Tag Archives: literature

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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Clutter

Posted on May 23, 2018 by Lee

A young Henry Miller looks around the home he now shares with his wife Mona. He turns to his library: “Every book on the shelves had been acquired with a struggle, devoured with gusto, and had enriched our lives.” Henry … Continue reading →

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William Burroughs and Facts

Posted on May 18, 2018 by Lee

William Burroughs tells Allen Ginsberg: “I am about to annunciate a philosophy called ‘factualism.’ All arguments, all nonsensical considerations as to what people ‘should do,’ are irrelevant. Ultimately there is only facts on all levels, and the more one argues, … Continue reading →

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Henry Miller and Belief

Posted on March 27, 2018 by Lee

“I believe in God the Father, in Jesus Christ his only begotten Son, in the blessed Virgin Mary, the Holy Ghost, in Adam Cadmium, in chrome nickel, the oxides and the mercurochromes, in waterfowls and watercress, in epileptoid seizures, in … Continue reading →

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The Noose and the Sky

Posted on March 20, 2018 by Lee

The deepest truths about a human being can be expressed only in lies. Nietzsche knew this, Henry Miller knew this. So did Sylvia Plath. Why? Because each human being is the sum of the stories she tells herself: for example … Continue reading →

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Notes on Charles Bukowski on Writing

Posted on March 5, 2018 by Lee

Charles Bukowski’s right: sometimes a poem just sounds too much like a POEM. You know it’s been worked up, affected, to make it sound like a poem should. Rather than being its own thing, an expression of something unique and … Continue reading →

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