File spoon-archives/phillitcrit.archive/phillitcrit_1997/phillitcrit.9712, message 121


Date: Thu, 25 Dec 1997 20:39:48 -0500
From: Eric Yost <103423.421-AT-CompuServe.COM>
Subject: Re: PLC: Henry Miller and the Academy Who Doesn't Read Him


Among the shards of his prissy Yuletide invective, Stirling offers some
worthwhile comments.
As if to demonstrate " self-absorbed ranting," Mr. Newberry decries "
Miller's evasion of responsibility, Miller's desire to talk about how great
he is, and how there is a weight from the past that
bears down on him, Miller's rage and invective." It was good of him to
provide an example.

When he writes about "the difference between a first rate thinker, and
first rate writer, of
Nietszche's caliber," he shines.  Although nothing I said invited a
comprison, that Stirling injected one here serves to illustrate how few
writers would do well by the comparison.  Proust, Djuna Barnes, Sherwood
Anderson, etc. ...  all simpleminded compared to mad Fred.

Stirling warns that "If Miller is your idea of combining these two facets,
then you  have got to
be pretty shallow. He rants, he rails, he exults, he rages, he lathers. He
rinses it down with booze. He repeats."

He also had the discipline to write daily, and conduct rather formal
exercises with his writing.  In the sketched outline for Tropic of Cancer,
Miller indicated his narrative models, and gives some idea of the
difficulty of his project.  Stirling also persists in touting the image of
Miller as drinker.  Miller's drinking is marginal in the way Nietzsche's
laudanum addiction is marginal.  Must be confusing him with Charles
Bukowski, huh?

Stirling asks: " If Miller's liberation is so personal - then why is it so
common and tawdry
and obvious?"

Gee, Stirling, because it is populist?  Yes it is perhaps born in a stable,
but so are most people's.  Perhaps we should seek a world where everyone's
struggle toward salvation is as intellectually sublime as young JS Mill's
spiritual crisis, but it's fraud to ignore life as it is lived.

Most interesting seemed the point raised about sexism.  In most of his
narratives, Miller is a macho pig, too self-concerned to see most women as
anything but a means to his gratification.  I'm not up on the Erica
Jong/femcrit dialogue, but it may become an academic cottage industry. 
Would a reflex charge of sexism in Genet be valid?  

Regards,
Eric Yost


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