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29 of 31 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Some Great Thoughts on Life and Lit., February 13, 2002
I find some of Henry Miller's books to be wonderful and some to be mediocre or downright boring ("Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch," for instance). This book, however, certainly ranks among the wonderful. Any bibliophile or Henry Miller fan (as I am) will find here a treasure of insight relating to books and Henry Miller and other important things. All of Miller's books are essentially about himself and his experience of life, and this one is no exception. As he states in the preface: "The purpose of this book...is to round out the story of my life. It deals with books as a vital experience." Miller seeks to revive the meaning of books which inspired him and his development as a writer. He goes back to his childhood and talks about his experiences with the Greek plays, "Robinson Crusoe," Rider Haggard, G.A. Henty, and to his youth and Paris years with his reading of Nietzsche, Doestoievsky, Whitman, Balzac, Celine, Cendrars, Rimbaud, Rabelais and others. He dedicates a chapter each to his two French contemporaries, Cendrars and Giono. Blaise Cendrars (born Frederic Sauser) is one of his great literary heros, a man who wrote tons of books of virile autobiographical prose (and poetry, unlike Miller) but seems still rather unknown. Jean Giono lived his whole life in the French provinces, was a pacifist, and wrote on themes concerning nature and humanity. Like Miller, he was only concerned with "la gloire d'etre vivant". Two other chapters are dedicated to Krishnamurti and Rider Haggard. The chapter on Krishnamurti reveals somewhat Miller's penchant towards the mystical and themes of emancipation and liberation. In the chapter on Rider Haggard Miller expresses the enthusiam and wonder he felt reading Haggard's mystical tale "She" as a boy. He then goes on to "speak of certain revelations concerning my own character and identity which are connected to it." Here Miller questions himself, "why the emphasis, in my works, on crude repetitious experience of life?" and associates Haggard's fictional heroine, Ayesha, with Miller's first wife and inspiration, June: "How very much there was of 'She' in 'Her'...Why, do we not sometimes ask ourselves, why the fatidical beauty in the great heroines of love throughout the ages? Why do they seem so logically and naturally surrounded by death, bolstered by crime, nourished by evil?". Miller also has much to say on philosophy, art, education, and simply on "how to read and why," to use the title of one of literary critic Harold Bloom's books. On at least one important point, though I suspect on very many points (including the whole idea of Bloom's "The Western Canon"), Miller would take issue with Bloom and his type; he writes: "And this leads me to say how woefully mistaken are those who believe that certain books, because they are universally acknowledged as 'masterpieces,' are the books which alone have power to inspire and nourish us. Every lover of books can name dozens of titles which, because they unlock his soul, because they open his eyes to reality, are for him the golden books. It matters not what evaluation is made of these by scholars and critics, by pundits and authorities: for the man who is touched to the quick by them they are supreme. We do not ask of one who opens our eyes by what authority he acts; we do not demand his credentials." Miller would certainly agree with Oscar Wilde's witty remark: "Oh, it is absurd to have a hard and fast rule about what one should read and what one shouldn't. More than half of modern culture depends on what one shouldn't read."
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by Henry Miller
by Henry Miller
by Henry Miller
by Henry Miller
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