Category Archives: Literature

Notes on Nexus, Part 3: Finding Love

Posted on October 30, 2018 by Lee

Chapter Three of Henry Miller’s Nexus is about despair. Miller describes his desperate state, trapped in a harmful relationship with Mona. He spends his days doing nothing, letting “events pile up of their own accord.” He knows he needs a … Continue reading →

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Notes on The Philosophy of Andy Warhol

Posted on October 16, 2018 by Lee

Thesis: “As soon as you stop wanting something you get it.” Andy Warhol says that he has found this rule to be “absolutely axiomatic.” He was always lonely and desperately wanted a friend, until one day he decided he was … Continue reading →

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Henry Miller: Soul and Mind

Posted on October 2, 2018 by Lee

In Chapter Two of Nexus we see the limits of Henry Miller’s patience with abstract arguments. His friend, a lawyer called John Stymer, is, like Miller, fascinated by Dostoevsky, and thinks that a “new phase of existence” arrived for humanity … Continue reading →

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Notes on Gogol’s Old-Fashioned Farmers

Posted on August 15, 2018 by Lee

The world is all “in an uproar,” says Gogol. And yet here is peace and quiet: the house of the owners of a small village in the Ukraine, with its bright garden full of trees and hanging fruits, and the … Continue reading →

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Notes on Gogol’s The Overcoat

Posted on July 30, 2018 by Lee

Gogol’s The Overcoat is a story of a lowly government official in Tsarist Russia. His job is to copy out documents. There’s a curious ambiguity in the narrator’s feelings for the official: on the one hand he is described as … Continue reading →

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Creation is Grace: Notes on Daniil Kharms

Posted on July 23, 2018 by Lee

I’ve been reading I Am a Phenomenon Quite Out of the Ordinary: the Notebooks, Diaries, and Letters of Daniil Kharms (published 2013) and trying to get a picture in my mind of the kind of person Kharms was. “Creation is … Continue reading →

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Notes on Gogol’s “The Nose”

Posted on July 17, 2018 by Lee

Nikolai Gogol’s story of “The Nose” opens with a macabre scene: a nose found in a loaf of bread. Perhaps this is going to be a murder mystery. But then the story becomes absurd: the nose found its way into … Continue reading →

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Nostalgia

Posted on July 11, 2018 by Lee

The poem I’ve just read has the narrator reading a newspaper, “letting fall” the pages she has finished with, that rustle and crackle as they are shed. It’s a scene to stir nostalgia, as many of us now no longer … Continue reading →

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Stories

Posted on June 12, 2018 by Lee

I reach for my copy of Plexus by Henry Miller. I’m wondering if I’ve written all I can about Miller. I open the book to find out. There’s always something more in here. Today I read Miller’s version of Goldilocks … Continue reading →

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Forgetfulness

Posted on June 8, 2018 by Lee

Forgetting is the essence of writing, says Henry Miller. “Inner turmoil” must be present in good writing, and the inner life of the writer a seething chaos. Moments of past and present come to the surface and are gone again. … Continue reading →

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