It is interesting to me that Henry Miller does not have a greater reputation in classic literature. Perhaps it was because he was so amoral, in the conventional sense. But who is to say what is amoral? Having sex with someone without remembering their name? I think that can be just the opposite, the most moral of all things, the most deeply involved with living one can be.
I think Henry Miller’s reputation will only grow over this century. There has never been a writer like him, before or since! As Orwell said, he’s like a Whitman among the corpses. His exuberance overflows and spills onto the floor, it makes me want to move to Paris and live under a bridge if necessary.The bastard was a garbage man for crying out loud! He went to a semester of college then dropped out. Tropic of Cancer is a masterpiece of classic literature and it was his first novel.
Yes, life is so rich and filled with potential experience and people don’t even seize on it, they (alas, to each their own) buy houses and live comfortably and that is good for them but when they die nobody will care fifty years later. Of course it doesn’t matter in the scheme of the universe but all that humans know is only, what, five thousand years?
Cheers! To life and death!
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