If you want to get to know the real Henry Miller, this is probably your book. Lacking the shocks of his TROPICS and ROSY CRUCIFICTION series, this is the fifty-something author at home taking it easy and pondering the world around him. Unlike the also autobiographical COLOSSUS OF MAROUSSI, where Miller acts like an American tourist who's never left the states and spends the novel gushing about everything Greek, here he stays put and takes in visitors, answers his correspondance, paints his water colors and deals with his family. Pretty mundane stuff. Miller hardly mentions his wife or gives the reader much of any sense of her, despite the fact he seems to resent her and they seperate. He also seems to be a pretty undisciplined father. I got the sense the kids could pretty much do whatever they wished. He would just chalk it up to their wild nature and let them run free, despite comments from his neighbors that they might need to be reigned in some.

Miller seems like a good man with a big heart. He is generous with friends and really, really has to be pushed to say something harsh about anyone. Miller believes in god, but is no church-goer. From his philosophical leaning, he appears more interested in Eastern Mysticism than any form of Christianity. Unfortunately, he also harbors belief in astrology. Really? Frankly, he pretty much supports any spiritualism that anyone found for themself. I was disappointed to read that he would take his trash to the edge of the cliff and dump it in the Big Sur ocean. C'mon, Henry! All in all, I enjoyed this book, but don't open it up expecting big thrills and car chases. Instead, expect to hear moments of wisdom, naivety and honesty.

choppy, but with many enjoyable tidbits and spurts of great writing. Worked hard to decipher long passages in French. First book I've read by Henry Miller, and probably not the best one to begin with.

This was the first book of Henry Miller's that I have read (kind of the only one so far), and it made me really appreciate him as a person and as an artist. It is basically written in journal format during the time in his life when he was living in Big Sur (I believe around the time of WWII). Often times I don't care for people's diaristic writing, but Miller is an exception, as is Anais Nin. Reading Henry and June was what finally got me to read anything at all by Henry Miller.

changed my outlook on life

Lovely narrative about nothing in particular - very much enjoyed it.

If I ever win billions of dollars in the lottery I will be moving to Big Sur. It is one of my favorite places on the planet. How lucky are we to get to read Miller’s insights while living there!

Second time around and finding it just as interesting, perhaps even more so, than the first reading some forty years ago.

Henry, in his pyjamas and beneath the canopy of the firmament or graced below the Californian solar rays, writes this memoir of his past, and unfolding life in Big Sur, with a generosity of spirit, soul and a vitality for living. This book seems shamanistic and cosmic to this earthly ex-London-city-dweller.

Having recently experienced the sensations and revelations of leaving the city, to live here in the Peak District hills(as I write this in bed supping a hot coffee I can take in the panorama of the early morning orange hue cresting on the surrounding hills), and as a father to a youngling-wildilng-daughter me'self, I relate to Henry Miller's awakenings to his new surroundings and life as a father in his Big Sur idyll.

'Men won’t move an inch for paradise.' says our cosmic orator and solar seer, and he has a point; Henry has many a poignant, and beautifully observed point on humankind's daily habitual grind and mortal haze. And on his own routines, obstructions and hindrances to seeing, feeling and writing. He ponders the benefits of his glorious solitude and reflects on his life and life's work.

The first two sections of the book are engrossing and characterful portraits of the area and one really feels a sense of how it positively affected and sated him. It's a feel good read. The third part tells the story of when Miller was visited by an old friend from Paris, Conrad Moricand, a French astrologer. This 'poor soul' soon becomes a toxic drain on Henry Miller. It's a compelling drama that transmogrifys the story and Henry Miller's house into a toxic den. Moricand is a joyless fella and soon after his arrival, tests Miller's generosity of spirit, and becomes a disruptive rift in the narrative.

The sweep of Henry's prose is a powerful swell with the cadence of music. He writes with humour and warmth while all the while lacerating any superficial or inauthentic sentiment from every sentence. He writes the truth with a poetic documentary style.

Back in my 30s, I read and reread Henry Miller's Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch. The insights tumble forth as Henry reflects on his rustic life along the California coast and what it means to be human. Of course, for Henry, one key to our very human life revolves around art - and that's art as in things like writing and painting and music.

Here's one quote that popped out:

"Men are not suffering from the lack of good literature, good art, good theater, good music, but from that which has made it impossible for these to become manifest. In short, they are suffering from the silent, shameful conspiracy (the more shameful since it is unacknowledged) which has bound them together as enemies of art and artist. They are suffering from the fact that art is not the primary, moving force in their lives. They are suffering from the act, repeated daily, of keeping up the pretense that they can go their way, lead their lives, without art."

By my eye, nowhere is this vapidness more apparent then when we turn to literature, the novel in particular. What happens when people lacking empathy and personal depth try their hand at the novel? You get howlers, a superficial, tinker-toy world of good guys vs. bad guys; you get novels like Embrace the Serpent by Marilyn Tucker Quayle, End of the Age by Pat Robertson, and Debt of Honor by Tom Clancy.

Making a quick cut to another topic, another reflection: Henry says, "When I paint I feel good. And if it makes me feel so good, then chances are it will make the other fellow feel good too."

One of the tragedies of the modern world is many, many people spend time doing what doesn't make them feel good. When it comes to employment, Marx termed this "alienation from the end of production," in other words, people don't give a fig about what they are doing; rather, they are simply chasing a paycheck.

When it comes to time away from work, we're more in control of our time. So, please, I urge you, and I think Henry Miller would urge you, if you have any inclination toward creativity and the arts - go for it! Paint, play music, write - and if you feel good about doing those things, chances are others will also enjoy what you're doing.

Henry Miller goes on to observe, "We Americans have submitted to some perilous experiments." No doubt, Henry! And the experiments tended to be outward when many lands extending south to Florida and west to California were still uncharted territory. Nowadays, in a mostly same-o, same-o geography with highways, shopping malls and standardized housing, we can still experiment but the WAY we can experiment has changed.

The way I see it, we are better situated to explore inner space rather than outer space, have more access to great books, great learning opportunities (the internet in its many educational phases) and practicing things like meditation, yoga, jogging, the list goes on. My advice: squeeze your own Big Sur oranges in ways that will make you greater, deeper, more expansive each and every day.

These are only a few gems in Henry Miller's 400-pager. Pick up a copy (or listen to the audio book). More magic awaits.

This is a fascinating look at Henry Miller in his later stage of life, while living in Big Sur California. It was a humane view into the being of a man who was known for his life long pursuits of societal ills, and his acceptance and willingness to finally have a place to call home and feel peace.

Henry Miller wrote of the beauty of the land and introduces us to the litany of eccentrics who are drawn to Big Sur. He, probably the biggest character of them all.

There is 0 sex in this