Henry Miller is one of my spiritual mentors. He's best known for "dirty" books, such as Tropic of Cancer, but I don't read the books for the sexy bits. I read them to share in his struggle to become a human being.
Part of that struggle involves sex. By today's standards, Miller's attitude toward women seems antediluvian. Compare his views to other male writers of the same period – such as Papa Hemingway – and that attitude seems pretty typical of its time (between the World Wars).
Unlike many male authors (DH Lawrence comes immediately to mind), and many romance novelists, Henry's view of sex is not some gossamer religious experience. It is earthy, and raw, and passionate. It is not le petit morte, as the French say. Henry's sex is the encounter of two flesh-and-blood human beings, filled with life and desire; not the cosmic union of eternal archetypes.
When Henry Miller met the woman he calls June, he met a woman who could stand up for herself. She encouraged him to follow his muse, but she was not willing to sacrifice herself as he did so. His greatest work, The Rosy Crucifixion is dedicated "To Her."
Most of his books were banned in America, supposedly because of their sexual content. I disagree. As I wrote when he died (June 7, 1980):
... sex scenes are brief in Miller, and are certainly the less important elements of his books. No, his books are dangerous, like Catcher in the Rye, or Huckleberry Finn, because they are full of life, full of living ideas. And, as a self-admitted anarchist, Miller is especially threatening to our status quo institutions.Henry Miller, like Jack Kerouac in the post-WWII generation, saw the emptiness in the Great American Dream of material acquisition. He turned his back on a decent enough job to become a writer. He turned his back on getting ahead and keeping up with the Joneses and battling for empire in order to fullfill his destiny as a fully realised human being.
No comments:
Post a Comment