You may think anyway you want, and I'm sure you do, but there has been no worse decision made by an editorial house than to let Mr. Karl Shapiro write the introduction of Henry Miller's «Tropic of Cancer». Through Anais Nin's diaries, I have come acquinted with Henry Miller and his rather interesting, "naturalist" approach to life. I wouldn't say that then I loved him and I thought all his words were made of gold, but I stared at him and watched him from a safe distance, as through Anais' sometimes affected, sometimes shaded, sometimes rebelious and open words reflected this hard eyed, German descendant, who would barely write but devoted a great deal of his time to take tons of notes taht would rest in heaps all around him, would be irresponsible with money, speding in whores as if they were a basic necessity of importance only surpassed by breathing, whines about his relationship to June and then simply stares and let people do his life. From love to hate to disappointment, to soft love and a fading sense of friendship soon replaced by other characters, you get to know a given Henry Miller that raises yous curiosity. So you wonder:
"Okay, who the hell must he be?"
Anais' diary is, after all, a diary plagued with the most subjective observations of the world, and after all, what is a diary or a journal but the very concentration and intensification of the subjective view of an individual? Perhaps the question of the diaries, or journals always tends to divert me towards this story I was writing a while ago, a fanfic, a Snockhart that broke the boundaries of NC-17, truth to be told, and where there's mention of three journals kept by a character, three that were kept with different purposes, but weren't even those subjective? So, from Anais' words to Miller's, I thought it was about time I found out the Miller in Miller, so I checked upon two of his books, which I ended buying. The question was indeed fascinating, as you have been watching him from Anais' eyes and you imagine vividly a true procrastinator, who gives so much to a way of organization, the building of a work environment that applies to his European roots, so fond of orderliness and structure, which he yet can't comply with as he's immersed in his Americanism, prone to temper tantrums, and chaos and lack of discipline by claiming "freedom" and the destruction of structures that "enslave the human" and so on, and with which the final result is the nothing: a lot of blah and no result.
But so he wrote a book, pushed and pulled by two women: Anais and June, though... was it so? Did June's endless lies did feed the story so he would write it, and did Anais' motherly persistence allowed him to finally materialize the book. Was it so? Was Anais' hand in the letters, guiding him to put together a decent book and not only a pile of notes? It was time to turn to Miller and see what does he has to say for himself in the book that was supposed to be the portrait of June, a counterpart of «House of Incest», where June was protrayed through the eyes of her female lover. Orderly, as I try to be, I started on the first page of the book, Miller's book, and read my way through the Introduction. >_< Pfwaaaaaaaaaa!!!! You do better skipping it! Put together by Karl Shapiro, the words of an ignorant sycophant rain over you profuse of lists of authors and books and turns and turns around flourish that say nothing, anchoring in profuse quotations of the author himself, is a clear attempt to imitate Miller. Disgusting.
Why do we need to know the list of books Miller or Shapiro have read or the artists that lived or accounted Miller among his friends, or have snippets of Miller's passion for the phenomenon of Rimbauld and then ADD the list of poets and artists that lived in the time of Rimbauld? I stare in the book into the words of an ignorant, no better than the people who surround me on daily basis, who pretend to know by puking long threads of memorized snippets of great names with big words and self-important attitudes. Through thirty-too-many pages this ass-sucking dickwad vomits gouts after gouts of showy phrases that hardly connect to a point, but try unsuccessfully to encompass Miller, his work and present his love for Rimbauld's work and life as an "amazing parallelism" that do not exist if not in Miller's aspirations and half intended desire to imitate. Yep, I see Miller giving up women to fuck men in the ass and pretend an adolescence way up in his 30's and sit down to write poetry. Admiration is not reincarnation.
