Back in my younger days i went thru my Bukowski and Miller phase at the same time. Listening to jazz and classical while reading those two, along with lots of cheap read wine. I loved the minimalism of Bukowski and the stream of consciousness of Miller. Opposite ends of the spectrum but both so readable to me.
Shit man, I don't know when exactly this happened, but lately you've been giving books and authors some tough love. Before I used to come here for praise filled recommendations, but it seems like you're going towards a more nuanced review style. Good stuff, man.
Oh I have the same sensibility as you with regards to high tolerance of-- and great enjoyment out of-- other people's brutally honest yet even-handed, personality filled reviews. I like the self-assurance of someone delivering them without apology. Younger people especially have become so terrified of personal opinions in general upsetting other people that the result is a very homogenous, superficial, anodyne load of tiresome, bloodless, gutless bollocks. There are 7 billion humans on planet Earth, all of whom think differently to you or I and I'm unsure why confronting this reality upsets kids today: are they just not able to deal with that fact? The comment sections here on RU-vid can be like piranha tanks of outrage over each other's differing views. Over a bloody book, an album, a movie, a political view. Jeeeeesus Christ. 7 billion brains to live alongside...it's going to be a very rough ride for a lot of these delicate yet poisonous flowers out here I think. Anyhow, have a good one. I liked your comment.
Bukowski lies. There are published letters that prove the admiration of Bukowski to Miller. What moves Bukowski in the linked video is pure resentment. And Miller isn’t boring at all. He’s gigantic. Sexus is great. (sorry about my poor english. It’s my second language). And by the way, great content.
Hello, could you maybe provide us with or mention the exact source? I'm doing long-term studies on Miller and start getting into Bukowski at the moment.
I have a knack for picking the perfect book to read at precisely the best possible time in my life, it's instinct, pure serendipity. Your review here reminded me of when I was reading Black Spring myself. I was on the pooper at Heathrow Airport reading the page where Miller muses that sitting on a toilet is the perfect place to read a book, or something to that effect. I sat there nodding with eyebrows raised, the sound of hand-driers blowing and ladies chattering by the sinks thankfully muffling my laughter.
@@IntellectuallySuperior2U I read a brick-like, hardcover compilation of every short story that Richard Yates ever wrote cover to cover whilst recovering from an operation years ago; I was off my face on morphine and read like a demon all night long. It was heavenly. Right now, I'm reading Cosey Fanni Tutti's memoir and my preferred environment for loooooong reading sessions is in a steaming hot bath with Japanese onsen bath salts (I've stopped eating Kit Kats whilst cogitating in hot water as too many disappointing things have happened.)
A long time passed reading and loving Miller until I realized that his statement right at the beginning of Cancer when Miller states that this is not literature, etc. was to be taken literally; then everything else that is literature could be put into a different context, because Miller's work is simply incomparable, that is not to be compared with anything which is literature. Thank you for this very honest review of an writer I love. There are passages in Miller which are as flat and dead as three-day roadkill and he keeps on trudging ... It is undeniable; Miller put it ALL in there. This review is one more example of why your channel is so good!
I think that is the biggest challenge for a writer: not so much not having anything to write about, but rather, what do you choose, from the infinite potentialities of life, to write about? You envy writers who know exactly what they want to pursue with their work.
To have read Miller's first books, I mean the first published three, and not to have read or reviewed the rest gives a very deceptive picture of who Miller was in the end. Miller is a writer whose writing and attitudes changed dramatically during his life. He certainly matured both in life and work.
10:25 Interesting: a friend of mine said something similar. He's a big Bukowski fan; I recommended HM and he just found it an unsatisfactory compromise between style and substance, philosophy and grit. Really great books by Miller's friend Lawrence Durrell: Justine, Balthazar, Mountolive and Clea. My '40s paperback copies of Cancer and Capricorn have "not to be imported into England or USA" on the back. Nice relic of that era.
