Henry Miller (1891-1980)
Is Henry Miller famous? Or is he just infamous? Or is he both?
I have just finished reading a book of his essays, reviews, and prefaces entitled Stand Still Like the Hummingbird (1962) and find myself alternately idolizing and deploring the man’s work. Of course, he is probably most famous for his novels featuring S-E-X, especially The Tropic of Cancer (1934). And yet, he can write like a Bodhisattva, as in the essays “The Hour of Man” and “The Immorality of Morality.”
In the latter essay, he wrote what I regard as the definitive answer as to how to live in the era of Trump:
Neither would I urge one to run away from the danger zone. The danger is everywhere: there are no safe and secure places in which to start a new life. Stay where you are and make what life you can among the impending ruins. Do not put one thing above another in importance. Do only what has to be done—immediately. Whether the wave is ascending or descending, the ocean is always there. You are a fish in the ocean of time, you are a constant in an ocean of change, you are nothing and everything at one and the same time. Was the dinner good? Was the grass green? Did the water slake your thirst? Are the stars still in the heavens? Does the sun still shine? Can you talk, walk, sing, play? Are you still breathing?
And yet, in another essay entitled “To Read or Not To Read,” Miller brags about reading fewer books “I tried to make it clear that, as a result of indiscriminate reading over a period of sixty years, my desire now is to read less and less.”
One of Miller’s Water Colors
Is it perhaps because Miller also sees himself as a painter, particularly of water colors? The ones I have seen are pretty good, and I shouldn’t be surprised if the author likes the act of pure creativity involved in coming up with these scenes, which he does not paint from life.
In the end, I see Henry Miller as, at times, gifted by his muses—and at other times merely producing when the muses aren’t present. There is a certain lack of consistency in his work. I will continue to read him for the times I find he is spot on.
tarnmoor 
sounds pretty enlightened; living in his monkish existence there in Big Sur, he probably had the time to investigate different artistic endeavors…
If you read his book on his life in Big Sur, you will find that he spent much of his time feuding with his French astrologer friend Conrad Moricand, whom he invited to live with him.
i haven’t read that book. and here i was imagining HM living in quietude and peace… tx for the tip… i wonder if he credited astrology…?
When he first met him, he thought Moricand was a great storyteller, and says so in Stand Still Like the Hummingbird, but some otherwise good people can become the houseguests from hell.