words that bewitched me and which I intended to drag in by the scalp if necessary; reproductions of paintings, by Uccello, della Francesca, Breughe, Giotto, Membling; titles of books from which I meant to deftly lift passages; phrases filched from my favourite authors, not to quote but to remind me how to twist things occasionally
Thank you Mr. Miller, to be able to keep giving, after you’ve died—to people you’ve never met—surely that’s something to strive towards?
Next.