Of Miller and Tales
I love the writing of Henry Miller. Big surprise, I know. I admit to only recently reading him, but doing so, I have dove in deep with the Rosy Crucifixion trilogy. I am beginning the third book, Nexus. Already I can see this will tie things together nicely, as any tome of this title is expected to. He is the strange guy you meet in a bar who surprises you by thinking through his gin more than you imagined, the way the guy in the corner makes canapé of the stars and empty bottles. The great American confession an old friend once called it.
I wouldn't call it a technical flaw really, but rather an overconspicuous technique I have witnessed in the Crucifixion. Every character with anything of import to say, sounds like only a slight variation of Miller himself. Again, the existence of great dialogue is suspect. Great ideas - vindicated. I would not be able to correct this in my own attempts, but Miller should be able to. At times I do believe it may be consciously done, as in Dogville, with the sets purposefully absent to bring attention to deeper aspects of the drama. That, in Miller's work, would be a balancing act. He would need to make the personalities and voices distinct enough for realism in the Miller realm, but not so idiosyncratic as to draw one away from the celestial ideas being shared. Salinger does this with a more sensitive touch. Franny and Zooey is a brilliant attempt at this balance, though for me the soliloquies are too numerous to prevent me from believing wholeheartedly in the existence of masterful literary dialogue. If anyone reading this has a pertinent example I should read, please share. O how easy it is to sit back and point.
Miller DOES, however, balance out well raw idea and the medium he uses to impart it. The tagalong epiphanies, the human reversion to baser, dark childlike fears of self and world strike me as real. He puffs up no rickety artifice in which his ideas play out. He feels no need to construct paved highways for his autodidactic lowrider. His balance here is right on, and allows his messages to be received clearly. Where I am right now. This is the way it should have been. I raise a glass to him.
Writing my own paths are difficult for me because I read such swirling continents, I see the words already on bloody page, nodding heads all the way through them. Not that I could have written them, mind you. Its I could have written them that gets me. If I could hypnotize myself into seeing on every tablet, my words already mapped out cover to cover with a swinging, shiny pocketwatch before my eyes, I could be a machine full of syntax and strata.
And these paths, the narrow six deep plowrows I make despite sensible judgments, I make simply because those around me have been worn loose with use. No mystery in the worn out whore whose heyday was 1967, save she might have a few secret moves reserved for special clients. The streets, sadly, are not interested in impressing anyone. We write souls, because we don't see enough of them around us. It could be an onset of blindness. Caves, because the landscape has been fucked to wide open plains, leaving a map for conducting business unhindered.
Fiction is selling less and less. Its a fact. Poetry just doesn't sell. Don't believe me? Do some research for yourself. Why? With the focus of our society ever more on buying and selling a product, a product (the dynamic of which firmly designed to flatten out the soul), anything attempting to infiltrate us (that is engage us) is of a mongrel logic we write off as naive or malevolent. This serves to invalidate those who attempt anything beyond the dollar. Its working, too. It's worked. And yet the attempt continues, confounding everyone.
Today, 2006, if the right approach is taken, with good karmamatureheart seeing, with the seriousness of a lawyer money making cash cow desire; then the right path may allow itself to be cleared for treading. Two often two things happen to prevent this:
1. those who muster the strength to try, do so to solely from the gray matter to impress or masturbate, failing to realize that a key is just a piece of metal without a lock.
2. Others lead with their heart only, turning the whole thing soft and gooey and laughable in the eyes of the stern world to whom they reach out.
That is why I believe it lies in the proper combination. So many believe it lies in one or the other, head or heart, myopia or zenlike nothing. The goal is the organic construct that flares up from the surface and keeps shooting that way, with the atmosphere allowing itself to be affected, then down again to change the base, only to rise again anew.
I wouldn't call it a technical flaw really, but rather an overconspicuous technique I have witnessed in the Crucifixion. Every character with anything of import to say, sounds like only a slight variation of Miller himself. Again, the existence of great dialogue is suspect. Great ideas - vindicated. I would not be able to correct this in my own attempts, but Miller should be able to. At times I do believe it may be consciously done, as in Dogville, with the sets purposefully absent to bring attention to deeper aspects of the drama. That, in Miller's work, would be a balancing act. He would need to make the personalities and voices distinct enough for realism in the Miller realm, but not so idiosyncratic as to draw one away from the celestial ideas being shared. Salinger does this with a more sensitive touch. Franny and Zooey is a brilliant attempt at this balance, though for me the soliloquies are too numerous to prevent me from believing wholeheartedly in the existence of masterful literary dialogue. If anyone reading this has a pertinent example I should read, please share. O how easy it is to sit back and point.
Miller DOES, however, balance out well raw idea and the medium he uses to impart it. The tagalong epiphanies, the human reversion to baser, dark childlike fears of self and world strike me as real. He puffs up no rickety artifice in which his ideas play out. He feels no need to construct paved highways for his autodidactic lowrider. His balance here is right on, and allows his messages to be received clearly. Where I am right now. This is the way it should have been. I raise a glass to him.
Writing my own paths are difficult for me because I read such swirling continents, I see the words already on bloody page, nodding heads all the way through them. Not that I could have written them, mind you. Its I could have written them that gets me. If I could hypnotize myself into seeing on every tablet, my words already mapped out cover to cover with a swinging, shiny pocketwatch before my eyes, I could be a machine full of syntax and strata.
And these paths, the narrow six deep plowrows I make despite sensible judgments, I make simply because those around me have been worn loose with use. No mystery in the worn out whore whose heyday was 1967, save she might have a few secret moves reserved for special clients. The streets, sadly, are not interested in impressing anyone. We write souls, because we don't see enough of them around us. It could be an onset of blindness. Caves, because the landscape has been fucked to wide open plains, leaving a map for conducting business unhindered.
Fiction is selling less and less. Its a fact. Poetry just doesn't sell. Don't believe me? Do some research for yourself. Why? With the focus of our society ever more on buying and selling a product, a product (the dynamic of which firmly designed to flatten out the soul), anything attempting to infiltrate us (that is engage us) is of a mongrel logic we write off as naive or malevolent. This serves to invalidate those who attempt anything beyond the dollar. Its working, too. It's worked. And yet the attempt continues, confounding everyone.
Today, 2006, if the right approach is taken, with good karmamatureheart seeing, with the seriousness of a lawyer money making cash cow desire; then the right path may allow itself to be cleared for treading. Two often two things happen to prevent this:
1. those who muster the strength to try, do so to solely from the gray matter to impress or masturbate, failing to realize that a key is just a piece of metal without a lock.
2. Others lead with their heart only, turning the whole thing soft and gooey and laughable in the eyes of the stern world to whom they reach out.
That is why I believe it lies in the proper combination. So many believe it lies in one or the other, head or heart, myopia or zenlike nothing. The goal is the organic construct that flares up from the surface and keeps shooting that way, with the atmosphere allowing itself to be affected, then down again to change the base, only to rise again anew.