Nexus: Int'l Henry Miller Journal: Vol. 9

Volume Nine of Nexus: The International Henry Miller Journal has been released. The 160-page journal features the following essays:

“Tropic Of Cancer: The Happy Nihilist”- Nobel Prize for Literature winner Mario Vargas Llosa reflects on Miller’s masterpiece, navigating around the fictions of that novel’s “Henry” character and his bohemian Paris, to find the genuine artist who presents the modern reader with a nostalgia for his ideals of utopian freedom.

“Henry Miller’s Inhuman Philosophy” - Indrek Männiste uses his Ph.D. in philosophy to consider the philosophical value of Miller’s writings. He finds Miller taking a stand against the linear trends of the Western modern era; “What Miller is trying to say, it seems, is that if we continue to think in terms of past, present and future, we will never get out of the web of history.” Miller sought to subvert “traditional time” and find resurrection through the concepts of timelessness and inhumanness.

“Henry Miller’s Tropic Of Cancer in the College Curriculum of One Happy Teacher” -  James C. L. Brown recounts a Banned Book curriculum he taught at George Washington University, which began with readings of Tropic Of Cancer that triggered student debates about gender sexual double-standards.

“Henry Miller and the Possibility of Wisdom Unfulfilled” – Samuel G. Kardec identifies a Henry Miller who sought wisdom through sexual cultivation. Miller became an “expert at giving life to his revolt,” yet, possibly disillusioned with his fame, possibly manic depressive, and certainly selfish, he was never truly loved and failed to truly love in return.

“The Embodied American: The Cosmological Eye and the River Through” – Dominic Jaeckle looks to Emerson and the failure of the transcendentalist movement, to explain Miller’s position on the nature and meaning of “America,” from which he felt alienated, and the impact made upon the author by the “cultural trauma of the great depression.”

“Quiet Days in Clichy: Henry Miller’s Urban Idyll” – Eric D. Lehman cracks open his dictionaries to make a case that Quiet Days can be defined as an “urban idyll” (or pastoral): a romanticized, nostalgic portrait of a city “paradise,” written with a light-hearted, carefree voice that lyrically lingers on descriptive prose (whether food or sex).

“Time Tested: Nancy & Lawrence Durrell in Corfu” – Joanna Hodgkin, daughter of Lawrence Durrell’s first wife, artist Nancy Myers, writes about the couple in Corfu at the end of the 1930s, in this excerpt from a recent book about Nancy (built upon her unpublished memoir), Amateurs In Eden. Hodgkin describes the reactions of Henry Miller and Hans Reichel to her mother’s paintings, and goes into detail about the strains in Nancy’s marriage to Lawrence.

“Henry Miller’s Black Spring Through the Looking Glass of Jacques Lacan” – Looking to Jacques Lacan’s theories of individual subjectivity for comparison, Hamish Jackson analyzes Miller’s struggle in Black Spring to “comprehend himself and his subject-hood,” finding not answers, but instead “fragmentation and lack.”

“'How long do you intend to stay?’ Desire Meets Proscription in the Subject in Henry Miller’s ‘Via Dieppe-Newhaven’” – Ron Herian considers Miller-the-narrator (as opposed to Miller-the-man/ or the-writer) and the relationship between desire, language, proscription (law) and the subject, making an example of Miller’s “Via Dieppe-Newhaven”—a story in which Miller does not get what he wants.

“To Paris Via Montreal: June 22-23, 1969” – In another of the annual excerpts from the personal journals of Miller’s young friend, Harry Kiakis, we spend time with Henry talking about his kids, about writing, about ping-pong; we eat with him at an expensive restaurant, and drive him off to the airport; Harry and his wife will houses-it tMiller's Ocampo home for three months.

The journal also contains a John Biscello poem, a 1963 London newspaper cartoon, and “Miller Notes” about various newly-published or -discovered (paper or online) items on the subject of Henry Miller.

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Nexus: The International Henry Miller Journal #9 is available at a special price of $5 (North America) and $9 (International), both post-paid. Visit the journal website to order.