![]() ![]() Potentially every man is Presidential timber. “Over there you think of nothing but becoming President of the United States some day. ![]() A tremendous reactive urge, but absolutely uncoordinated.” (68) A constant ferment, but it might just as well be going on in a test tube. There is a sort of atomic frenzy to the activity going on the more furious the pace, the more diminished the spirit. New York makes even a rich man feel his unimportance. “When I think of New York I have a very different feeling. No, what the artist needs is loneliness.” (66) An artist is always alone-if he is an artist. “It is not difficult to be alone if you are poor and a failure. ![]() Even a bad novel requires a chair to sit on and a bit of privacy.” (32) Even if it’s not a masterpiece you’re doing. One can sleep almost anywhere but one must have a place to work. “It’s hard to know, when you’re in such a jam, which is worse-not having a place to sleep or not having a place to work. And as with libraries, so with monuments, and as with monuments, so with civilizations.” (xiii, Karl Shapiro) Books, after all, are only mnemonic devices and poets are always celebrating the burning of libraries. “I imagine that Miller has read as much as any man living but he does not have that religious solemnity about books which we are brought up in. “Europe is saturated with art and her soil is full of dead bones and her museums are bursting with plundered treasures, but what Europe has never had is a free, healthy spirit, what you might call a MAN.” (viii, Karl Shapiro) I didn’t like the subject matter, but I still think it should be read. I think everyone needs to expand their knowledge and have their boundaries pushed and tested. Recommendation: Read it, especially if you think it might offend or appall you. ![]() I can see where it caused such an uproar in the 1930s, but I can also see where it remains just as inappropriate and anti-woman as before. My only major complaint is the lack of focus, it seemed a ramshackle journey through Miller’s recent history and you jump in mid-conversation on page 1 and you’re left in mid-conversation on page 381.Ī lot of reviews say that the book is no longer shocking with what happens in the world I disagree. As I was reading I saw where authors like JK Rowling and Howard Jacobson (among others) may have read Miller and borrowed his ideas. And the various anecdotes throughout make me wonder if he’s even wider read than expected, or if he (as many authors do) writes from what he’s read. His turns of phrase and descriptions are colorful and original, and they place the reader right into the action or the mindset of the characters. From the graphic (and degrading) sex scenes and language, to the descriptions of the city’s inhabitants and Miller’s absolute disregard for any moral standards the novel reeks of egoism and hyperbole.Īlthough the subject matter is somewhat tetchy, there is no doubt to me that Miller is a good writer. The novel is a debauchery of the senses, a crass introduction to 1930s Paris and the life of a struggling writer. I was slightly embarrassed reading the book on the metro and bus with the cover the way it is, but honestly once you’ve read Imperial Leather (among others) on public transportation, you just sort of get over it. Not only does Miller spend 9/10ths of the novel debasing women, but when he attempts to remedy this it comes across as trite and self-serving. This quote sums up what is perhaps the most vulgar and misogynistic book I’ve ever read, and that’s saying something coming from someone with an MA in Gender, Sexuality and Queer Theory. “Sex everywhere: it was slopping over, a neap tide that swept the props from under the city.” (204) ![]()
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