Abstract
Miller writes hundreds of pages describing in the minutest and clearest detail his exploits in bed. Every serious reader of erotica has remarked about Miller that he is probably the only author in history who writes about such things with complete ease and naturalness. Lawrence never quite rid himself of his puritanical consciousness, nor Joyce; both had too much religion in their veins… Miller‘s achievement is miraculous: he is screamingly funny without making fun of sex, the way Rabelais does…. Miller is accurate and poetic in the highest degree; there is not a smirk anywhere in his writings.1
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
Karl Shapiro, In Defense of Ignorance. New York: Random House, 1960, p. 324.
Walter Allen, The Modern Novel. New York: E. P. Dutton & Co., Inc., 1964, p. 181.
Ludwig Marcuse, Obscene. Translated by Karen Gershon. London: Macgibbon & Kee, 1965, p. 258.
Michael Fraenkel, The Genesis of the Tropic of Cancer. Berkeley, California: Ben Porter, 1946, p. 26.
Ludwig Marcuse, Obscene, p. 264.
David Loth, The Erotic in Literature. New York: Julian Messner, Inc., 1961, p. 36.
Henry Miller, Selected Prose. London: Macgibbon & Kee, 1965, II, 364.
This is a greatly enlarged and thoroughly revised version of an article by the present writer, “Henry Miller: Individualism in Extremis,” Southwest Review,Summer, 1948, XXXm, pp. 289–295.
Henry Miller, Tropic of Cancer. Paris: The Obelisk Press, 1939, p. 317.
Henry Miller, Tropic of Capricorn. Paris: The Obelisk Press, 1939, p. 37.
Henry Miller, Sexus. Paris: The Obelisk Press, 1949, p. 261.
Henry Miller, The Cosmological Eye. Norfolk, Connecticut: New Directions, 1939, p. 3.
Art and Outrage: A Correspondence about Henry Miller between Lawrence Durrell and Alfred Perles. New York: E. P. Dutton & Company, Inc., 1961, p. 23.
Kingsley Widmer, Henry Miller. New York: Twayne Publishers, Inc., 1963, p. 23.
Selections from Ralph Waldo Emerson. Edited by Stephen E. Whicher. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1957, p. 24.
“Why is man unhappy and lonely in spite of an abundance of sexual opportunities? Why does fulfillment not necessarily generate gratitude and love but often produce hostility and hate?” Clemens E. Benda, The Image of Love. New York: The Free Press of Glencoe, Inc., 1961, p. 16.
D. H. Lawrence, Psychoanalysis and the Unconscious and Fantasia of the Unconscious. New York: The Viking Press, 1960, p. 143.
“Under male dominance women have always accepted the roles which men have created for them. Having reduced them to the role of submissive dependents, men then criticized them for being submissively dependent.” H. R. Hays, The Dangerous Sex. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1964, p. 179.
Henry Miller has been severely criticized – and rightly so – for his imperceptive treatment of women in fiction. “Most of the sexual encounters in the Tropics and The Rosy Crucifixion are comic accidents. The woman never emerges at all.” Kenneth Rexroth, Bird in the Bush. New York: New Directions, 1959, p. 166.
The Henry Miller Reader. Edited by Lawrence Durrell. Norfolk, Connecticut: New Directions, 1959, p. 356.
Lawrence Durrell and Henry Miller: A Private Correspondence. Edited by George Wickes. New York: E. P. Dutton & Co., Inc., 1963, p. 265.
Leslie A. Fiedler, Waiting for the End. New York: Stein and Day, 1964, p. 39.
Henry Miller, Plexus. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1963, p. 373.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 1971 Martinus Nijhoff
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Glicksberg, C.I. (1971). Henry Miller: Prophet of the Sexual Revolution. In: The Sexual Revolution in Modern American Literature. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-010-3236-0_10
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-010-3236-0_10
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
Print ISBN: 978-90-247-5036-8
Online ISBN: 978-94-010-3236-0
eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive