Tag Archives: reading

Fantasy and Escapism

Posted on September 2, 2019 by Lee

Fantasy books, TV shows, and films all provide entertainment and escapism. I enjoy fantasy but I’m troubled by this notion of escape – of using art to “wind down” and “switch off.” It seems to me that this is potentially … Continue reading →

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Arthur Machen’s “Meditations of a Tavern”

Posted on July 29, 2019 by Lee

In Arthur Machen’s The Hill of Dreams, Lucian Taylor is a struggling writer prone to daydreaming. He deliberately seeks out obscure books, to learn the most useless knowledge he can find. He is sick of modern society and its day-to-day … Continue reading →

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Truth and Literature

Posted on July 15, 2019 by Lee

Henry Miller is obsessed with truth. And yet he wants to write literature! Literature is something other than truth. “Then to hell with literature!” Writing his novel, Henry is all the while obsessed with the idea of the real book … Continue reading →

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Book Review: Mostly Dead Things by Kristen Arnett

Posted on June 24, 2019 by Lee

Sometimes you encounter a book and you don’t know quite what to make of it. Sometimes you feel this right from the first page, and from there you plough on with a weird and wonderful feeling that things are slowly … 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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Truth in Writing

Posted on November 26, 2018 by Lee

Occasionally people will ask about Henry Miller: was he even a real writer? Wasn’t he a fraud who fooled the world into believing he was the real thing? Miller’s books are, on the one hand, like nothing else that had … 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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