“what is my weakness, the desire to devour all”
henry miller

A little tough to get through near the end. Miller can be a little heavy in spots.

Peter Schutz On Henry Miller On Writing

I'm standing basically alone here, judging from other reviewers, but Henry Miller on Writing did very little for me. No spark for me, no engagement. Maybe my experience comes from having read many of his other works, thus meaning I've already read many of the pieces contained in this one.

Great collection of excerpts from various of Miller's published and unpublished material. Organised into a few loose themes relating to his career as a writer and finding his identity and his voice. Also a great insight into Miller's unique and self-liberatory worldview along the way...

Everything is reasonable when it is writing about writing, but a lot of this is about how his works were banned, which is quite repetitive throughout the book.

Although I was familiar with Henry Miller and his famous novels, I had never read any of his books. But after watching the September 8th CBS Sunday Morning News Show where they talked about Big Sur and his life living there, I was interested in learning more about Miller.

Miller was a controversial writer in his time and his books were considered vulgar and banned. What I found interesting is how freedom and censorship happening in the 1930s are still relevant today. He writes about the censorship of his books not only in the US but in Norway, because of his descriptive writings about sex. One of the best lines from the book is his take on censorship:

“You cannot eliminate an idea by suppressing it, and the idea which is linked with this issue is one of freedom to read what one chooses. Freedom, in other words, to read what is bad for one as well as what is good for one-or, what is simply innocuous.
How can one guard against evil, in short, if one does not know what evil is?

But it is not something evil, not something poisonous, which this book Sexus offers the Norwegian reader. It is a dose of life which I administered to myself first, and which I not only survived but thrived on. Certainly I would not recommend it to infants, but then neither would I offer a child a bottle of aqua vite. I can say one thing for it unblushingly-compared to the atom bomb, it is full of lifegiving qualities.”

It did have great insights from Miller about writing. I especially enjoyed his advice to writers. Here’s 11 of Millers most important advice for budding writers:

1. Work on one thing at a time until finished.
2. Start no more new books, add no more new material.
3. Don’t be nervous. Work calmly, joyously, recklessly on whatever is in hand.
4. Work according to the program and not according to mood. Stop at the appointed time!
5. When you can’t create you can work.
6. Cement a little every day, rather than add new fertilizers.
7. Keep human! See people, go places, drink if you feel like it.
8. Don’t be a work-horse! Work with pleasure only.
9. Discard the Program when you feel like it but go back to it the next day. Concentrate. Narrow down. Exclude.
10. Forget the books you want to write. Think only of the book you are writing.
11. Write first and always. Painting, music, friends, cinema, all these come afterwards.

MILLER'S DAILY PROGRAM

Mornings: If groggy, type notes and allocate, as,stimulus. If in fine fettle, write.

Afternoons: Work on section in hand, following plan of section scrupulously. No intrusions, no diversions. Write to finish one section at a time, for good and all.

Evenings: See friends. Read in cafes. Explore unfamiliar sections-on foot if wet, on bicycle. Write if in the mood. Make corrections to manuscript.

Good read indeed

Not great.

Should be 2-stars, one more for beautiful phrases here and there.

More rambling from Henry Miller. Now, his is top-class rambling, don't get me wrong, but this is rambling about writing (collected articles), and there is very little of value. Yes, rich and sometimes purple prose, beautiful words . . . but little about writing, really. And LOTS about Henry Miller.

Let's get one thing clear: Henry Miller is not such a great writer. All of his autobiographies have a good dynamism, a good feeling of the present, good scene sculpturing. They do NOT have good character development, good plot handling, a novelic sweep, no grand vistas, no insights into man's or men's or all mankind's soul. Good sex scenes here and there.

So he could have written about how he keeps up this dynamicism, how he makes his slightly interesting life into so much more. But he doesn't. So . . . what's the point?

I was hoping that this would be tips on improving your writing style from the author. Instead, some editor went through Miller's bibliography and grabbed up passages about writing, and threw them into one volume.

Seems a bit too intense (hyper?) for my taste

This was a little difficult for me to sink my teeth into. The thing about Miller's writing that I usually enjoy is the ebb and flow of it, the descriptive passages of life punctuated by the more philosophical and metaphysical musings, which stand out like gleaming heads-up newly-minted pennies on the sidewalk to be picked up and put in your pocket for your restless fingers to play with while you're walking or waiting for the subway. This book is a collection of all intense passages, and without that context of the descriptive life passages to ground them, they can overwhelm. There's a lot of great stuff in here but I think Miller is meant to be enjoyed in his rambling wholeness instead of excerpted so finely.