December 23, 2004
Tropic of Cancer
From Narrative Detours: Henry Miller and the Rise of New Critical Modernism (1989): I want to make a detour of those lofty arid mountain ranges where one
dies of
thirst and cold, that “extra-temporal” history, that absolute of time and space
where there exists neither man, beast, nor vegetation, where one goes crazy
with loneliness, with language that is mere words, where everything is
unhooked, ungeared, out of joint with the times. I want a world of men and
women, of trees that do not talk (because there is too much talk in the world
as it is!), of rivers that carry you to places, not rivers that are legends,
but rivers that put you in touch with other men and women, with architecture,
religion, plants, animals–rivers have boats on them and in which men drown,
drown not in myth and legend and books and dust of the past, but in time and
space and history. –Henry Miller, Tropic of Cancer
