Doing It With the Cosmos: Henry Miller's Big Sur Struggle for Love Beyond Sex

by Elayne Wareing Fitzpatrick

Doing It With the Cosmos: Henry Miller's Big Sur Struggle for Love Beyond Sex, explores the philosophy and agonizing personal relationships of this rogue elephant of American literature. The author maintains that, contrary to a popular mindset, Miller was not an apostle of gratuitous playboy sex. On the contrary, his books detail the man's tortuous efforts to integrate "impulsive urges that were wholly beyond control" into a higher, more spiritual, form of love that may, or may not, include sex. This book serves as a caveat for people planning to play house together, as well as a manual of happiness. Miller's joyful wisdom, born of despair, is an antidote for what ails an entire generation of restive, increasingly dehumanized and sex-inundated Americans.

216 pages, Paperback

First published November 1, 2001