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Henry Miller
To make a long story short I was at a café and I overheard two youngish dopes talking about writers and books. I’ve been slumming as a columnist on all things literary, as some of you know…I thought… this is a carton of Merits found on the sidewalk. I don't particularly like Merits. But, they're free. As it happens my pen was already in position. The first one said:
“I was into Kerouac but then I read Miller and now I’m like, sheesh.”
Well, I was with him there. Then the other one said,
“Henry miller! what’s he famous for, talking about f@#%cking?”
“Yeah, he’s totally f@#cking all the time, it’s like Benny Hill. It gets harmless.” and he went on for a spell, I couldn’t keep up with scribbling it all down. Then finally the other guy got in there with Celine. They went back and forth between Celine and Miller for a while. But then there was an unexpected turn…
“My mother bought me a Zadie Smith book for Christmas, I just put it in my bag of books to be sold.”
So it was back to the old stuff:
“I don’t read anything new. It’s probably lame. I’m sure there’s sh@#t out there I’m missing. Have you ever read the fiction in the New Yorker? I skip right over that. First I go to the comics thing at the back and see what the winning caption, then I read the movie review, I work my way backwards. BACKWARDS... but I skip the fiction. And the poetry is always, like, Mary Oliver or Kathan Pollit or someone, sheesh, and I never read the book review, basically the reviews and the profiles is all I read…”
“I know someone who works at the Believer…”
This statement failed to catch fire. There was a lag, too my benefit, since I was still putting down the part about Benny Hill. The bastards started up again with Flaubert.
“I’ve never gotten through him. Yeah he sort of… there’s a few guys… and I put them all in the same basket… there’s Flaubert and Proust and DH Lawrence… those guys I can’t ever get through their books. It’s boring!”
“I’d rather just read, like, my friends or just, I guess American writers.”
“Yeah, but I don’t like Steinbeck.”
“I love Steinbeck”
“I like, let’s put it this way, I like what he writes about but I don’t like HOW he writes. It’s boring.”
“No way.”
“I just never have”
“That’s crazy”
And he shrugged.
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