That sort of poetic, ecstatic quality is kind of what drew me to Miller back in the 90s when I was much younger and more susceptible to that sort of thing. The smut... nah, not interested, although I'm not interested in *that* sort of thing as a general rule irrespective of whoever's writing it. And yes, he did write smut on the side for cash, there's a book called Opus Pistorum (aka Under the Roofs of Paris) that's attributed to him; there was a reasonably thriving underground trade in written erotica for private collectors in the 40s and Miller plus Nin and various friends of theirs (including, or so I've read, a young painter called Robert De Niro, whose son you may have heard of) wrote a bunch of it for a dollar a page for some quick cash.
This is a great review. I just talked about Miller a bit on my weird quarantine-brained channel in which I am surveying all the books I own & talking about them, never onscreen myself, filmed with no editing, & now I am feeling self-conscious about the praise I heaped on him. You make such a good case for his sometimes ridiculousness.
I always found Tropic of Cancer to be a very romantic novel, just read a passage like this: “She rises up out of a sea of faces and embraces me, embraces me passionately--- a thousand eyes, noses, fingers, legs, bottles, windows, purses, saucers all glaring at us an we in each other's arm oblivious. I sit down beside her and she talks--- a flood of talk. Wild consumptive notes of hysteria, perversion, leprosy. I hear not a word because she is beautiful and I love her and now I am happy and willing to die.” It's how I've felt before with a girl who I care for. Miller taught me what sex and love and life are all about.
I got into Henry Miller through Henry Rollins. I remember listening to an audiobook of Rollins’ “Get in the Van” in high school and he mentions this book!
That passage from the book was really something. I have to read this one when I get a chance. It sounds fascinating. Even if I find the eroticism juvenile, which is possibly down to personal opinion anyway, I'd definitely say it sounds worth reading. However, I'm glad your review is nuanced on all aspects of the work.
Thanks for your book reviews. I watch it and read you "Better than Friday " posts. Your show is one of the bright spots for me through this pandemic. I have so many books at home that I haven't read yet . Books, music and movies are my constant companions. Stay safe!
I'm just getting back into reading after not being active for a very long time. This book seems to be right up my alley, and I think it'll be the next thing I'll read.
I haven't read those writers you mentioned but I think Miller's erotic moments are often times poetic, and hilarious! Especially in Tropic of Cancer! And maybe people have a short term memory but I think it was shocking at the time. It definitely shocked me the first time I read it. I also like how his prose meanders. There's a naturalness to it that's great. Like so many writers he tried to write formally at the beginning, until Anais Nin urged him to write like he spoke, and apparently he was a very good speaker. I think he mentions this in Sexus, my personal favorite of his!
Tropic of Cancer changed my life. And I can thank RATM’s ‘Evil Empire’ for that. Thinking back, the first page from that book influenced my writing style. Admittedly, I am unsure if that’s a good thing not. At any rate, I appreciate your review and suggestion. Peace and respect.
Yeah, it is better to understand Miller´s work as an extension of "A Portrait of An Artist", but the difficulty involved in life. Dealing with mortality in a sense.
Very enjoyable review. Given your South American reviews, I feel you would enjoy 'Zama' by Antonio Di Benedetto. If I recall correctly, NYRB has a published translation.
Nin, who came from money, was married to a wealthy banker, Hugh Guiler (his artist name, later in life: Ian Hugo). As I recall it, after her stint as an analysand with Rank - with whom she had an affair, surely, she worked as an analyst herself and earned (some of) her own keep. Rank didn't ever bankroll Nin, afaik. In fact, Nin paid for her analysis, although maybe not after she had become his assistant and student of sorts. I swear, just today I thought, did i unsub from BTF or sumtin? So this was great. I never got far in Miller's oeuvre, read bits and pieces, but I did enjoy Quiet Days in Clichy and his correspondence with Nin (A Literate Passion). They remained friends till the end, be it strained and contentious at times. In my Nin phase, one of her books I liked best was about their menage a trois, Henry and June. The movie based on this book was perfectly cast with a young statuesque, uninhibited Uma Thurman as June, and the delicate and sultry Maria de Medeiros as Nin. I also liked her 'unprofessional study' of D.H. Lawrence, whom she worshiped. I only read her unexpurgated diaries, and most of her non-fiction: which I by far preferred over her fiction, which was too ethereal, dreamlike for my taste. (I skipped on the erotica altogether. Both she and Miller wrote sexy stories for a rich American, a few dollars apiece). I've always been intrigued by why she wasn't able to write great fiction, and whether it was related to her leading a life of fiction with a web of lies so elaborate that she had a filing system to keep track. Perhaps she was just too much of an idealist, a dreamer. She wrote a book about writing, The Novel of the Future, if it conveys the answer, I forgot. I moved on, a long time ago... Much enjoyed your take, as always. I'm inspired to get to Black Spring (again), and at least read the first story.
