(NOTE: This article/essay was originally posted here, on my Stuff and Things (“throw-away”) blog (now DEFUNCT), on February 23, 2015. It was subsequently updated on February 25, 2016; February 23, 2023; January 4, 2024; February 29, 2024; and most recently on July 12, 2025, when, with that particular update, there had also been a slight alteration made to this post’s (article’s/essay’s) title. I reblogged the then-current version of this piece to—re-published it on—my [main] blog-turned-hub website, The Grand Tangent, on February 25, 2016; I much later did the same on/for my Medium page, republishing the article/essay—as it appeared in early 2024—there, now viewable on both the Medium app (for Android) and on the Medium site in-browser, specifically on January 23, 2024. All three versions of this post (article/essay) have collectively been edited, updated, and synced to match one another as of the most recent update on July 12, 2025.
【 — Vincent St. Clare, 12 July 2025】[.])
Henry Miller (1891-1980) was one of the more unorthodox writers of his time. He’s also quite a personal inspiration to me.
Any bookworm worth their salt who finds themselves enthusiastic about post-Depression era American literature is at the very least aware of the Miller. Then again, what enthusiast of literature could truly be ignorant of him? He’s known for having led a beautifully odd life, one both richly spiritual and richly epicurean, a life marked by numerous experiences the quality of which was doubtlessly unique and magnificentaly affecting, Miller’s ability to capture in words the sensual and almost sacred joy of everyday occurences a testament to the depth and complexity of his inner world. His writing can be well-described as altogether carnal, contemplative, irreverent, and ecstatic.
Many of Miller’s experiences are recounted in semi-autobiographical form—that is, in a way that blurs the lines between an autobiography (or memoir) and a novel. In such a work a fictional character stands in as a kind of avatar for the writer, that avatar describing experiences closely mirroring the actual lived experiences of the writer as if they were merely those of the character. It is precisely because of the man’s proclivity for penning works in this genre, namely during a time in which anything like them were unknown to most of the world (if there are indeed semi-autobiographies and semi-memoirs that were published before Miller began his writing career then they are certaily few and far between), that Miller is remembered for essentially being the originator of the modern autobiographical novel. For this reason and others—I often think of Miller’s extraordinarily unique style of writing, his unique “voice” driving the sheer wisdom, majesty, clownish joy, holy hedonism, and unabashed penchant for eroticism so prevalent in his writings—he has had a massive impact and influenc the work of countless writers who came after him, and, indeed, those writers who continue to take inspiration from his work.
Arguably his most famous book, Miller’s 1934 publication Tropic of Cancer is one such work. The novel was banned in the United States until the 1960s due to having been ruled obscene for its candid and and ribald exploration of sexuality,
The highlights of this book (like many of Miller’s, including Black Spring and Tropic of Capricorn—both recommended) are, however, not Miller’s comedic sexual escapades, but rather his unique brand of creedless mysticism—a sort of artistic metaphysics.
Miller was something of a secular prophet, a clownish spiritual guru who taught that the pleasures of life are, in some abstract sense, “divine.” His long, tangential passages dive into surreal, half-dream worlds full of skyscrapers, genitalia, enlightenment, wine, wisdom, lonely streets and hallucinatory backdrops. Imagine Omar Khayyam born in the Bronx, then turned American expat in the 1920s, and add a dash of flamboyant modernist prose for good measure. That’s perhaps a good way of describing Miller’s work. (And yet it doesn’t do him justice at all!)
Really, the best way to get a sense of Miller is to read some of his “rambles.” For that purpose, here are a few passages from Tropic of Cancer:
“Today I awoke from a sound sleep with curses of joy on my lips, with gibberish on my tongue, repeating to myself like a litany – “Fay ce que vouldras!… fay ce que vouldras!”; Do anything, but let it produce joy. Do anything, but let it yield ecstasy. So much crowds into my head when I say this to myself: images, gay ones, terrible ones, maddening ones, the wolf and the goat, the spider, the crab, syphilis with her wings outstretched and the door of the womb always on the latch, always open, ready like the tomb. Lust, crime, holiness: the lives of my adored ones, the failures of my adored ones, the words they left behind them, the words they left unfinished; the good they dragged after them and the evil, the sorrow, the discord, the rancor, the strife they created. But above all, the ecstasy!”
“Life moves on, whether we act as cowards or heroes. Life has no other discipline to impose, if we would but realize it, than to accept life unquestioningly. Everything we shut our eyes to, everything we run away from, everything we deny, denigrate or despise, serves to defeat us in the end. What seems nasty, painful, evil, can become a source of beauty, joy, and strength, if faced with an open mind. Every moment is a golden one for him who has the vision to recognize it as such.”
“On the meridian of time there is no injustice: there is only the poetry of motion creating the illusion of truth and drama. If at any moment anywhere one comes face to face with the absolute, that great sympathy which makes men like Gautama and Jesus seem divine freezes away; the monstrous thing is not that men have created roses out of this dung heap, but that, for some reason or other, they should want roses.”
… These are words of joy if ever I’ve read them. Dare I say the writer was somewhat… Thelemic? Endowed with what Trungpa Rinpoche—the scandalous tantrist—called “crazy wisdom?”
What a man. What thought!
Stuff and Things 