Sexus

The first book in Henry Miller's trilogy, "The Rosy Crucifixion", "Sexus", offers a peek into the mind of Henry Miller himself. It is a graphic, cerebral, visceral rendition of his life as a penniless, brilliant, sexually prolific mooch. I cannot say if I think he is horrid or marvelous. What I can say is that his writing is amazing. His use of language and breadth of reference is compelling. He seems like a man folks would hate to love, but would love being around. I look forward to the next two volumes of the trilogy.

Henry Miller is a skilled, intelligent and creative writer. His philosophy of art and social criticism are relevant for the 30 year old struggling artist he depicts and is beautifully written, as is his self-analysis and criticism. His alleged sexual exploits are unfortunate. Usually sexual literature does not bother me. However, this time, I took exception. I believe Miller’s self-doubt caused him to feel an obsessive need to relate his imagined, or real, sexual escapades and abuse ad nauseam. He had something to prove to himself and his readers. It was not art he was sharing, it was his immaturity. It is my hope that, over time, Miller self-actualized and wrote Nexus and Plexus with more self-respect and full use of his illustrious, show more imaginative writing faculties. Outside of this mild rebuke (humor), I do enjoy his writing and will continue to explore his work. show less

It takes a deft touch to write about sex without making it sound cliché or creepy, and in describing his sexual encounters, I have to say, Miller often doesn’t have it. It’s almost comical just how much sex is in this book too – cheating on his wife with a woman he meets in a dance hall (who will become his second wife) and then vice versa, various random encounters, having sex with friends and the wives of friends, a couple of ménage à trois, etc all told in graphic detail. He’s not interested in deft touches or in holding back though. He just wants to have the freedom to express himself about everything in life, to let it rip without censorship. As he puts it early on, “People have had enough of plot and character. Plot show more and character don’t make life.” And so, with Sexus, he writes the first installment of the autobiographical account of his life in ‘The Rosy Crucifixion.’

Reading this book is hit and miss, perhaps as a result of just how fearless Miller is – in other words, it may be his greatest strength, which, when overdone, becomes a weakness. He’s clearly intelligent and well-read, referencing all sorts of things, e.g. the Tao Te Ching, Dostoevsky, Freud, Chagall, etc but then may just as easily drop a derogatory comment about women or a minority group, e.g. referring to “Chinks” as “white slavers.” He’s sees the bigger picture about life and is profound and sometimes poetic in writing about it, but there is also a seaminess throughout the book – prostitution, grungy streets, cockroaches streaming around his apartment, and references to women self-abortions using knitting needles. I definitely didn’t need to read all the details about how he clogged a toilet one time and the ensuing mess, as honest as that might have been.

Miller saw the tedium of life and wanted no part of it. He writes “Suddenly now and then someone comes awake, comes undone, as it were, from the meaningless glue in which we are stuck – the rigmarole which we call the everyday life and which is not life but a trancelike suspension above the great stream of life – and this person who, because he no longer subscribes to the general pattern, seems to us quite mad…” He sees himself as this person, and the artist who understand that the world is something that isn’t meant to be put in order, that the “great secret will never be apprehended…he has to make himself a part of the mystery” through connection to all aspects of reality and acceptance of it. I don’t believe all of the following, but still found it to be a lovely, philosophical gem:

“A man who has confidence in himself must have confidence in others, confidence in the fitness and rightness of the universe. When a man is thus anchored he ceases to worry about the fitness of things, about the behavior of his fellow men, about right and wrong and justice and injustice. If his roots are in the current of life he will float on the surface like a lotus and he will blossom and give forth fruit.”

In order to be this free spirit, though, Miller wants to do as little work as possible (“There was another thing I heartily disbelieved in – work.”), mooches off his friends, and is completely absent as a parent to his child. He’s also got this view about caring for what’s going on in the world: “I despised people who, because they lacked their own proper ballast, took on the problems of the world. The man who is forever disturbed about the condition of humanity either has no problems of his own or has refused to face them.” Wow.

At the end of the day, I think it’s a mistake on his part to view the world’s periods of suffering as the same as its better times (he literally equates the two), and to focus on himself (in several ways; his pleasures, opening himself up, self-knowledge, etc). In fact, it’s probably the definition of selfish. Miller certainly wasn’t cheated in life and I admire how he pushed the envelope in describing life honestly, but he’s not always such a likable guy. It’s like reading Kerouac with the sex dialed way up, and the heart dialed way down.

A few more quotes:
On falling asleep with someone:
“Incarnate or discarnate, we were now wheeling off into space, each to his own orbit, each accompanied by his own music. Time, with its endless trail of pain, sorrow and separation, had folded up; we were again in the timeless blue, distant one from another, but no longer separated. We were wheeling like the constellations, wheeling in the obedient meadows of the stars. There was nothing but the soundless chime of starry beams, the bright collisions of floating feathers churning with scintillating brilliance in the fiery sound track of the angelic realms.”