Damn cliff, most edits I have ever noticed in a Better Than Food communique and yet you still did the author justice.Last cult book of the eighties Geek Love by Katherine Dunn, any thoughts? Be Well.
THE TROPICS TRILOGY GETS ALL THE HENRY ATTENTION BUT BY FAR MY FAVORITE HENRY MILLER IS HIS RELATIVELY STRAIGHTFORWARD ALMOST TRAVELOGUE-ISH BOOK THE COLOSSUS OF MAROUSSI. IT WILL MAKE YOU WANT TO DROP EVERYTHING AND MOVE TO GREECE IMMEDIATELY.
It would be great if you read the novel "el obsceno pájaro de la noche" from the author José Donoso. One of those books that i feel painfully identified. Congrats for the reviews, please keep going
I love your interpretation of, as well as, your impersonation of Mr. Miller. This was an excellent review, in your style. Amused, entertained, and informed. I have adored Miller for years. Especially for his love letters to Anais Nin. He was a character yes but nobody ever did it better. He was a living breathing dirty old man/ 1930's crime drama narrative. This is true. That's why although as you said, it is often difficult to get through and take it seriously, it is always something you get through for that very same reason because he was a character. Love your reviews.
Re: Henry Miller. Nice job. Spot on. Would also like to say Buk's prose hardly holds up anymore. Sure, when I was in my 20s & 30s it worked a lot better. Post Office might still be pretty good; but really, I believe his poetry holds up better than the rest of his output.
Also, small note. “He wrote smut on the side to make a living.” Partly true, but as Erica Jong’s Miller biography says, there is no evidence that those published bits attributed to him were actually written by him. Furthermore, even if they were it was an entirely unsuccessful endeavour as (you correctly pointed out) sex was always the weakest of his writing and pornography is entirely different from what he wants to achieve with the sex scenes in his actual books
By the way (This has nothing to do with the review): perhabs 'Beyond Sleep' from W.F. Hermans, a dutch autor would be something for you. It is reagarded as one of the best post war novelist of the Netherlands, and sometimes Europe. At least I enjoyed it and mabey it is interesting for you t read a dutch novelist. Anyways: love your reviews, keep it up!
How about reviewing Central Asian writers? I think Chingiz Aytmatov is available in English. He's a classic writer. How about "One day lasts more than a 100 years"?
I just found this video but coincidentally I read the book when this review came out. I love Black Spring and Henry Miller in general. In fact I have a tattoo inspired by a quote from Tropic of Capricorn. I would definitely definitely recommend you checking out the “Colossus of Marousi” which he considered his best book and it is a truly special one. Continue the good work !
I am at writing moment about halfway through tropic of capricon, the first book of miller i have read. I got to agree with Bukowski when he said that Miller overdoes it with the reaching for the stars, the philosophical prose. But when he gets down to it, to the simple, then he puts the word down with grace, and incredible style. I have just read the pages in Capricorn on how he combines the taste of sour rye bread with the wonders, and freedom of child hood, and i must admit, those are some of the best pages i have read.
