Sunday After the War

by Henry Miller

"I always carry over 40,000 gold francs about with me in my belt. They weight about 40 pounds, and I am beginning to get dysentery from the load." A collection of stories and excerpts from longer works.

Genres: Essays

Hardcover

First published January 1, 1944

About the author

Henry Valentine Miller was an American novelist, short story writer and essayist. He broke with existing literary forms and developed a new type of semi-autobiographical novel that blended character study, social criticism, philosophical reflection, stream of consciousness, explicit language, sex, surrealist free association, and mysticism. His most characteristic works of this kind are Tropic of Cancer, Black Spring, Tropic of Capricorn, and the trilogy The Rosy Crucifixion, which are based on his experiences in New York City and Paris (all of which were banned in the United States until 1961). He also wrote travel memoirs and literary criticism, and painted watercolors.

Reviews

[Jim · Rating 3 out of 5]

Most of the essays in this book have been published elsewhere, in such works as The Rosy Crucifixion and The Air-Conditioned Nightmare. I enjoyed some of the essays, particularly "Re-union in Brooklyn," about a disappointing visit to his family,whom he had not seen for many years.

At his best, Henry Miller can be great, as he is in Big Sur and the Oranges of Heironymous Bosch or The Air Conditioned Nightmare. Sometimes, unfortunately, he is given to ranting and overstating his case by several hundred percent. Still, it is nice to read Sunday After the War to reacquaint myself with his work. I did, however, find myself skipping a bit, especially in his essays on D. H. Lawrence and Anais Nin.

[Christina knox · Rating 5 out of 5]

my favourite henry miller. i love his voice as an essayist. the first two essays on this book, respectively focused on the shit hole that is (was) america and hollywood's misuse of it's power as a conditioning vehicle to create zombies are still fresh and edgy today.

[Bob · Rating 4 out of 5]

I had started this earlier in the year, put it down, finished "The Air-Conditioned Nightmare" and picked this back up the next day, more to clear the decks than because I was so taken with this period of Miller's work.

There are several pieces in common with "The Air-Conditioned Nightmare" and it has that haphazard feel of a collection that was assembled of things written partly just to get by. His self-consciously writerly swagger contrasts sharply with the bourgeois self-effacement of the Anthony Trollope or Charles Ives type of artist.

The standout pieces here (for better or worse) are "Reunion In Brooklyn" where his disappointment with his (in his analysis) unhappy, uninteresting lower middle-class family (who are disappointed in him, for that matter) is acute, and several "Fragment[s] from 'The Rosy Crucifixion'". The latter are the beginnings of the "Sexus, Plexus, Nexus" trilogy, the modernist trilogy that took him 20 years to complete and one might say are his last great work, despite writing for another 20.

[Jeff Pavlick · Rating 4 out of 5]

Henry Miller is such a breath of fresh air to my spirit, the passion and emotion he evokes with words is simply a reverie

"Strange, how we can manage to feed the world and not learn to feed ourselves"

"Many will pass away, art does not die"

"We can no longer give meaning and significance to events"

"Intelligence is nothing if we have only the illusion that we're free"

After being away for a while when Henry Miller saw his mother. The first words out of her mouth were "Can't you write something like gone with the wind and make a little money?" To which Henry said "I had to confess I couldn't"

"Now extinction seems like true bliss"

"When one is trying to do something beyond his powers it is useless to seek the approval of friends"

"It is only in this polar night that your true self can emerge"

"We are on top of the mountain that was God and it is extinct - The most lovely inanimate object in existence"

[Brendan · Rating 5 out of 5]

This collection of shorter Miller pieces is a great summation of his career as a writer to date, while also looking forward to his magnum opus still to come in The Rosy Crucifixion. There are some fantastic writings in this book.

[Unbridled · Rating 4 out of 5]

Given that slightly less than half of this book is excerpted from other works, I wouldn't recommend this book for the Miller novice, but there are some pieces in here that you'd have difficulty finding anywhere else, and as a Miller-phile, anything 'new' is something to rejoice. Rereading the excerpted material is not exactly painful either; like stepping back into a personal paradise, like alighting the steps of the airport in Maui as you eagerly make your way toward the warm green outside.

[Chris]

Good colection of diffrent stories, some from other books, some from other places.