Henry Miller

I read Tropic of Cancer at just the right age, my early twenties. I was kind of a half-hippie and I loved Miller. If you want a vocabulary builder, he’s your guy. A lot of people think of sex if you bring him up, but books like Stand Still Like a Hummingbird and Big Sur and the Oranges of Heironymus Bosch are essay books that are free from salaciousness, so far as I recall. Likewise his book on Greece, The Colossus of Maroussi, and The Air Conditioned Nightmare (what a title), both of which I enjoyed tremendously. I think the sex angle is overblown and misses the point. He took the risk, tried to become an artist, and he pulled it off after paying some pretty serious dues. I admired that about him. And there’s a lot more to him than that, he had enormous enthusiasm for literature, and it really shows.

True story, I gave my little brother a copy of Tropic of Cancer, and a couple weeks later we saw an episode of Seinfeld that featured a younger, high school version of Jerry and George, and they were excited about Tropic of Cancer because of the sex in it.

Also I read The Razor’s Edge around the same time, it’s kind of a more refined bohemian book. Somerset Maugham is a good writer, he has some stories set in the East that are interesting. But he can be stuffy for people today, probably. There are two film versions of The Razor’s Edge, they’re both pretty good, the more recent one is with Bill Murray.