Harry Miller's Blog

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Say Good Bye

Woke up at three, obsessing about the confessional snow scene in Norwegian Wood, wondering for the umpteenth time why the director would leave so much empty space on one side, which no high school film student would be careless enough to do; and then it finally occurred to me that the empty space stands for Naoko, just as the eerie soundtrack of the following scene seeps into this one, likewise obtruding her presence or absence therein.

First, I created the basic text by translating into English parts of the Chinese anecdotal source “Yushan yao luan zhi” (“Treachery at Yushan”), by Feng Shu (1593-1645). Here are two sentences from this basic text:

True to what her cousin had told her, Chief Eunuch Wei Zhongxian was then at the height of his influence. On Tiger Hill, in Suzhou, the Puhui Shrine was being built in his honor.

Next, I transplanted the basic text to contemporary and near-future America, resulting in the Baltimore te...

“He was pleased to be in these beautiful places, which he had known all his adult life, with someone who gave them a new sense of being enjoyed.” (p. 62)

“When the storm began, they were all glad of the interruption. There was quite a lively conversation about storms in general. Darkness, in this long, large room lined with furniture and dim paintings, drew them closer together.” (p. 81)

“It was as if she had taken leave of her senses – or come into their full possession at the expense of her re...

This book is about Eszter, the daughter of an aristocratic family fallen before the advent of communism, and her lifetime hatred for Angéla, who passes seamlessly from the old aristocracy to the new.

Angéla the convener of seminars, the constant presence at the orphanage, forever improving herself, her eyes glued to the copy of Karl Marx in German…and buying all the latest books on Party ideology. When people were turned away from the butcher’s because there was no meat to be had, she opened her...

“Putting food on the table” is what both husbands and wives do. In traditional marriages, however, the husband does it figuratively while the wife does it literally. The separateness of these two modes of devotion leads both husbands and wives to feel that they are laboring alone, and both grow resentful.

In Seraph on the Suwanee, the husband, Jim Meserve, makes clear from the outset that his view of marriage is not as an equal partnership. As he conveys “in so many words” to wife-to-be Arvay He...

…I am not alone in the woman’s apartment upon my arrival, because she maintains an entourage of young fashionable people. One of them is an arrogant hippie. He serves everyone a dish of bread pudding with syrup, everyone but me. When I ask him about it, he replies that I am being punished for the rudeness of my initial greeting. He’s right: I had been a little aloof.

“OK, then,” I declare, with token defiance, “I’ll just fetch myself a glass of water.” I repair to the kitchen. However, the fl...

This book was actually written in 1856 by a white woman (a Kentucky slave-owner turned abolitionist), which nearly disqualified it for adoption as my Juneteenth reading this year. However, as it is dedicated “to all persons interested in the cause of freedom,” I deemed it not entirely inappropriate.

Like many similar books of the antebellum era, Griffith’s Autobiography seeks to steal a march on slavery’s sugar-coaters by portraying the peculiar institution as the cruel, treacherous, family-dest...

The difference between the man of God, preoccupied by Sin, and the man of Art, preoccupied by Beauty, can be measured by how comfortable they are with their penises.

First, the man of God/Sin:

Prayer and performance had been for naught when that ugliest of all heads decided to rise with a will of its own. If he could hack it off his body, he would. (p. 283)

Next, the man of Art/Beauty:

She removed his vest, his other boot, his leggings, and all of his garments until he was naked and his maleness...

Will Buckingham’s Sixty-Four Chance Pieces: A Book of Changes is a collection of short stories, each based on a hexagram from the Yi jing. It traces a meandering search for meaning through a broad expanse of cultural material from Baal to Billie Holiday.

Of course the meaning of life will never quite come into focus, yet contentment is possible for all who stop focusing on it. The lesson is perhaps most obvious in #48, “The Well,” about a stranger seeking to understand his adoptive home, a pursu...