Tag Archives: books

Henry Miller and Being in the Moment

Posted on March 15, 2016 by Lee

(Some notes on the text and related thoughts as I read Indrek Männiste’s Henry Miller: The Inhuman Artist Chapter 3. Where I write about Zen I’m recalling – however imperfectly – something from Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind by Shunryu Suzuki. … Continue reading →

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Notes on Henry Miller’s Tropic of Cancer Episode 2: “The Last Book”

Posted on March 14, 2016 by Lee

These madmen, Henry and Boris, want to write “The Last Book”. It will be the last because it will break everything apart. “Not one of us is intact, and yet we have in us all the continents and the seas … Continue reading →

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Essay review: “Henry Miller’s Inhuman Philosophy” by Indrek Männiste (in Henry Miller: New Perspectives, Bloomsbury 2015, pp. 9-20)

Posted on March 9, 2016 by Lee

Miller is a writer, not a philosopher. So he “has” a philosophy, he doesn’t “do” philosophy, says Indrek Männiste. A philosophy, in the sense that Miller has one, is something “intuitive” that affects how one lives one’s life “day to … Continue reading →

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Notes on Henry Miller’s Tropic of Cancer Episode 1: “Behind the Word is Chaos”

Posted on March 7, 2016 by Lee

Quotations are from Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller (Harper, 2005) Misfortune Henry Miller is uncomfortable in Boris’s clean, orderly house. Even though the house is spotless, Boris manages to get lice. The cleanliness of the house can’t protect these … Continue reading →

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Henry Miller’s singing prose

Posted on February 29, 2016 by Lee

Ondřej Skovajsa writes: “In Miller’s attempt to write voice, the usage of parallelism is crucial. Marcel Jousse (1886-1961) interprets the general function of parallelism as mnemonic, connected with and involving the bilateral symmetry of human body and the rhythmical breath … Continue reading →

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Some notes as I work through Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Grammar

Posted on January 13, 2016 by Lee

(Quotations are from Philosophical Grammar by Ludwig Wittgenstein, translated by Anthony Kenny, published 1974 by Blackwell. I’m mostly looking at Part 1 Chapter 1 section 2, found on pages 39-40 of this edition.) “We regard understanding as the essential thing, … Continue reading →

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Notes on Henry Miller’s Tropic of Cancer Episode 11

Posted on October 12, 2015 by Lee

Sometimes you have some money in your pocket and you feel content and secure. And sometimes you spend that money and fill your belly up with what you desire, and then “you feel empty, disgusted with yourself.” Henry Miller returns … Continue reading →

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Alyosha Karamazov’s Laughter

Posted on October 9, 2015 by Lee

Alyosha’s sinful laugh after reading the love letter. And then the laugh is repeated, it isn’t sinful any longer. With the first laugh he seems to be laughing at the girl who is in love with him. With the second … Continue reading →

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Notes on William S Burroughs’ “Ghost of Chance”

Posted on August 24, 2015 by Lee

William S Burroughs’s Ghost of Chance (1995, High Risk Books) has a simple political point at the heart of it: humanity will perish if it continues at odds with nature. It’s a familiar theme. Human beings are destroying the environment … Continue reading →

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Kathy Acker on William Burroughs

Posted on June 8, 2015 by Lee

As I prepare to talk about William S Burroughs at the end of the month, I’ve been re-reading Kathy Acker’s essay “William Burroughs’s Realism”. You can find her essay in Bodies of Work (Serpent’s Tail, 1997). The following is a … Continue reading →

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