This collection of stories and essays takes its title from a long prose reverie in which Henry Miller, after his return to the United States, thinks back to the happy years of middle life which he spent in France. The qualities that make the French unique have seldom been so movingly expressed. The America he had rediscovered does not come off very well by contrast-particularly the Hollywood state of mind, which gets a thoroughly Milleresque going over in the burlesque "Astrological Fricassee."

What Miller likes on the American scene are the individuals who have broken through the pattern of conformity, the rare and often isolated creative personalities who are resisting the dehumanization of our so-called "civilization." He gives us vivid portraits of the painters Abe Rattner, Jean Varda and Beauford Delaney; the sculptor Bufano; and Jasper Deeter, director of the hedgerow Theatre.

Two of Henry Miller's greatest essays are also in this volume: "Murder the Murderer" (on war), a declaration which ranks with Randolph Bourne's War and the Intellectuals, and, with particular relevance to the censorship codes which kept his Tropics of Cancer and Capricorn out of this country for so long, "Obscenity and the Law of Reflection."

About the Author
Henry Miller (1891-1980) was one of the most controversial American novelists during his lifetime. His book, The Tropic of Cancer, was banned in the some U.S. states before being overruled by the Supreme Court. New Directions publishes several of his books.

Reviews
"Henry Miller is the nearest thing to Celine America has produced .... He aims not at the ears, brains or consciences, but at the viscera and solar plexus." -- New Leader
"No one ever embraced life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness more lustily." -- Pico Iyer - TIME
"Here is an artist who re-establishes the potency of illusion by gaping out at the open wounds, by courting the stern, psychological reality which man seeks to avoid through recourse to the oblique symbolism of art." -- Anais Nin
"I think he's the greatest American writer." -- Bob Dylan
"The only imaginative prose-writer of the slightest value who has appeared among the English-speaking races for some years past." -- George Orwell
"It is difficult not to admire a writer who has so resolutely gone about his own business in his own way without the slightest concession to any fashion." -- Gore Vidal
"The people that banned words in books didn't stop people from buying those books. If you couldn't buy Henry Miller in the early sixties, you could go to Paris or England. We used to go to Paris, and everybody would buy Henry Miller books because they were banned, and everybody saw them, all the students had them. I don't believe words can harm you." -- John Lennon
"I suspect that Henry Miller's final place will be among those towering anomalies of authorship like Whitman or Blake who have left us, not simply works of art, but a corpus of ideas which motivate and influence a whole cultural pattern. " -- Lawrence Durrell
"American literature today begins and ends with the meaning of what Miller has done." -- Lawrence Durrell
"What makes Miller distinctive among modern writers is his ability to combine, without confusion, the aesthetic and prophetic functions. Realization, one might imagine, is such a disinterested process that the result would be the purely objective naturalism of a Madame Bovary. But Flaubert's limitations have become somewhat obvious of later, and though his method is perfect as far as it goes, Miller is aware that it must be carried much farther, into the realm of ideas, and that the writer must not be afraid to declare his ideals. Miller's ideals I find very acceptable-they are the ideals of what I call anarchism." -- Sir Herbert Read
"There is an eager vitality and exuberance to the writing which is exhilarating; a rush of spirit into the world as though all the sparkling wines have been uncorked at once; we watchfully hear the language skip, whoop and wheel across Miller's page." -- William H. Gass



Book Information
ISBN 9780811201131
Author Henry Miller
Format Paperback
Page Count 482
Imprint New Directions Publishing Corporation
Publisher New Directions Publishing Corporation
Weight(grams) 522g
Dimensions(mm) 203mm * 127mm * 25mm