After Greece, Miller's years in the wilderness of Big Sur.
Henry Miller's story has been a pendant and an "application" of several ideas sketched before the war in "The Colossus of Maroussi."
Settled rudimentarily in 1940, on his return From Greece, on the wild coast of Big Sur in California, a narrow strip of barren and magnificent land lodged between cliffs and mountains, clearly away from "civilization," he leads a life there. Simple, austere, often challenging, all exceptional in certain aspects of neighbors' company. The life's story, of its hardness and joys, of the visits of friends, strangers, and unwelcome, for the better and the worse, between difficulties of raising children and the complex pleasures of the watercolor artist, constitutes a "lesson." He sprinkled with more theoretical digressions, which find their beautiful coherence over these 400 pages.
This book has resonated in the heart and the reader's mind for a long time.
"Who originally lived here? Maybe Wren. The Indians came late. Very late.
Although young, geologically speaking, this land looks like an older man. The ocean's depths have arisen with strange shapes and unique and captivating contours as if the Titans of the Abyss had worked for eons to shape and mold the earth. Thousands of years ago, the great birds of the planet were frightened by the sudden appearances of these shapes.
There are no ruins or relics for an account. There is no story we can evoke—the face of what has always been. Nature smiles at herself in the mirror of eternity.
Far away, the seals are warming on the rocks, wriggling like giant brown worms. And, dominating the roar of the waves on the breakers, you can hear their hoarse barks for miles."

Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymous Bosch is delicious! At a paragraph in, my veins were already tingling, at a page in, it was a masterpiece. And I’ve already, albeit inwardly, elected him my beloved godfather of literature and magnificent storytelling, his words warm with a sense of home, of comforting familiarity, and all the same, doling out wallops of wisdom and revolutionary thoughts.

i have no idea if I would love this book again as much as i did once- it was a book that i tried to read probably 7 times and could never get past the first 30 pages and then ond day- one mood- i read the whole thing and fell in love. it started me on a henry- thon- but this autobiography is still my favorite. He's too nasty and harsh for even me in his other books. Maybe he was the sex tarentino of the 60's-but somehow his style misses me now.

i wanted to say this aged poorly but i think it was probably also bad when it first came out.
It's been a while since i read a book that was so aggressively written by a ~man~

I thought this was fabulous. It's not your usual memoir reading. It rambles and diverges and surfs the content of his life in that Henry Miller kind of way. It took him awhile to perfect his style starting with the Tropic of Cancer. At least for me. With all its free association prose and occasional wild sexual language, the Tropic of Cancer can be tough to follow. But by the time he wrote Big Sur he'd made writing seem rather effortless. His thoughts and his pen seem to be one and the same. It's an account of an artist getting older, living on the edge of a rugged coast line. And I love when he throws in a name or two to keep you alert. He'll casually say, in his story of raising his two kids in a bungalow on Partington Ridge in Big Sur, how it was always a treat when Buster Keaton would come up from Hollywood and entertain the children, doing slapstick routines all evening in their little, living room. Miller was a pioneer in alternative lifestyle living, even if it was mostly on a shoestring budget. And of course the backdrop to his impressions is Big Sur. The kind of place that can drive anyone into personal, artistic genius and/or mad hattery.

"To find an opening one has to make a breach in the wall - and the wall is almost always in one's own mind. If you have the vision and the urge to undertake great tasks, then you will discover in yourself the virtues and capabilities required for their accomplishment." - Henry Miller

So-so, though I'm not much of a Henry Miller fan. There's some generous and pleasant accounts of the land and people of Big Sur (some great pull quotes for tourist brochures). But the better part of this book is given over to Miller's philosophical musings, which are here meandering, muddled and silly. And boring.

i have always hated henry miller and not because he's a misogynist, but because of his style of writing. this book is about his time in big sur and it's pretty well written and even inspiring at times. it makes me want to visit big sur?!

Random philosophical ramblings that are fun to read, but I need a break now! :-)

1944 yılında insanlardan, ilişkilerden kaçmak için geldiği Kaliforniya yakınlarındaki Big Sur’da 15 yıl geçiren yazar buranın o zamanlarki bakir ve sakin yıllarını anlatıyor. Vahşi doğası, denize inen hırçın kayalıkları ve ormanlarıyla bir cennet olan Big Sur 1960’lı yıllarda aralarında Jack Kerouac’ın da olduğu Beat kuşağınca ikinci kez keşfediliyor.
Henry Miller bölgede yaşayan insanların basit yaşamlarını gözlemlemiş, kendi yaşamını da bu gözlemlere katarak bir anlatıyı gerçekleştiriyor. Zaman zaman deneme tarzına yaklaşsa da genelde anı-anlatı kitabı Big Sur. Yazarın kendi deyimiyle müstehcen edebiyat olan “dönence edebiyatından” çok farklı bir kitap. Zaman zaman içimin geçtiğini, ilgimin dağıldığını, yazarın şişkin egosundan rahatsız olduğumu da not etmekte yarar var.
Üç bölümlü kitap ismindeki Hieronymus’un Portakallarını ilk bölümde metafor olarak kullanmış. Yazdığı tarih ise Mayıs 1955-56 arası.

A little wit and wisdom amid much silliness, and certainly not up to his essays.

When I was a young man
a very young man
I worshipped Henry Miller

I remember devouring
his Tropic of Cancer
as a twenty-something

living with my parents
in a suburb of Vancouver
in the year two thousand

oh how the sun
shone upon my life
so innocent and pure!

here is a list
of my achievements
up to that point

I could make an omelette
I could drive a car
I could sleep all day

I could play guitar
I could smoke a cigarette
I could write an essay

in three parts
with a conclusion
I could tell the difference

between punk rock
and jazz fusion
I had lost my virginity

I could drink alcohol
mimic with my tongue
the sound of beer

pouring into a mug
or of water falling from a ledge
high in the air

I could do five push-ups
I could do one chin-up
cut my own hair

sew on a button
change adult diapers
speak two languages

act like a clown
jump off a peer
into the ocean

and not drown
I had lived on three continents
I had burned down a van

broken a girl’s heart
had my own heart broken
made lots of friends

scrutinised my face
in mirrors and wondered
who I was

I had walked on pink sand
been stuck in canyons
braved thunderstorms

I had seen snakes float
on the surface of rivers
I had built sandcastles

I had lain in a field
at night and fallen
into a bed of stars

I had smashed three guitars
but when I read Miller
for the first time

I felt like I hadn’t lived
so I moved to Paris
to forget my ex

and promptly outgrew
Hank's cult of sex
oh Henry how good

to meet up again
after all these years
you haven’t changed

one bit old man
still a pleasure
to listen to you

talk and talk and talk
right up until
the crack of dawn

and though I am
twenty-four years older now
and going a little

grey around the ears
I don’t think I’ve changed
all that much either