On the future, and living life to the full; here he channels Walt Whitman:
“Joy and faith are inherent in the universe. In growth there is pain and struggle; in accomplishment there is joy and exuberance; in fulfillment there is peace and serenity. Between the planes and spheres of existence, terrestrial and superterrestrial, there are ladders and lattices. The one who mounts sings. He is made drunk and exalted by unfolding vistas. He ascends sure-footedly, thinking not of what lies below, should he slip and lose his grasp, but of what lies ahead. Everything lies ahead. The way is endless, and the farther one reaches the more the road opens up. The bogs and quagmires, the marshes and sinkholes, the pits and snares, are all in the mind. They lurk in waiting, reading to swallow one up the moment one ceases to advance. The phantasmal world is the world which has not been fully conquered over. It is the world of the past, never of the future. To move forward clinging to the past is like dragging a ball and chain. The prisoner is not the one who has committed a crime, but the one who clings to his crime and lives it over and over. We are all guilty of crime, the great crime of not living life to the full.”

On travel:
“Indeed, the true adventurer must come to realize, long before he has come to the end of his wanderings, that there is something stupid about the mere accumulation of wonderful experiences.” show less

Strategically embedded in the seemingly random, wandering, moment to moment depiction of one man's conflicted life lies intentional philosophical observations and lessons that Miller needs us to see, needs us to hear. The nature of mankind; the good, the bad, and the ugliness of human existence. What, did he calculate, could get us human animals to pay attention for more the a few seconds? To hear what he needed us to hear? Sex, of course. Brash, loud, graphic, uncomfortable, squirmy, steamy sex. And now that he has our attention, here lies the blood life of his message:
"Everybody becomes a healer the moment he forgets about himself. As long as we live self-consciously we must always fail to cope with the world. Everybody is a neurotic show more down to the last man and woman. We must die as egos and be born again in the swarm, not separate and self-hypnotized, but individual and related."
A master with words and thought. A brilliant and tormented mind. Henry Miller...bravo show less

Henry Miller quotes,"Whatever I do is done out of sheer joy; I drop my fruits like a ripe tree. What the general reader or the critic makes of them is not my concern."

Maintaining Henry’s charm; let the perversity surge.

Ladies and gentlemen, I am Henry Miller and I’m in a gratifying allegiance with my penis. I LOVE TO FUCK!!! Screw every pussy in town!! YooHoo!! My ex-wife is a lesbian! Yay!! I fucked my wife’s lesbian lover; for years! Whoa! Aren’t I an uncouth, sordid dirty little bastard?

Things you ought to discern about my book - Sexus.

1) Sexus is the first volume of the Rosy Crucifixion trilogy. The series is based on my factual life experiences amid my metamorphosis of being a novelist. Predominantly, it is my sexual show more navigation of an exotic creature – Mara; not before circumnavigating Irene, Sylvia and numerous dripping lassies. Irene that horny cunt can make a man bleed. No wonder her husband is paralytic. She must have twisted his cock off. Poor Ulrich couldn’t keep up with the all night orgy. Sylvia on the other hand is dull as ditch water. Mara, that bitch can get me barmy giving me a hard on even when I’m looking at the bitter hag -my wife. I am so hung up on her blowjobs and taxi quickies, I overlook that she is an impetuous liar.

2) Maude my present wife is such a wrench. Fucking her makes me feel like a necrophiliac. Although it is not a nuisance as I can bang any crap with a hole, yet her customary snide of me being a promiscuous prick, not caring about the family or my child smacks the shit out of me.

3) My cronies- Dr. Kronski, Ulrich (my sidekick in sexual burlesque), Stanley, etc.. are a bunch of sympathetic drunks with suicidal or fatal aspirations, except get them some twirling willowy legs and they can hump like rabbits.

4) Sex is one of the nine reasons of reincarnation. So, each time I get a stiff bulge in my pants I come across ways to attain salvation.

5) If the frequent usage of racially provocative or prejudiced language astounds the proverbial reader, chew a nickel and get on with it. I can’t help if I’m the cruelest sexist asshole.

6) At times when my penis does not take a call, I do manage to pen down sensible libretto arguing the significance of being a writer and life as we call it. However, me being a narcissistic prick, eventually the narration embellishes all-night orgy sessions with couple of lou-lous and Ulrich.

7) Several readers consider me to be a pervert dickhead while some contemplate about my genius collaboration of imaginative intelligentsia. Yes! My common sense does take a hike at times, but that’s who I am – a raunchy, egoistical mastermind of sexual emancipation.

Hush Miller! We get it! You are as horny as a three-balled tomcat with a swamped gutter mouth.

In conclusion, as to sum it all up, Sexus is a freakishly fascinating reserve. show less

Erotica, memoir, history of ideas. This (the 3 volume set) is huge and wonderful and probably way overly ambitious. Miller depicts himself as a thoughtful, horny, bohemian wastrel with literary and social ambitions and an insatiable appetite for all the culture the world has to offer. He's been reviled for being misogynistic, but that seems to be a case of the times in which he was writing.

Back again for another Henry Miller book. This probably is actually his most representative work as it contains him both at his best and at his worst. Charles Bukoski actually said it best, that when he's good he's good but when he's bad he's pretty awful. The book is populated mostly by stupid assholes which, as it does with all literature that features stupid assholes, sadly brings the quality down. The book never reaches the heights of Tropic of Cancer, which I still think carries the Walt Whitman mantle, but never dips to the absolute boredom of Tropic of Capricorn. Instead he middles along with some bullshit here, some insight into the other characters' idiocies, and some pretty good stuff there. A thoroughly middling experience.