Category Archives: Literature

Kindred Spirits (Notes on Henry Miller’s Nexus)

Posted on May 27, 2019 by Lee

Chapter 8 of Henry Miller’s Nexus is about the role that other people can play in the life of an artist, for better or worse. Life can seem lonely for an artist, without anyone in the world who understands you, … Continue reading →

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Notes on Henry Miller’s Nexus: Burying the Past

Posted on May 20, 2019 by Lee

In Europe, Henry will acquire “a new body and a new soul”. Then he can make use of his experiences: what he has taken from New York, and from all his life so far. We’ve seen throughout Nexus that Henry … Continue reading →

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To Own an Inch of Earth

Posted on May 13, 2019 by Lee

Neal Cassady wrote to Jack Kerouac that when writing “one should forget all rules, literary style, and other such pretensions.” And what he wrote next was really beautiful: “… Rather, I think, one should write, as nearly as possible, as … Continue reading →

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Love and Understanding (Notes on Jack Kerouac’s The Town and the City)

Posted on May 10, 2019 by Lee

To children and writers, a landscape presents mysteries to be contemplated rather than solved. Jack Kerouac opens his The Town and the City with a description of the course of the Merrimac River, its “broad and placid” flow “broken at … Continue reading →

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Take Heart (Notes on Henry Miller’s Nexus, Chapter 11)

Posted on May 6, 2019 by Lee

Henry Miller falls asleep and has a dream, and that dream becomes a vision. He awakes to see the world with new eyes. It begins with one of those lucid dreams where anything is possible: “Nothing I wished to do … Continue reading →

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Notes on Dante’s Paradise, Canto 3

Posted on May 3, 2019 by Lee

“… think carefully what love is and you’ll see …” This line hands you the key to the poem, if you haven’t picked it up already. The universe of Dante is a hierarchy, where every individual’s place in the order … Continue reading →

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Get Out of My Garden

Posted on April 29, 2019 by Lee

Henry Miller’s Nexus is, above all, the story of Miller’s own development as a writer. He says he is learning to read between the lines. It is difficult for him to explain what he means by this: “How could anyone, … Continue reading →

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Book Review: Lanny by Max Porter

Posted on April 26, 2019 by Lee

A lot of the very best books have a very simple story, made interesting by the new perspective that the author has brought to it. Perhaps it’s a story we have heard a hundred times before, but now it’s full … Continue reading →

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Telling It

Posted on March 15, 2019 by Lee

“I see the boys of summer in their ruin “Lay the gold tithings barren, “Setting no store by harvest, freeze the soils …” Great store is set today by grit: telling it like it is, calling it as you see … Continue reading →

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Henry Miller’s Christmas

Posted on December 17, 2018 by Lee

Unexpected Cheer Henry Miller always said that he couldn’t write stories: his books are huge spiral-formed stream-of-consciousness works that can’t really be called novels. And he tends to depict the grim and obscene realities of life rather than giving a … Continue reading →

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