Date: Tue, 23 Dec 1997 15:37:54 -0500
From: Reg Lilly <rlilly-AT-scott.skidmore.edu>
Subject: Re: PLC: Henry Miller and the Academy


Stirling Newberry wrote:
> 
> >1.  Do what you want to do.  If necessary borrow money.
> >2.  Don't get a conventional job until you can no longer borrow money.
> >3.  Be yourself, even if you are an ass.  You'll get better at it.
> >4.  Ignore western technocratic folkways and search for truth. Be grateful
> >for it.
> >5.  To get what you want, you may have to use people.
> >        5a.  If you use people you will suffer for it.
> >
> >
> 
> This is subversive?


I muist say I've never quite understood the notion of Miller as a subversive
writer, though that's a common moniker for him; if he's trying to be subversive
(which I'm not sure he is) it would be the same sort as that practiced by Sade,
who beats him (ouch!) in spades and D.H. Lawrence likewise.  William Burroughs
or Allen Ginsberg or Lenny Bruce or a number of others were more
linguo-socially-subversive to me than was Miller.  Abby Hoffman (the earlier)
was more economically/institutionally subversive.  Nevertheless, I liked reading
Cancer and Capricorn; it was like visiting a licentious uncle or something who
had plenty of booze and was being visited by exotic people at all hours of the
night.  Pleasant and 'free-air-ish' for a change but, as George suggests, after
awhile it all gets sort of tedious.  Sometimes I wonder of Miller isn't one of
those figures (they seem to congregate in NY in the 40's-60's in that hotel --
what was it's name?) whose real work of art was their life(style) rather than
what got written.

Ciao,
Reg


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