This quote about Henry Miller by George Orwell:
Miller is a writer out of the ordinary, worth more than a single glance; and after all, he is a completely negative, unconstructive, amoral writer, a mere Jonah, a passive acceptor of evil, a sort of Whitman among the corpses.
A sort of Whitman among the corpses—god I love that!
Not that I completely agree with Orwell’s assessment. There is more to Miller than that. Of course he is a gleeful sinner, hardly accepted by the erect posturing of the knucke-thrashing moral standards of his own time, and all-but irredeemable by today’s “enlightened” standards. But that does not mean that he is not worth reading? Maybe I am risking something asking that.
I will not make apologies for Miller, for reading Miller. I am guilty, of the indecent act of reading the wrong books, books that others are inclined to ban, in that I am something of a serial offender. As a would-be author, I can only hope to write a book worthy enough to be banned one day, preferably by ideological puritans of all persuasions.