Henry Miller: Contribution as American Novelist

Also Read

      Henry Miller (1891-1980), was a traveler, living in various areas of she United States and for ten years as an expatriate in Europe. The best among his works is Tropic of Cancer was published in France in 1934 but not in the United States until 1961. In the beginning, Miller describes that it is not a book, this is prolonged insult, a gob of spit in the face of Art, a kick in the pants to God, Man and Destiny, Time, Love, beauty...what you will. Further he says, “I am going to sing for you, a little key perhaps, but I will sing.,” What he sings of here, in a literal sense, is his life of expatriate in Paris; his adventures in art, his sexual relations, his quasi-philosophical musings, all animated by his belief that “more obscene than anything is inertia.” Also he signs of his conviction that “there is only one great adventure and that is inward towards the self.”

      Miller, next work The Air Conditioned Nightmare (1945) and its sequel Remember to Remember (1947) sum up his feelings as about the American scene which he describes in terms of a prison or cancer ward, a place isolated from real health and life. Sexus (1949), Plexus (1953), Nexus (1960), The Roy Crucifixion, a trilogy, continue his autobiographical in form that is as usual, deliberately formless, obedient only to what Miller saw as the sprawling, insistent rhythms of the existence and the self.

Previous Post Next Post

Search