A wee bit raunchy but his writing still is raw and beautiful.

Miller în toată splendoarea sa.
Una din lucrările care pun în evidență începuturile (promițătoare) a unui viitor mare scriitor.
Câtevapagini din acest text mi s-au părut niște dulcegării inedite.
Foarte, da foarte bun text.

""Šta bih radila?" ,začuđeno je ponovila." Ništa ne bih radila Samo bih živela."
Kakva ideja! Kakva zdrava ideja! Zavideo sam joj što je takva flegma, što je tako nemarna i bezbrižna. Terao sam je da mi priča o tome kako ništa ne bi radila. To je bio ideal o kokavome nikad nisam sanjao. Da ga ostvari, čovekbi morao da bude savršeno prazan, ili veoma bogatog duha.Bolje je, smatrao sam, biti prazan."

Way too salacious for me in the first half - should have read the description on goodreads, not on the librarybook itself… I wanted more Paris vibes, less prostitutes.
Henry Miller can write well, but not the content I want to read I think.

volim milera i uzivam beskrajno u njemu ali fali fabularnosti i nezaokruženo je... v fun tho

العبث و الحياة العبثية كانت ومازالت تغري الكثيرين، مازال البعض يحلمون بحياة عبثية لفسفتها العميقة نعم عميقة لأن البعض قد يعتبرها سخيفة لكن هي جميلة في حد ذاتها، هنري في هذه الايام الصاخبة اراد ان يرينا جمال العبثية بأسلوب حقيقي يعني حقائق وقعت له في تلك المدينة العبثية كليشي، عن الإباحية التي فيها نعم قد تشمئز منها، لكن هي جزء رئيسي من هذه العبثية التي يريدها المريد، حقيقة أعجبتني وابهرني اسلوبه جدا لذا حازت على توقعاتي لها كيف لا وقد قرات ثلاث ارباعها بعد شرائي لها بلحضات فقط وانا عاد على متن القطار.
هل انصحكم بها لا اعتقد ذلك الا من تغريه حياة العبث.


ايام هادئة....!! كم هو مخادع العنوان جدا جدا.

لمْ تكنْ أيامُ ميللر هادئةً كما يُشعِرُ عنوانُ كتابِه بل كانتْ صاخبةً زاعقةً. ميللر هنا هو هو كما في رواياتِه ليسجلَ شيئًا من يومياتِه عندما كان يعيشُ حياةَ التشردِ في باريسَ، ما زلتُ أعتقدُ حتى بعدَ أن أنهيتُ الكتابَ أنَّ الجنسَ هنا "ما هو إلا قشرةٌ خارجيةٌ" ويبقى غوصُه في تحليل الطبيعةِ البشريةِ لضحاياه أمر يدعو للتقديرِ وفيه عمق كبيرٌ جعلَ منْ كتابِه الصغيرِ تحفةً رائعةً

I would put a spoiler alert up here, but does anyone NOT know what they're going to find in a Henry Miller novel? Well, if you don't . . .

"Quiet Days in Clichy" is Miller's tale of being young in Paris in the 30s, a tale he re-worked and published in 1956. It's the usual raconteur's delight of meals, whores, sex, spiritual insight, mysticism and scenery that makes Henry Miller Henry Miller.

Miller was famously dissected by Kate Millet in her 1970 book "Sexual Politics" -- torn to shreds, with each shred pinned like a butterfly -- and people STILL like reading him. Women included.

So why?

As a writer I'm going to say it's his voice.

Voice is the hardest and the most subtle element of writing to teach, to understand, or to accomplish -- and he just had it. He wrote with an ease; he went from scene to scene in such a natural way that people just like reading him. I would compare his writing to Isaac Singer's in that way (and that way only). Additionally, there's the outrageous sexual point of view present in Miller's writing, a POV that still has power in our age, as "sex workers" form unions.

Isaac Singer? So where's Henry's Nobel Prize?

(Ahh, I guess it's too late now.)

ps. If you like Henry Miller track down a photograph of him taken in Big Sur. It shows him playing ping pong, naked, with two beautiful naked young women. Not salacious; it might make you smile.

Quiet Days in Clichy is like a little taste of the most mediocre and vile portion of Tropic of Cancer. I kept waiting for a moment of bright clarity, an original event, ANYTHING -- and then it was over. There were of course a few good lines, a couple of pertinent observations, but it jumped directly into a rough-and-ready sexual encounter with a prostitute; it didn't build upon this ...it was just one hooker after the next, with none of the blazing philosophical rants that made Tropic of Cancer a thing of beauty. I'll keep reading Miller, but this was (I hope) a bump in the road.

