Henry Miller Books

Emmett's Snowball is a warm-hearted and funny book. Sweet but never cloying, the story is engaging and the characters are delightfully realistic, with none of the caricatures so often found in children's books. The writing style makes it especially fun to read aloud, but it's also good for a quiet read by oneself. The beautiful pictures complement the excitement and humor of the story.

Twenty-five years ago, it was a crime to sell Theodore Dreiser's An American Tragedy in Massachusetts, or Edmund Wilson's Memoirs of Hecate County in New York, or Lady Chatterley's Lover anywhere. Henry Miller's works could come into his native land only in the hands of smugglers.

The End of Obscenity describes the exciting trials of Lady Chatterly, Tropic of Cancer, and Fanny Hill, leading all the way to the Supreme Court, which cleared the way for their publication in this country. Charles Rembar's analysis of the legal background and strategy of each case is insightful and lucid. And the excerpts from the trial transcripts are often gripping, especially the excerpts from the expert witnesses who were called by the defense: Malcolm Cowley (who, in speaking of Lady Chatterley's Lover, said to a not particularly literary-minded examiner, "Sir, I will have to explain that the whole book is directed toward what doesn't happen in the book") and his fellow critics Eric Bentley, Alfred Kazin, and many others, joined by such political figures as Senator Edward Brooke, judges, postmasters and the writers themselves.

Rembar's book deals not with the why of obscenity laws but with the how, and as a result often has a freshness that little recent writing on this subject can match.

From the dustjacket:

FORM AND IMAGE IN THE FICTION OF HENRY MILLER is a study of the allegorical patterns in Miller's major fiction. The cities, characters, and scenes of his fictional world are described as "events" in the development and integration of the self.

The analysis, which draws on several disciplines for its insights, especially on the psychoanalytic studies of C. G. Jung, is a deliberate and detailed attempt to explore the extent to which such insights can successfully support and assist a literary analysis. Consequently no biographical context for the explications is provided. Neither Miller's knowledge of psychoanalytic theory nor the details of his personal life are the concern of this study. The focus is on the fiction itself and the actions of the mind it may dramatize.

The great miller cities of Paris and New York are seen as projections or images in which the psychic landscape of the developing self has been given fictional form. The characters are not discussed as characters familiar to readers of the novel, but as figrues of the mind which borrow only their superficial characteristics from the twentieth-century scene. The nature of their form shows that many of them are aspects of one archetype against which the 'I' of Miller's fiction struggles. The development of this 'I' provides the allegorical dimension in the fictional world of Miller and becomes the subject of his confession. The frankly described sexual adventures that prevented many of Miller's works from being distributed in this country until fairly recently are identified as parts of the archetypal world. Other analyses can satisfactorily defend Miller's obscentity, but recognizing the relationship between the sexual imagery and other archetypal images provides a reading that reveals the allegorical character of his fiction and the unity of its action.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Jane A. Nelson is currently a member of the Department of English, Bradford Junior College, Massachusetts. She has taught in the Department of American thought and language, Michigan State University; the University of Maryland, Munich branch; and Eastern Michigan University. She received her BA from Mount Holyoke College (1948) and MA and PhD from University of Michigan (1949, 1966).

"Friends of Animals" is an incredible account of perseverence amidst great opposition! An inspiring, awesome narrative of heroic achievements, despite ridicule and resistance, beautifully written and illstrated. This book should be mandatory reading for anyone owning a pet or involved in any animal management. Exceptional reading for people of all ages!

