Abstract
No writer has caused greater controversy in the twentieth century than Henry Miller. For Lawrence Durrell, Miller is an inspiration. Norman Mailer sees within him a paradox out of which artistic genius is formed: ‘It is as if Henry Miller contains the unadvertised mystery of how much of a monster a great writer must be.’3
Fundamentally he intended to undermine, if possible, the whole structure of the Puritan ethos which would open the way for correct loving, real loving and consequently art; sensuality, sensibility go hand in hand.
Lawrence Durrell1
When he deals with sex he seems to me to achieve a crudity unsurpassed except by the graffiti on the walls of public urinals… In my view, Tropic of Cancer is obscene in the simplest sense.
Walter Allen2
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Notes
Walter Allen, Tradition and Dream: The English and American Novel from the Twenties to our Time (London: Phoenix House, 1964) p. 181.
Norman Mailer, Genius and Lust: A Journey through the Major Writings of Henry Miller (New York: Grove Press, 1976) p. 10.
Richard Hoggart, ‘Art and Sex: the Rhetoric of Henry Miller’, in Speaking to Each Other, vol. n: About Literature (London: Chatto and Windus, 1970) p. 102.
Kenneth Rexroth, ‘The Reality of Henry Miller’, in Bird in the Bush: Obvious Essays (New York: New Directions, 1959) p. 166.
Kate Millett, Sexual Politics (London: Virago, 1977) p. 313.
Kate Millett, Flying (St Albans, Herts: Paladin, 1974); Sita (London: Virago, 1977). Page references in the text.
Henry Miller, Tropic of Cancer (London: Panther, 1968). Page references in the text.
Henry Miller, Tropic of Capricorn (London: Panther, 1969). Page references in the text.
Henry Miller, The World of Sex and Max and the White Phagocytes (London: Calder and Boyars, 1970) p. 101.
Henry Miller, ‘Letter to Michael Fraenkel, June 19, 1936’, in The Michael
Henry Miller, Sexus (London: Panther, 1970). Page references in the text.
Anais Nin, The Journals of Anais Nin, vol. it (London: Quartet Books, 1973) p. 35.
Henry Miller, Nexus (London: Granada, 1981) p. 68.
Henry Miller, ‘Letter to Anais Nin, May 3, 1934’, in Letters to Anais Nin, ed. Gunther Stuhlmann (London: Peter Owen, 1965) p. 158.
George Orwell, ‘Inside the Whale’, in Collected Essays (London: Secker and Warburg, 1961) p. 123.
Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Marble Faun (London: Everyman, 1910) p. xv.
Anais Nin, ‘The Unveiling of Woman’, in A Woman Speaks (London: Star Books, 1982) p. 100.
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© 1988 the Editorial Board, Lumiere (Co-operative) Press Ltd
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Woolf, M. (1988). Beyond Ideology. In: Day, G., Bloom, C. (eds) Perspectives on Pornography. Insights. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-19557-2_8
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