"Govorila je divlje, mahnito, protiv sudbine koja je bila jaca od nje. Ko god da je bila, nije vise imala ime. Bila je samo zena, izubijana, izmucena, skrsena, stvorenje koje nemocno udara krilima u tami. Nikome se nije obracala, ponajmanje meni; nije pricala ni sa samom sobom, ni sa bogom. Bila je samo brbljiva rana koja je nasla glas i kao da se otvarala u tom mraku, gradeci prostor oko sebe u kojem moze da krvari bez stida i ponizenja. Sve vreme me cvrsto drzala za misku da se mozda uveri kako sam jos tu; stezala ju je svojim snaznim prstima kao da ce njihov dodir saopstiti znacenje koje njene reci vise nisu imale."

"Isto não são putas, são ninfomaníacas."

Os dias tranquilos em Clichy deixam muito a desejar, pelo menos no que diz respeito à tranquilidade.
Na cidade de Paris de Henry Miller, Joey e Carl constroem uma história de amizade caracterizada por intrigas e comportamentos disfuncionais. Os dois homens vivem para o momento, fazem o que lhes apetece, onde mais lhes agrada e com quem mais desejam.
Miller foca-se no lado mais sórdido de Paris, no seu mundo reles e deprimente do sexo, álcool e pobreza. Neste cenário, os dois garanhões não perdem tempo com futilidades (como o trabalho, a leitura ou a escrita), concentrando-se, em vez disso, em levar para a cama (casa de banho, sofá, chão ou outro sítio qualquer que sirva) todas as mulheres que conhecem, a qualquer hora e de qualquer forma. Acrescento que a maior parte das mulheres são prostitutas, mas as poucas que não são, são tratadas como se também fossem mulheres do oficio.
A personagem principal, que também faz o papel de narrador, vê todas as mulheres como objetos, usando-as para seu prazer e divertimento, tratando-as como lixo quando já não as quer ver. Mas quem é capaz de julgar um escritor faminto, que até no lixo procura comida? Um homem que tenta tornar a sua vida mais agradável, ainda que a sua forma de o fazer seja, digamos, bastante porca?
Eu não me senti ofendida ou repugnada com o estilo de escrita de Henry Miller. Pelo contrário, as duas descrições são feitas com humor, o que as torna refrescantes e honestas. O livro "Dias Tranquilos em Clichy" é não só realista, como nos entretém até ao final da pequena história.

"Amanhã vai ser um dia como qualquer outro, apenas um pouco melhor, mais suculento, mais cor-de-rosa."

this is a book about limbo. Not the kind you'd typically expect. It's a dusty saga through the white legs of limbo, as henry miller cuts into prostitute after prostitute during the rainy days of Clichy. It is like watching someone play horseshoes.

There are only two things you can do on a rainy day, as the saying goes, and the whores never wasted time playing cards.

I thought this book was alright. Miller does get to stretch his verbal abilities, but this isn't Black Spring. This book is not a revolution, but very much so a reflection. It is an old man looking tastily back on the flesh of lazy days and thinking why didn't i grasp the ground more and sing i won't leave.

When i think about this period, when we lived together in Clichy, it seems like a stretch in Paradise. There was only one real problem, and that was food...

There is an amazing scene where Miller donates all of his money to a weeping prostitute then comes home ravenous and begins chewing the bones and moldy bread out of the garbage,

...All other ills were imaginary. I used to tell him so now and then, when he complained about being a slave. He used to say i was an incurable optimist, but it wasn't optimism, it was the deep realization that, even though the world was busy digging its grave, there was still time to enjoy life, to be merry, carefree, to work or not to work.

He goes throuhg woman after woman after woman and what is accomplished? Nothing. It is like an old man with a metal detector on the beach, combing it scrupulously and finding glee over rusted copper shards. Like business, Miller contents himself with the meaningless absurdity of pleasure, which he finds in fountains, in slews, in Clichy::

'And what would you do with yourself to pass the time away?' I once asked.
'What would i do?' she repeated in astonishment. 'I would do nothing. I would just live.'
What an idea! What a sane idea!

It's true. He may be cruel to women, he may be overly sexually exploiting and objectifying, but that is his dirty business. It is his charming outside prison that--like mafia novels or espionage novels or horror novels--expunges an indulgence and does so with jelly on the chin. This is his limbo, being forced to eat at a buffet all day. He doesn't really characterize anyone. All of his women are whores, his men are cartoons. They spin up the streets as goddesses or pollute the canteen as moths:

The rosy glow which suffused the place emanated from the cluster of whores who usually congregated near the entrance. As they gradually distributed themselves among the clientele, the place became not only warm and rosy but fragrant. They fluttered about in the dimming light like perfumed fireflies. Those who had not been fortunate enough to find a customer would saunter slowly out to the street, usually to return in a little while and resume their old places. Others swaggered in, looking fresh and ready for evening's work.

It's by far not Miller's best work and shows his age and distance in how dreamy and sedate it is. I like Miller less when he talks about rosy cunts and more when he talks about time travel. It's a distinct possibility he wrote this book because he was horny and he needed to exorcise his demons.