Customer Reviews

The Air-Conditioned Nightmare

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

In "The Air-Conditioned Nightmare", Henry Miller writes about an automobile trip he made through the United States in the 1950's. His encounters with colorful characters, and his hilarious and insightful descriptions of the towns he passes through make this a "must read" for Miller fans. His criticisms of the banality and shallowness of American life he observed then still hit the mark. His favorite region was the South, which, as a Southener, I appreciate, and so this part of the book was especially interesting to me. Compared with Jack Kerouac's "On the Road", which was written at about the same time, this is a more cynical and negative view of America, but is saved from being merely depressing by Miller's wonderfully savage sense of humor and his ultimately forgiving human heart

Miller's observations of the USA are still true 60 years later. The contrast is between the man-made horrors and some of the wonderful artists Miller found in out of the way places. My favorite chapter is the story about Weeks Hall's mansion "Shadows" at Bayou Teche, Louisiana -- it inspired me to visit the place, which was still as mysterioso as Miller had described it.

In some ways, Air Conditioned Nightmare is one of Henry Miller's most accessible books. It can be consumed, processed, and enjoyed by readers who are not, per say, Miller fans, as the themes are somewhat broader than his usual subject matter of himself and his friends.

This is a great book to introduce newcomers to Miller's work. It also is a fascinating portrait of America at a point in time and from a certain perspective. Especially given the modern habit of romanticizing the WW2 era, Air Conditioned Nightmare gives an alternative, cynical view that remains insightful today.

What holds me back from giving the book five stars is that it falls victim particularly harshly to Miller's characteristic laziness. His favorite trope of gushing over some new friend of his for a chapter or two unfortunately dominates the book, and he rambles off on some very dull tangents about things like car trouble.

Nonetheless, there's plenty of Miller's brilliant diatribes and observations, which make it quite worth the while to plough through the hubris.

Miller grabs you by the mental testicles and yanks. Scathing social commentary hits the bullseye with clarity and breadth. This happens to be the first work of Miller's I've read, oddly enough, and I'm already an addict. On to more...

The Air-Conditioned Nightmare was my introduction to Henry Miller, and it inspired me to read much of his other work. I don't love everything he has written, but I always appreciate him, and this book is a great find. Miller isn't constrained with his writing here; not by a plot, storyline, or even always making sense. I felt like sometimes he was writing words to have an impact on the reader separate from their meaning.

The beginning of the book is great; Miller doesn't pull any punches about how he sees America after his long stay in France. If you are one of those conservative folk who have a hard time listening to people criticize the United States you probably wont like much of what he says, but he eloquently writes of his keen observations and the parallels to be drawn to problems we face today could fill a book of its own. Although Miller tends to go on long-winded tangents, the book stays light, and the writing is honest, sassy and generally fun to read.

If, like with a friend, you can accept this book on its own terms, I think you will find it very enjoyable.

"The Air-Conditioned Nightmare" is Henry Miller's acerbic examination of the 'state of the union' upon returning to the US after ten years of self-imposed exile in Paris on the eve of WW2; and to say that he finds the US somewhat lacking is something of an understatement.

By turns enraged, amused, indifferent and impassioned, TACN chronicles his journey across the US in the uniquely slapdash and free-associative fashion that I've come to adore from Miller: whether he's discussing car maintenance, the state of recreational parks, the bare-faced cheek of a "Lilliputian" urchin in a soda fountain or the death of the American dream, he nails his subjects with an incisiveness, wit and verbosity that is unique in the literary canon.

The conclusion that Miller clearly makes at the end of TACN is "My country: wrong not right", but his love and enthusiasm for the characters that he meets during his travels is infectious.

Miller's observations of the American scene in "The Air-Conditioned Nightmare," are, as in his earlier works, dead on. But his travels take him beyond the Yeast Coast to the Grand Canyon, where he shares his unique appreciation of things uniquely appreciable about North America. Also has a great vignette on auto mechanics circa 1940.

These set of essays fit more like social diatribes with travel as a platform to announce them from.Miller relates the decay of the social core in American lifestyle,a way of life which he would gladly secede for the completely human natural way of living.Although his statements are mostly convincing,an objective & critical mind would notice the few slips of his zealous & antagonistic approach where one could suspect that if he did not miss the point of the topic that he assails on,he misses it as a whole.One can sense the innocent exuberance of his dreams & derisions,like a child wishing for his toy or an adult barring a door to the problems he wants to completely forget forever.The style of his writing is vigorous,lively with occasional flashes of grin compelling wit,highlighted at times by paragraph climaxes which round up all the previous sentences to a slap driving whole.Though lacking the spine-cracking,life-altering appeal of Bukowski and the inimitable brilliance of Celine,his adamnant and at times raging missives rarely fail to convince.The work as a whole could have been better if it would have stayed true to the gist of its inception:A Travelogue.But the incongruence hardly affects the work at all,& this has got to be one of Miller's finest moments.

