A Henry Miller Moment [and, sort of, blogging]

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

>Carroll writes:
>
>>  > I agree. Miller is repulsive. Tropic of Cancer is pornographic
>>  travel> fiction. The sex in Justine is more genuine than in that
>>  travesty.>
>>
>>  Actually, I'm not very familiar with Miller's work. Pound recommended
>>  his first book to Shakespeare Press in Paris with the comment,
>>  "It's a dirty book worth publishing." Kate Millet gives him a pretty
>>  good going-over in her _Sexual Politics_.
>
>Well I don't know that _Sexual Politics_ is a very good guide in that
>regard. It's a bit too easily offended and rather too categorical. Sure
>Lawrence has written some of the worst poetry and most tedious novels
>I've ever had to read... but Millett's reading makes him sound almost
>as provocative, troubling and important as he wished to be. She's
>closer to the mark with Miller maybe because that kind of monolithic
>gender politics shaded with hyperbole was exactly his style. But again
>she makes him sound crucial and thus dangerous rather than dull,
>sensationalist, and pompous all at once.
>
>A dirty book worth publishing? That's a strange kind of compliment
>coming from Pound, so much so that I doubt it reflects a very high
>opinion at all. It might be justified, but again, 'dirty' makes it seem
>affecting... tantalising rather than clumsy. I better stop now or I'm
>going to end up having to justify these statements, and that might
>require actual engagement with the actual text, and once was more than
>enough.
>
>Catherine

Here's Anaïs Nin on Henry Miller and Lawrence Durrell: 
<http://media.salon.com/mp3s/nin1.mp3>.  It sounds like the audience 
got a great kick out of her talk.  Perhaps, in the future, Miller 
will be a footnote to Anaïs Nin's life, and Hemingway, to Martha 
Gellhorn's.
-- 
Yoshie

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