Category Archives: Literature

Dostoevsky, Death and Paradise

Posted on September 1, 2016 by Lee

Why write? Not to create original truths, but to remind ourselves of old truths. We need to be reminded: we are forgetful. Original stories to remind us of what we’ve always known. The history of humanity, and the duration of … Continue reading →

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The Very Last Love in the World

Posted on August 8, 2016 by Lee

Vladimir Mayakovsky’s “The Backbone Flute” is a poem about desire, the mystery of where desires come from, and how they can fade and be forgotten. And it’s about the suffering of an artist, a poet, whose desires seem too wide … Continue reading →

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When is it Life? Part 3. Final Part: “Life Presents Itself”

Posted on July 25, 2016 by Lee

Something is wrong with Henry Miller, as he wanders Broadway, lost, unable to write. This is what we’re really seeing when Miller gives us his picture of impersonal Broadway. Broadway reflects Miller himself: inhuman, sleepwalking, living dead, an abyss for … Continue reading →

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When is it Life? Part 2: Miller at Epidaurus

Posted on July 23, 2016 by Lee

A day for relaxation, spent reading The Colossus of Maroussi by Henry Miller. I’m in a pleasant, empty bar where I can drink wheat beer as I sink into a comfortable chair, absorbed. “The road to Epidaurus is like the … Continue reading →

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When is it Life? Part 1: Henry Miller on Broadway

Posted on July 13, 2016 by Lee

Henry Miller is looking around at Broadway, all the people not themselves but one great mass “cackling with a thousand different human tongues, cursing, applauding, whistling, crooning, soliloquising, orating, gesticulating . . .” Each of these individual persons is alive, … Continue reading →

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Sunflowers in the Sunset

Posted on June 21, 2016 by Lee

“We’re not our skin of grime, we’re not dread bleak dusty imageless locomotives, we’re golden sunflowers inside, blessed by our own seed & hairy naked accomplishment-bodies growing into mad black formal sunflowers in the sunset, spied on by our own … Continue reading →

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That Dark and Silent Gap

Posted on June 10, 2016 by Lee

“Although, to restless and ardent minds, morning may be the fitting season for exertion and activity, it is not always at that time that hope is strongest or the spirit most sanguine and buoyant.” Reasons why I can’t write in … Continue reading →

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A Smokestack or a Button

Posted on May 26, 2016 by Lee

“What strikes me now as the most wonderful proof of my fitness, or unfitness, for the times is the fact that nothing people were writing or talking about had any real interest for me. Only the object haunted me, the … Continue reading →

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Henry Miller, Weird Ideas, and “Damned Facts”

Posted on May 11, 2016 by Lee

Joshua Buhs’ essay in the latest Nexus: The International Henry Miller Journal (“‘One measures a circle, beginning anywhere’: Henry Miller and the Fortean Fantasy”) begins with a casual reference to Charles Fort, made by Henry Miller in Big Sur and … Continue reading →

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Truth and Wonder in “Henry and June”

Posted on April 28, 2016 by Lee

Taken from her diaries, Henry and June is Anaïs Nin’s account of her relationship with Henry Miller and his wife June Mansfield. During the course of the relationship, we see Anaïs and Henry grow, learning from each other. And all … Continue reading →

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