Marty Gervais shows there are no boundaries to the imagination. He writes this poignant tale of a young French Canadian woman who works in a hotel on the border. It is there she runs into Henry Miller who is staying in the hotel. She has already read his controversial book, Tropic of Cancer. It was contraband at the time, but living in Canada, she was able to read it. This takes place around the time that Miller was writing The Air Conditioned Nightmare. Gervais makes for a mysterious and intriguing tale, as he sets up this love affair of the imagination, this woman writing letters to Miller which she will never send . . .AT the end of her life, she reads about his death in the paper, and goes to the letters. What follows is this wonderful little book. It is filled with the colour of the times, the '30s on the border. It captures Miller perfectly in that swaggering and confident manner. It captures this farm girl image in the most touching and endearing way.

this reads like really good fiction...Anais opens up and analyzes everyday life to death....expresses emotions that everyone can relate to...as well as daring, very strange, and exciting situations in her life. very sensual....very deep views of relationships...very optimistic..never EVER DULL...always at maximum pitch

Edited by Lawerence Durrell, The Henry Miller Reader encapsulates some of the very best of Miller's writings. It includes sections from the Tropic books, Black Spring, and Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch. I have the 1956 New Directions edition of the book, and I don't know whether it has been re-edited since that point, but any erotic, or sexual content had to be strained out for the censors. What is left is pure genius. There is a wonderful section on Alfred Perles...otherwise known as "Joey," to those familar with Miller's work. His insights on the writings of Anais Nin hold a certain poignancy in light of their twenty year relationship which both writers had to withold from their readers; Ms. Nin was married still to Hugh Guiller. I would highly recommend this book be purchased along with The Tropic of Cancer, or any other of his works.

This edition of the Hamlet letters is a pirate edition as is that of capra press from the late 1980s. The copyright is held by Carrefour archives and a new edition is planned. there are many other carrefour Press titles which deal with hamlet letters in some way. If you require further details contact me karlorend@yahoo.com

This book covers in a unique way the period when railroads were still making the transition from a ubiquitous public carrier to a limited market high volume transportation mechanism (one that the Boston and Maine never fully made). It was a period of optomism that technology and good management could change things even in the face of the decline of the New England mill economy.

But this is no dry economic tome. Neal covers the Boston and Maine through a series of vignettes of the diverse work force that keeps a railroad going. Each is interesting and well written. With a perspective of 50 years in the future we can see Neal was overoptomistic and maybe not challenging enough at times, but book freezes a railroad in time in a manner which can sustain multiple readings. My dog eared copy is a prized treasure.

Please note that this review is of the book, and not the audio tapes. Also, please check out www dot yourwords dot ca for this review and others.

While there is normally (and quite understandably) a certain stigma attached to essay collections, this is one very noteworthy exception. Covering topics from political discourse and sociological perspective to Shakespeare and "penny-dreadfuls," each essay is written fluidly and intelligently, with insight and understanding. In fact noteworthy is a perfect word to describe Orwell's writing, as I found myself jotting down notes constantly while I read.

In my final year of high school, my English teacher whom I'd respected very much handed out photocopies of an essay called "Politics and the English Language" and encouraged us to read it on our own time- assuring us that it had blown him away. Needless to say, and though I had understood significantly little of the essay at first reading, I too was taken by the ideas within the text and have read it repeatedly since then. After randomly picking up "Inside the whale..." in a used-book shop and seeing "Politics..." in the index, I knew I had to have this book.

There are far too many ideas in the book to discuss at length, but what can be said is that Orwell's breadth of ideas is staggering. I find myself reluctant to continue this review because I cannot intelligently say enough to give anyone a proper idea of just how influential several of these essays were on me, so consider my words to be inadequate as you read on. 'Politics and the English Language' and 'The Prevention of Literature' both observe the decay of language and literature in the face of oppressive governments in so accurate an analysis that this reader couldn't help but nod in solemn agreement as the words enlivened my imagination. It is within these two essays that many ideas later used in 1984 can be found germinating in the writer. The only essay I found to be laborious was the last of the collection, 'Boys' Weeklies,' in which he describes various comics that many young men of his generation grew up reading. This simply didn't interest me because I had never heard of any of the comics, and so the point was ultimately lost on me. 'Shooting an Elephant' could well have been a chapter straight out of Burmese Days, and is particularly noteworthy for Orwell's very personal account of social expectation forcing one to do what one otherwise would not.

If you're into Orwell's writing, this book is a must-have. If you aren't, there are several essays within the collection that everyone should read- even if only to consider the ideas put forth, as they are ideas that do and will affect anyone born into a society such as ours.