I so appreciate this review. I completely agree that Miller is at his best when he is taking you on a surreal trip into the visceral. If you stop trying to grasp at the literal meaning of his words and just let yourself get carried on them, you can be transported. Don't stop to ask what he meant anywhere. What matters, like you said, is that feeling of being slapped in the face with sea water - woken up. But when it comes to writing about sex, I think he gets too much credit. To me it comes across as having been written by a juvenile who has never actually had sex in real life, (and yes, I know he had plenty of sex in real life, as he relates it). He has said in interviews that he intentionally stripped the sex act of emotion to break it down to something grotesque almost. Mission accomplished. But to me, I don't find any additional meaning from this strategy. It seems like he's portraying aliens, not humans. If it blew the doors off convention and paved the way for free speech - great. But if we are just giving him too much credit simply because it was counter-culture and not because it was well done, let's face that too. I can appreciate it as a metaphor for escape, feeling disconnected, for misery, for the joy of abandon and celebrating the grotesque - and as a blunt object that beats us over the head and beats down the norm, I guess. So yeah, moments of genius. Lots of them. But, never an easy read, for me anyway. You keep reading because for some reason it's addicting or hypnotizing, but I also crave solid ground after reading a few hundred pages of it.
I'm always searching too. Most literature related channels are done by very safe, milk-toast, wet-behind-the-ears kids who are clearly terrified of having opinions that might offend someone on planet Earth and thus make very generic, poorly scripted, trend-happy videos about silliness like YA books and other such nonsense. They're too young for my particular sensibilities, and that's not their fault but it is nevertheless frustrating. This particular channel is so excellent, and thus, a rare find.
It was a long wait for this video but worth it. Thanks. P.S. I abandoned The Tropic of Cancer halfway and i don’t normally do that. It starts as shocking but after it feels like shocking for the sake of shocking.
Not wrong about black spring being indulgent. I think Miller shines when he has a clear subject to focus his energy at: Rimbaud's poetry in The Time of the Assasins or a travelogue through Greece in The Colussus of Maroussi. Because Black Spring has no external reference, he gets lost in his own internal psychic ramblings. That said, Henry Miller could get lobotomized and still write better than Bukowski. Love the reviews Clif
Great review, thank you for that. Can I ask you for a book recommendation on specific theme? I've paid a company to build a home for me and my family, but when it was completed in 70% they run away with my money. I don't feel anger, I just feel a need to understand why someone can do something like that to me, why someone decides to 'be a dick'. Fairy tales apart, I think evil in real life is hidden somewhere in there. In not respecting someone. Any better than food book that would shed some light on why people do bad things even if the situation is not extreme?
Oh wow, I'm waiting eagerly for someone to respond to this incredibly interesting comment/request too. I'm so sorry you were betrayed the way you were. I can only hope that the criminal runs full pelt into one of life's unexpected brick wall pop-ups in 2021 and that you take a wrong turn only to discover a freshly rolled out red carpet.
@@joejs7659 Thank you for recommendation, I will definitely read it. When I think about it, I should read all of his work, because he sure is one of the best authors ever.
Aleksandra Cielemęcka indeed, he had great style - especially for his time, and his home country’s norms and restrictions at the time - to write like that was incredible.
I dont think Anais Nin was part responsable for the breaking of his marriage with June. They were already separate since before he moved to Paris, separate like, married, but not so together as a couple, since June, and he tells that on the book Nexus, since June brings to live with them a woman with whom June had some sort of relationship, and Henry was completely jealous of her, specially because also this woman had great taste in books and loved Rimbaud, than Henry was like: for some while i avoided Rimbaud because if that woman, and he actually loved Rimbaud after all. So, since that time he and June were living sort of separate lives and than June gave him the money to finally go to Paris. When June came to Paris, she figured out that he was having a type of relationship with Anais, but wasnt that that made them divorce, i think both knew their time together was over and June was in her own way happy for him to be doing what he likes, which was to write, even if she didnt liked many images of herself in his books. anyway, Miller is in my bildung, i started to read him when i was a teenager and June was fascinating to me, and is one of the women who influenced me as a woman figure. The movie is ok.
