The Air-Conditioned Nightmare by Henry Miller
The earth is not a lair, neither is it a prison. The earth is a Paradise, the only one we'll ever know. We will realize it the moment we open our eyes. We don't have to make it a Paradise-it is one. We have only to make ourselves fit to inhabit it.
This book was super uneven. It's described as a road trip memoir that Miller wrote to re-acquaint himself with the US after a decade spent living in Europe. And parts of it are that, and they're the most interesting parts. But a lot of the chapters are essays about other artists, or his pseudo-philosophical ramblings; they feel really disconnected from the larger narrative and most of the latter are just insufferable bullshit. Especially the last one, "Southland", which is about the poor downtrodden south and how they should have just been left alone to own other human beings. It was, as the kids today say, "cringe". I mean Miller was from Brooklyn, come on.
I also find something very eyerolling in how much Miller says he hates America and it's no place for artists, and California especially sucks, knowing that he spent the latter half of his life living in Big Sur. (I guess if you gotta live in California, you could pick worse places than Big Sur, especially back then when it was probably still a cheap place to live.)
Interesting to me personally is the fact that one of the earliest chapters is about the time he spent staying with Weeks Hall at Shadows in New Iberia--if you tour the house, the guide will point out Miller's signature on one of the doors--and ends with him looking at the Buddha statue on Avery Island. This one:
(Yes that is my own photo.)
There's probably some long German word about the feeling you get when someone in a book mentions a place you live, or have been. It's the same one I get when I look through my books of Clarence John Laughlin's photographs or go see an exhibit of his work, and see a subject that I photographed myself 50 or 60 years later.