The week-long Brooklyn festivities celebrating beautiful creep Henry Miller are mid-swing. Through Sunday, City Reliquary is showing off the writer’s “original manuscripts, letters,” etc as Henry Miller’s Memorial Library project hangs out on the East Coast. It’s called “Big Sur,” after a place that Miller actually liked, unlike Brooklyn.
The New Yorker reminds you that Henry Miller hated Brooklyn:
I saw a street called Myrtle Avenue, which runs from Borough Hall to Fresh Pond Road, and down this street no saint ever walked (else it would have crumbled), down this street no miracle ever passed, nor any poet, nor any species of human genius, nor did any flower ever grow there, nor did the sun strike it squarely, nor did the rain ever wash it… Dear reader, you must see Myrtle Avenue before you die, if only to realize how far into the future Dante saw.
[Brooklyn is ]a place where I knew nothing but starvation, humiliation, despair, frustration, every god damn thing—nothing but misery. Every bloody street I looked down I see nothing but misery, nothing but monsters… Later, when I began to explore it, why, it’s a different city, a little more horrible, gets worse all the time. Today I think it’s the ugliest, filthiest, shittiest city in the world.
But he hated all of America, though, didn’t he?
I left because I couldn’t stand to live in America. I was full of despair… In my humble opinion the end is near for America; its destruction.
Didn’t he hate everything to some degree?
People used to envy me my inspiration. I hate inspiration. It takes you over completely. I could never wait until it passed and I got rid of it.
You brilliant, passive aggressive bastard. Cheers!