"Everything is packed into a second which is either consummated or not consummated. The earth is not an arid plateau of health and comfort, but a great sprawling female with velvet torso that swells and heaves with ocean billows; she squirms beneath a diadem of sweat and anguish. Naked and sexed she rolls among the clouds in the violet light of the stars. All of her, from her generous breasts to her gleaming thighs, blazes with furious ardor. She moves amongst the seasons and the years with a grand whoopla that seizes the torso with paroxysmal fury, that shakes the cobwebs out of the sky; she subsides on her pivotal orbits with volcanic tremors. She is like a doe at times, a doe that has fallen into a snare and lies waiting with beating heart for the cymbals to crash and the dogs to bark. Love and hate, despair, pity, rage, disgust-what are these amidst the fornications of the planets? What is war, disease, cruelty, terror, when night presents the ecstasy of myriad blazing suns? What is this chaff we chew in our sleep if it is not the remembrance of fang whorl and star cluster. Henry Miller - from Tropic of Cancer
14:00min Ok, influencial given the unquestionable degree of boringness. All right. Yeah, it will not be to everyone´s taste. A lot of people said "I want to be f-ing boring man, and that is my dude"
Recommendation: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Sur_and_the_Oranges_of_Hieronymus_Bosch Not just my favourite Miller, but one of my perennial favourites - fresh and alive. Greetings from the Tyrol.
I'd be interested to know what you think of Lawrence Durrell's 'The Black Book'. Durrell and Miller were very close friends and corresponded for many years. I struggled through 'The Black Book' a month or so ago and really didn't enjoy it, at points seeming rather pointlessly smutty (something I think Miller is guilty of at times too), but id be interested to see what you think. On a side note, like 'Black Spring' it wasn't published in the UK until the 60s due to obscenity laws. Anyway, great review as always, will certainly be adding it to my 'to read' list!
I am a great fan of yours and the way you present all these books are just amazing. BUT i'm still waiting for you to review some African novels such as The Palm-Wine Drinkard by the Nigerian author Amos Tutuola. I'm curious to hear what you'd say about him and his book.
Hmm, just a couple of hours ago I was listening to My life in the bush of ghosts (Eno and Byrne), and thought: I have to look for that book. And then I read your comment
14:24min They are all auto-biographies. What is the life of this person like? that is what his books are about. The friction, and struggles, and antagosnism of living. It is not about Bataillian jouissance. If you expect that you will be, indeed, disappointed.
what about the dream sequence chapter or the narration of the ever changing watercolor he paints? give a highlight or two, my g. it was pretty out there and is still better than many surrealist works in its style. in some ways this books shows all of millers sides
7:59min In the fight between his jaws allied to his teeth his the tension deployed against the rival (his) lips have been losing for the past 7 plus minutes.
Subterranean Blues is one of the few books I couldn't get through and had to donate to the local charity shop. Terrible. One The Road is the only good thing Kerouac ever did, it's excellent. Can you think of any author's who YOU would call a 'one hit wonder'? Aside from Harper Lee, of course. That would be a great topic for a video.
@@barflytom3273 I've made an unwelcome discovery: 'There's No Such Thing as An Easy Job' is one of the dullest, most pointless and over-hyped novels I've encountered this year so far. Holy smokes...it infuriates me when books this poor win literary awards. My incredulity morphs into disgust, confusion and outrage. Avoid at all costs. Same goes for that odd 'genre', if you will, comprised of mysterious, maddeningly successful young authors who are wealthy, painfully ordinary, pretentious and tragically indulged princesses writing memoirs and novels romanticising their tedious journey deep into their own belly buttons, y'know, writing self-indulgent novels with zero self-awareness about identity, depression, suicide, psychotherapy and sex. This is my abridged reply as my chimpanzee rage and vitriol is inappropriate to subject a sensible and lovely stranger to :D. It all began with Wurtzel, but I'm sure there was an earlier incarnation. There are too many contemporary authors in this 'genre' for me to begin cataloguing here.
