The Writing of Henry Miller

The Writing of Henry Miller

Henry Miller had a profound influence both on my life style and my writing. I began reading him in the late nineteen fifties. The first thing that I read was his The Intimate Henry Miller. In his philosophical writings, Miller introduced me to many new spiritual teachers. I continued to read Miller though the nineteen sixties and still read him today.

The first thing I read by Miller was The Intimate Henry Miller a collection of letters and essays. The letter that he wrote to his friend, Fred Perles, Reunion In Barcelona completely blew me away. Just coming out of the fifties, I had been educated to believe that one must work hard, save one’s money, and make a contribution to society. Miller’s letter to Perles destroyed all of the ideas that had been hammered into my head in the fifties. He wrote that he had never been happier than when he and Perles were down and out in Paris. Through Perles Miller learned that earning a living has nothing to do with living. He learned that one must live each day to its fullest with no thought for tomorrow, that one must live fully in the moment.

Miller’s essay Balzac and His Double in the same collection helped me to see that the real meaning of life is found in the spiritual aspect of being. Looking at Balzac’ life and writings Miller shows how the spiritual aspect of man is killed at birth by today’s emphasis on material things. Balzac shows that unless one develops the angel in oneself one’s life is meaningless, that the purpose of life is to get in touch with the spiritual aspect of your self and to work to make that aspect grow.

In Wisdom From the Heart, another collection of essays, Miller introduces the reader to E Graham Howe and his theory of unconditional surrender. Howe maintains that we must accept unconditionally all that life has to offer, both the good and the bad. He shows that there is nothing in life that we cannot overcome if we go with it instead of fighting it. Howe maintains that we must have faith in higher powers that created and direct life, that by acceptance, we can get in touch with those powers and bath in the joy and beauty of real life.

I began to read Miller’s novels in the late 1960’s. It is hard to believe that these works were banned in the United States until the late sixties. Beginning with Tropic of Cancer, and Tropic of Capricorn, I then went into the trilogy The Rosy Crucifixion. Miller’s novels are autobiographical fiction. In reading his novels I saw that ordinary life is where one is to find meaning. We do not need to go to China to discover the spiritual in life.

Miller did not attend college. He was really down on the educational system. He says that it was more destructive of creativity than any other force that he ever met in his life. He was labeled a misfit and failure by the eighth grade. How many creative individuals have been labeled failures by this system. How many truly creative individuals has it produced in the twentieth century? Like Miller says, the structure and narrow mindedness of our educational system creates only cogs for the wheels of our industrial, military, network communication complex, yes men and followers, mediocre soulless conformers to the great truths of democracy with all of its hidden vices.

In "Wisdom of the Heart," Miller gives E.G. Howe's description of our educational system. "Education is more or less a free for all, but the originality of individualism suffers mechanization by mass- productive methods, and top marks are awarded for aggressive excellence. The limits of law aggressively insist that the aggressive should be aggressively eliminated, thus establishing the right by means of out wronging the wrong-doer." This is even more applicable to our educational system today than a half century ago when it was written.

Miller shows that in the struggle to write the harder things are the better the writing becomes if you just keep at it. He had no support for his writing in the early days. When he was living at home he had to hide his writing material in the closet when company came to the house. Often he would spend days at a time writing in his head, but not putting a single word on paper. His parents kept after him to give up the writing nonsense and get an honest job.

In his describing his struggle to find and keep a job, Miller paints a vivid picture of what it was like for the working man in the nineteen twenties. He worked for a telegraph company as personal manager. His job was to keep the branch that he covered filled with messengers to deliver the telegrams. The pay was so low that they attracted the lowest form of life, ex-cons, illiterates, and down and outers. Yet, every man was a human being. Every man had a story to tell. And Miller told their stories.

The men who delivered the messages were not the cream of the crop, but the men at the top were even worse. As soon as Miller had a full force of men, the managers would cut the pay and most of the messengers would quit. Miller would have to start all over again, hiring anyone who could walk on two feet. This was the way of the business world, it was rotten from top to bottom Miller wrote.

He writes that he never worried about money When he didn’t have it he borrowed it. When he had it he gave it away. And, though I have money problems until this very day, I have lived by Miller’s contention that we should not let the need for more and more money govern our lives.

It was not until he escaped the city of New York and became an expatriate in Paris that his writing really took off. Living in Paris without a penny to his name, no job, and never knowing where his next meal might come from he felt completely free for the first time in his life. In this freedom he was able to tap an inner source, the Muse, which some times wouldn’t turn off. He describes how when the Muse was in he wrote, and wrote unable to turn it off. Even when he took a break to eat, he found himself writing on the tablecloth.

Miller is some times described as a writer of dirty books. In his novels there is a lot of obscenity and explicit sexual description. In a large part Miller did this to protest the Puritanical Victorian attitude toward sex that existed in America right through the 1950’s. Miller looked at sex as something real that we should not hide or be ashamed of. I think he would agree that the pendulum has swung to far in the other direction today. He stated that the free love movement of the sixties failed because the advocates of free love were interested in sex and not in love. Miller felt that real Love was the most important thing in life and the hardest thing to come by.

Miller maintains that the purpose of writing is self-realization. Bringing the self to true manhood, which, for Miller, means reaching one's full God-like potential.

Miller writes Truth in words that I can understand. More than anyone else, Miller reinforced my feeling that there is something more to life that getting ahead. From his writing, I got a whole new view of the world of spirit. I also saw that maybe it's not just me that's screwed up. Maybe it's the whole world.

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