Yes, Big Sur is the feel-good cousin of The Air-Conditioned Nightmare. I haven't read the latter as of yet, only paged through it once or twice vibing on the hate. While TACN is the tart travelogue Miller angrily dashed off after his forced repatriation to the United States, BS, by contrast, is the joyous, years-later homage to the place he ended up.

The book is stitched together from various recollections and false starts and nuggets of previously published work, and were it not for Hank's infamy--had BS's manuscript bore some name like Benny Diller instead--it'd still be amouldering in a basement in Monterey. Thankfully, notoriety guaranteed publication of these enjoyable disquisitions on America, fatherhood, half-baked mysticism, and a Left Coast community with a pimp's name.

Not surprisingly, my favorite bits are those where Miller dips into a more familiar frame of mind and attacks what his buddy Kenneth Rexroth called "our insane and evil society." Miller closes his best attack like this:

These are the kind of facts, needless to say, that one would hate to rub under a kitten's nose by way of house-breaking it. Even a whiff of such facts would give a plover or an osprey mental diarrhea. Better not present them to your children until they are ready for their master's degree. Better keep the young on lemons and lavender until they've reached the age of discretion.

And the happy stuff is good, too.

Life changing book

It was good to get to know Henry Miller from the other side: as a caring friend, unhappy husband, loving father, lacking time and proper conditions to create artist, nature lover. A person who doesn't stop to dream, to grow, to believe in life and man's ability to overcome everything by himself no matter what...


At dawn its majesty is almost painful to behold. That same prehistoric look. The look of always. Nature smiling at herself in the mirror of eternity.
*
Surely every one realizes, at some point along the way, that he is capable of living a far better life than the one he has chosen. What stays him, usually, is the fear of the sacrifices involved. (Even to relinquish his chains seems like a sacrifice.) Yet everyone knows that nothing is accomplished without sacrifice.
*
Seeking intuitively, one’s destination is never in a beyond of time or space but always here and now. If we are always arriving and departing, it is also true that we are eternally anchored. One’s destination is never a place but rather a new way of looking at things. Which is to say that there are no limits to vision. Similarly, there are no limits to paradise. Any paradise worth the name can sustain all the flaws in creation and remain undiminished, untarnished.
*
It’s amazing how easily and naturally the inner springs resume their functioning once you surrender to sheer idleness.
*
I soon developed an attitude of caution with regard to what I desired, having come to realize that we generally desire either what is unimportant or else what is actually harmful. At this point, as everyone knows who has had the experience, enter the subtle temptations.
*
The question is, where do we want to go? And, do we want to take our baggage with us or travel light? The answer to the second question is contained in the first. Wherever we go, we must go naked and alone. We must each of us learn what no other can teach us. We must do the ridiculous in order to touch the sublime.
*
Yes, the Capricorn is a beast of solitude. Slow, steady, persevering. Lives on several levels at once. Thinks in circles. Fascinated by death. Ever climbing, climbing. In search of the edelweiss, presumably. Or could it be the immortelle? Knows no mother. Only “the mothers.” Laughs little and usually on the wrong side of the face. Collects friends as easily as postage stamps, but is unsociable. Speaks truthfully instead of kindly. Metaphysics, abstractions, electromagnetic displays. Dives to the depths. Sees stars, comets, asteroids where others see only moles, warts, pimples. Feeds on himself when tired of playing the man-eating shark. A paranoiac. An ambulatory paranoiac. But constant in his affections—and his hatreds. Ouais!
*
Every so often I revolt, even against what I believe in with all my heart. I have to attack everything, myself included. Why? To simplify things. We know too much—and too little. It’s the intellect which gets us into trouble. Not our intelligence. That we can never have enough of. But I get weary of listening to specialists, weary of listening to the man with one string to his fiddle.
*
To see a person whole and for what he is one has to use another kind of camera; one has to have an eye that is even more objective than the camera’s lens. One has to see through the various facets whose brilliant reflections blind us to the real nature of an individual. The more we learn the less we know; the more equipment we have the less we are able to see. It’s only when we stop trying to see, stop trying to know, that we really see and know. What sees and knows has no need of spectacles and theories. All our striving and struggling is in the nature of confession. It is a way of reminding ourselves that we are weak, ignorant, blind, helpless. Whereas we are not. We are as little or as much as we permit ourselves to think we are.
*
Reviewing their encounter that afternoon in my mind’s eye, I see them as two egomaniacs hypnotized for a few brief hours by the mingling of worlds which overshadowed their personalities, their interests, their philosophies of life.
There are conjunctions in the human sphere which are just as fleeting and mysterious as stellar ones, conjunctions which seem like violation of natural law. For me who observed the event, it was like witnessing the marriage of fire and water.
*
The answer which I am about to make is really an answer which I wish to make to myself. In my best moments I believe that my responsibility toward others begins and ends with the work of creation in which I am involved. It has taken me considerable time to reach such a decision. Like other men, better men than I, I have alternately been swayed by a sense of duty, a feeling of pity, a natural consideration for others, by a hundred and one different emotions. What precious hours I have squandered answering the thousands of pleas and inquiries addressed to me! I will do so no longer. From now on I intend to devote the best hours of the day, the best part of myself, to the best that is in me. That done, I intend to enjoy a few hours of leisure. Loaf in peace and tranquillity. Should I wish to paint—I often do when I am not in the mood to write—I will paint. But I will not answer letters! Nor will I read the books or write prefaces for the manuscripts which are hurled at me. I will do only what pleases me, what nourishes my spirit.
This is my answer.
If my words sound callous and unreasonable, ponder over them before you condemn me utterly. I have been giving thought to the problem a long, long time. I have sacrificed my work, my leisure, my obligations to friends and family in order to make answer where I thought answer was due. I no longer believe in making such sacrifices. If, however, you can propose a better solution, I shall not spurn it. I do not look upon mine as the perfect answer. It is the best I can give at the moment. It is from the heart, if that means anything. As for the doubting Thomases, to them no adequate answer can ever be made.

Solidifies my love of the "old man musings" genre.

Among other lovely thoughts...

"The great hoax which we are perpetuating every day of our lives is that we are making life easier, more comfortable, more enjoyable, more profitable. We are doing just the contrary. We are making life stale, flat and unprofitable every day in every way. One ugly word covers it all: waste. Our thoughts, our energies, our very lives are being used up to create what is unwise, unnecessary, unhealthy."