Henry Miller in the 21st Century

A Conference in Pacific Grove

Dear Friends,

Last week I drove up the coast with Mimi to attend a conference in Pacific Grove. The conference was titled “Henry Miller in the 21st Century”—a prospect that gives me pause. Imagine the author of Tropic of Cancer and other scandalous novels sitting in a Paris café scrolling through tweets on his cell phone. I shudder to think of it.

I had been invited to speak at the conference because I have written a biography of Miller—The Unknown Henry Miller, A Seeker in Big Sur—that had been published in 2014. The topic of my talk was Henry Miller as small “d” democrat—a citizen of our great land who modeled himself on Walt Whitman’s idea of the archetypal American—a man self-reliant and self-contained who also contained multitudes and thought kindly of his fellow man.

Henry would have been baffled by Make America Great Again. When had it ever been great? Only in the hopes of the founders who drafted our constitution, now being trampled by the very people who have sworn to uphold it. As for Trump’s version of America, now on full display, Henry would have been apoplectic, his fluency with obscenities sorely tested. Or maybe he would just have taken a walk.

The conference was organized and staged by three men devoted to Miller’s legacy: Bill Ashley, a radiologist from Arroyo Grande who is also an avid collector and publisher of Miller ephemera; James Decker, a Professor of Humanities at Illinois Central College and the editor of Nexus, The International Henry Miller Journal; and Magnus Toren, the Executive Director of the Henry Miller Memorial Library in Big Sur.

Miller scholars from around the world assembled on the grounds of Asilomar, a large campus of housing units and meeting halls set in a forest of Monterey pine bordering the Pacific Ocean. Men and women from Europe, Asia, and America came together to share their perspectives on the contributions that Miller has made to the world’s literature and art through his writing and painting.

I was struck by the wide range of interests and ages represented by the speakers. The youngest presenter was Diego Menendez, a junior at UC Irvine majoring in Aerospace Engineering (!) who studies Miller as a sidelight. He spoke on the philosophical system underlying Miller’s Tropic of Cancer and Tropic of Capricorn. The oldest, as far as I can tell, was Gary Koeppel, owner of the Coast Gallery in Big Sur, where Miller’s watercolors were offered for sale. In between we heard scholars from Finland, Denmark, Poland, France, India, Japan, and the United States talking critically about Miller’s mysticism, his existentialism, the gender themes in his novels, his painting, and the religious implications of his world view, among other topics.

The talks illuminated the many dimensions of Miller’s work, the subtlety of his mind, the earnestness of his quest for self-realization through art. Their cumulative effect was profound. On Saturday evening after dinner, several films about Miller were screened, bringing us all into his living presence. An exhibit of Miller’s paintings, courtesy of Gary Koeppel, filled the registration room that adjoined the conference hall, placed there for browsing between sessions.

Anais Nin, Miller’s Paris paramour, soul mate, and muse, also put in an appearance at the conference through an exhibit of letters Miller wrote her, and a film clip from Lisa Elliot-Rojas’s film The Gift of Wisdom. Steven Reigns, Board President of the Anais Nin Foundation, attended, reminding us of Nin’s crucial support of Miller’s writing when he was struggling for serious recognition of his work.

The social aspects of the conference were perhaps as important an experience as the formal presentations. We shared meals in a common dining room, meeting different colleagues at each sitting as we shuffled amongst the tables, exchanging personal information and tidbits of gossip about Miller, and tracing our engagement with him as a writer. Miller is a writer who affects his readers powerfully and deeply, both through his words and his life example. Bonds between people who appreciate him as a man and an artist are easily formed. The conference created a vibrant community of men and women of all ages and many nationalities who are working to preserve and extend Miller’s legacy.

A highlight of the conference was a “field trip” to Big Sur to visit the Henry Miller Memorial Library and the Fassett residence on the grounds of Nepenthe, where Miller lived briefly when he first arrived in Big Sur in 1944. During the bus ride there and back, my seat mate Joan Ganny and I discovered an astonishing number of life echoes that made our encounter seem fabulous. Thank you Henry!

Bill Ashley seated center blue shirt. Magnus Toren with guitar. James Decker to my left in sunglasses. Photograph taken at HMML in Big Sur.

Arthur

www.arthurhoyle.com