That bohemian blockbuster, author of Tropic of Cancer, Henry
Miller, is nothing if not personal, even less when not passionate.
Here in essay after essay his volcano of the senses endlessly
erupts- flaming goodness, fervent pleas cascade down the pages with
one thought as catalyst: la condition humainc is a mess. Miller's
subject matter may differ (from water colors and First Love to
European continuity and Yankee hush money; from Vedanta, Zea and
the AA to living down-and-outer, sad, searching Ken Patchen, and
the still-in-the-running, dead, "electric blue" bard Whitman); but
the wind-up's always the same. Man has lost the everyday miraculous
for the machine-made entanglement; the angels' revolt calling the
way men live is a lie, the real revolutionaries are those who
revolutionize themselves, not systems but sensibilities must
change, a persecution mania pervades both the Left and Right, the
order of the day being "liquidate! liquidate!". There's an
extravaganza on economics ("It is the poor who make the rich and
not vice-versa") plus an importance-of-lonesco bit ("We are free to
express our opinions, but have we any opinions?"). Covering 25
years, many long unavailable, the pieces taken individually are all
remarkably fresh, furiously entertaining. Unfortunately,
collectively, the roar becomes too much, the natural force
eventually bores. (Kirkus Reviews)
One of Henry Miller's most luminous statements of his personal
philosophy of life, Stand Still Like the Hummingbird, provides a
symbolic title for this collection of stories and essays. Many of
them have appeared only in foreign magazines while others were
printed in small limited editions which have gone out of print.
Miller's genius for comedy is at its best in "Money and How It Gets
That Way"-a tongue-in-cheek parody of "economics" provoked by a
postcard from Ezra Pound which asked if he "ever thought about
money." His deep concern for the role of the artist in society
appears in "An Open Letter to All and Sundry," and in "The Angel is
My Watermark" he writes of his own passionate love affair with
painting. "The Immorality of Morality" is an eloquent discussion of
censorship. Some of the stories, such as "First Love," are
autobiographical, and there are portraits of friends, such as
"Patchen: Man of Anger and Light," and essays on other writers such
as Walt Whitman, Thoreau, Sherwood Anderson and Ionesco. Taken
together, these highly readable pieces reflect the incredible
vitality and variety of interests of the writer who extended the
frontiers of modern literature with Tropic of Cancer and other
great books.
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