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  by noxiousverve & 9 users

• Current

Type: art

Status: favorite

Author: Henry Miller

Tags: american expatriate controversial

Description: A tour de force! Miller attempts to break down the Aristotelean edifice, by keeping himselfA tour de force! Miller attempts to break down the Aristotelean edifice, by keeping himself as attached to the narrative, as is humanly possible. Miller is the ultimate expatriate, living in Paris at the tail end of the lost generation. He (the character and the author are one in the same) has fled the US in search of a personal liberty that is not fully accepted stateside. The reader follows the main character through the author's own, debaucherous lifestyle. Miller takes sheer joy in his interaction with the under-belly of Parisian life. The sheer pleasure that Miller gets through his baseless existence makes this book powerful and palateable to the reader of gritty fiction. Unlike Bardamu in "Journey to the end of the Night", by Louis-Ferdinand Celine, Miller seems to wrap himself in the down comforter of French Nihilism. It is as if he is saying, "If this is it, we may as well grab all of the enjoyment that is to be had".

Banned in America from the date of it's first printing in 1933, until the Senate obscenity hearings of 1961, this book holds the mantle as the most banned American book in history. The modern reader will not find it nearly as shocking, but it is a testament to the work, that it stands the test of time. ...

2005-11-01

  by kreg & 7 users

• Current

Type: fiction

Status: I recommend

Author: Vladimir Nabokov

Tags: russian literature erudite expatriate picaresque banned

2005-09-08