The Henry Miller Memorial Library Bio Project

If you’ve ever surfed the Web looking for Henry Miller related content, you’ve no doubt come across the website for the Henry Miller Memorial Library in Big Sur. Way back before I started this blog, its website was virtually the only Internet space that provided a centralized presence for Miller content. While the website mostly featured notices about outdoor concerts, film festivals, poetry and other projects that fulfilled (and continue to fulfill) its mandate as a “public performance space for artists, writers, musicians, and students,” it also provided a message board on which people could chat about Miller (the board ceased several years back) and a simple “About Henry” section. This section contained a chronology of Miller’s life, as written by the author for the 1971 autobiography by Playboy Press, called My Life And Times.

A couple of months ago, the Memorial Library decided to beef up Henry’s self-written biography. And you can help. As announced in this blog posting, Library staff are looking for people to submit a “hearty paragraph” about several subjects and people relating to Miller’s life, especially those referenced in his timeline. The idea is to make the chronology as interactive as possible, with each word of interest having its own pop-up box or link to further information. They’ve already started by adding several images to the timeline.

Topics covered include Mezzotints, Villa Seurat, Lawrence Durrell, Greece, watercolours, Time of the Assassins and dozens more—basically any subject relating to Miller’s long and fascinating life. As I’ve learned on my blog, these sub-categories are nearly endless. If you think you’ve got the skills of concision, read the blog posting and get in touch with Laura.

They’ve also added a very helpful guide to Henry Miller archival collections and research sources.

Finally, congrats the site managers and workers past and present: 2011 marks the 30th anniversary of the Henry Miller Memorial Library.