Shapiro misses all the signs and in the swirl of it, he misses also Miller and his work, spinning words and attempts to show his own "intellectuality" failing so miserably that ends up giving the book a sour, regurritating taste of bile. Anai's prologue smothers it somehow with delicated words and soft praise of her friend, with a shy apologetic smile on her lips, lowering her head and seeking to fit him in the frame of her dream world, imagining the crowd composed by an endless number of clones of herself that would not understand raw words if there's not a prior love for the writer. She might be looking back at her diary and guiltily thinking: "I wrote it was ugly... I tried to make it right, but the truth in me is that I hate it because it is so unaesthetical."
I'm amused. I snort carelessly, frown and face him:
"C'mon dude. Do your worse."
"Okay, who the hell must he be?"
Anais' diary is, after all, a diary plagued with the most subjective observations of the world, and after all, what is a diary or a journal but the very concentration and intensification of the subjective view of an individual? Perhaps the question of the diaries, or journals always tends to divert me towards this story I was writing a while ago, a fanfic, a Snockhart that broke the boundaries of NC-17, truth to be told, and where there's mention of three journals kept by a character, three that were kept with different purposes, but weren't even those subjective? So, from Anais' words to Miller's, I thought it was about time I found out the Miller in Miller, so I checked upon two of his books, which I ended buying. The question was indeed fascinating, as you have been watching him from Anais' eyes and you imagine vividly a true procrastinator, who gives so much to a way of organization, the building of a work environment that applies to his European roots, so fond of orderliness and structure, which he yet can't comply with as he's immersed in his Americanism, prone to temper tantrums, and chaos and lack of discipline by claiming "freedom" and the destruction of structures that "enslave the human" and so on, and with which the final result is the nothing: a lot of blah and no result.
But so he wrote a book, pushed and pulled by two women: Anais and June, though... was it so? Did June's endless lies did feed the story so he would write it, and did Anais' motherly persistence allowed him to finally materialize the book. Was it so? Was Anais' hand in the letters, guiding him to put together a decent book and not only a pile of notes? It was time to turn to Miller and see what does he has to say for himself in the book that was supposed to be the portrait of June, a counterpart of «House of Incest», where June was protrayed through the eyes of her female lover. Orderly, as I try to be, I started on the first page of the book, Miller's book, and read my way through the Introduction. >_< Pfwaaaaaaaaaa!!!! You do better skipping it! Put together by Karl Shapiro, the words of an ignorant sycophant rain over you profuse of lists of authors and books and turns and turns around flourish that say nothing, anchoring in profuse quotations of the author himself, is a clear attempt to imitate Miller. Disgusting.
Why do we need to know the list of books Miller or Shapiro have read or the artists that lived or accounted Miller among his friends, or have snippets of Miller's passion for the phenomenon of Rimbauld and then ADD the list of poets and artists that lived in the time of Rimbauld? I stare in the book into the words of an ignorant, no better than the people who surround me on daily basis, who pretend to know by puking long threads of memorized snippets of great names with big words and self-important attitudes. Through thirty-too-many pages this ass-sucking dickwad vomits gouts after gouts of showy phrases that hardly connect to a point, but try unsuccessfully to encompass Miller, his work and present his love for Rimbauld's work and life as an "amazing parallelism" that do not exist if not in Miller's aspirations and half intended desire to imitate. Yep, I see Miller giving up women to fuck men in the ass and pretend an adolescence way up in his 30's and sit down to write poetry. Admiration is not reincarnation.
Shapiro misses all the signs and in the swirl of it, he misses also Miller and his work, spinning words and attempts to show his own "intellectuality" failing so miserably that ends up giving the book a sour, regurritating taste of bile. Anai's prologue smothers it somehow with delicated words and soft praise of her friend, with a shy apologetic smile on her lips, lowering her head and seeking to fit him in the frame of her dream world, imagining the crowd composed by an endless number of clones of herself that would not understand raw words if there's not a prior love for the writer. She might be looking back at her diary and guiltily thinking: "I wrote it was ugly... I tried to make it right, but the truth in me is that I hate it because it is so unaesthetical."
I'm amused. I snort carelessly, frown and face him:
"C'mon dude. Do your worse."
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