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It is not enough to overthrow governments,
masters, tyrants: one must overthrow his own
preconceived ideas of right and wrong, good
and bad, just and unjust. We must abandon the
hard-fought trenches we have dug ourselves
into and come out into the open, surrender our
arms, our possessions, our rights as individuals,
classes, nations, peoples. A billion men seeking
peace cannot be enslaved. We have enslaved
ourselves, by our own petty, circumscribed
view of life. It is glorious to offer one's life for
a cause, but dead men accomplish nothing.
Life demands that we offer something more —
spirit, soul, intelligence, goodwill. Nature is
ever ready to repair the gaps caused by death,
but nature cannot supply the intelligence, the
will, the imagination to conquer the forces of
death. Nature restores and repairs, that is all. It
is man's task to eradicate the homicidal instinct
which is infinite in its ramifications and mani-
festations. It is useless to call upon God, as it is
futile to meet force with force.
H E N R Y M I L L E R
Anyone lifting their head up to recognize the power and the glory
of Henry Miller, in my book, is a good day for the reader,
the individual, the world. Although a bit of a boggy
appreciation, Burnside does dig down into the golden
essence of Miller — not simply the once popular
lust of his Tropic books — but the realer lust
for life, which hasn't been equaled in his
many books of essays, travel, philosophy
and like Whitman, the greater love
of poetry and liberation.
Princeton
2018
photo: Henry Miller
home on Big Sur