This book was sort of a sprinter. It started off interesting with pretty solid essays on post-WWII America. But towards the end I found it pretty hard to get through. When Henry's writing works, it's really good stuff, but when it doesn't it seems dated and pretentious. I found his narrative of a Hollywood party to be useless and his long winded tirade about war to be about as valid as some drunk at a bar. It's interesting how Miller's stream-of-consciousness style of writing may have permanently changed modern literature, but if it came out today, I doubt anybody would take it seriously

A friend of mine gave me this book and said "You ought to read this, it is very old, but his obsevations about America are dead on!"

I found it to be a rambling hash of stories that rarely touches on America at all.

First of all, I am not a big fan of the genre of "America is bad because.." books, as these are quite overdone already, and taking potshots at America serves little or no purpose and is an easy sport. Running down WalMart or McDonalds or the American suburban sprawl is like shooting fish in a barrel.

And such books have been around for a long, long time. (oftentimes the writers of such tomes will gush about Stalin's Russsia, or Mao's China, or today, Chavez' Venezuala, without such a crtical eye as they apply to the US). So another America-bashing book did not appeal to me. It's been done to death and what's the point?

Second, the material is dated. America in 1939 was a different place than today. However, it does offer some scary insight into Miller's thinking. Early on in the book, his dismisses Hitler and World War II in a couple of sentances, essentially wondering what all the fuss is about. Basically he argues that governments come and go, and Hitler will be gone soon enough if we just wait him out.

I wonder if he felt the same way after the liberation of Auschwitz. His blase treatment of Hitler and fascism sort of alarmed me, and clued me in that this guy is not a heavy thinker. In case you haven't a clue, either: Nazis = Bad, OK? Remember that.

Much of the rest of the book is similar shallow trope. He arrives in America to see his dying father, clearly hoping to inherit. Unfortunately, Dad has other ideas and refuses to kick the bucket. A true bohemian, Miller sponges off friends for several months before coming up with the idea of writing an America-bashing "on the road" type of book. He is given an advance of $500, which he spends before he leaves Manhatten. He grouses that he deserves $5000, and much of the book is a long diatribe about how artists like himself are not appreciated.

He goes on at length about his car troubles. Without bothering to learn anything about cars, he buys one, and then like a hypochondriac, takes it to mechanic after mechanic, convinced it is overheating. He indulges in the all-too-common habit of many "educated" people in grousing about car troubles, while simultaneously lauding technical ignorance as some sort of badge of honor. Cars! Tee-hee, they're so complicated! I can listen to "car talk" on NPR if I want that sort of drivel. But he secretly loves his car, even if he does not take care of it properly or bother to learn anything one would need to know to own one.

And here Miller misses the entire point of America. The Automobile transformed America and is also at the root cause of many of its problems - societal, envionmental, financial, etc. Miller completely misses the boat here. But he whines about his Buick a lot (while at the same time, lauding it).

And Miller's very few real observations about America are hardly well-thought-out indictments of the American way. Rather, they are more shallow and superficial observations based often on only cursory views of a city or a particular issue.

For example, his ship lands in Boston. He walks from the dockyard to the train station. Dockyards and train stations are hardly the most glamorous parts of any city, even Paris or London. However, after his two-hour stay in Boston, he dismisses the entire city based upon his experiences in these industrial parts of that town. This is beyond shallow.

Other episodes are confusing and weird. Arkansas is lauded for siding the with Confederacy (apparently slave-owners and Nazis are OK with him!) and he spends the entire chapter discussing the ill-fated "Arkansas Pyramid" and its promoter, who he hails as a man of genius and laments that there are not more like him in the world. The problem is, the fellow who wanted to build this pyramid in Arkansas was clearly a crackpot, and while it is an interesting story, I don't think, as Miller suggests, that the problem with America is a lack of crackpots like him.

As others have noted, other chapters are essentially wasted in long gushing and fawning descriptions of his meetings with other, more important artists, such as Stieglitz. Miller is clearly a suck-up in that regard. It is almost embarrasing to read these parts. He sounds like a groupie.

So much of that sort of thing pads this thin tome that there is little in the way of the searing indictment of American, 1939, that the title and cover art promise.

You can't sell books with titles like "America sure is swell!" in 1939 or even today. People like to hear bad news, and they like to be told how rotten they have it, no matter how wealthy and well-off they are.

But this book fails to even deliver on that level. As an America-bashing book, it does not bash very well. Miller had a good time on his trip and then cobbled together this book from a number of mediocre short essays.