The World of Sex

by Henry Miller

In The World of Sex, Henry Miller, one of the most scandalous writers of the 20th century explains his literary project

Henry Miller's bold, explicit novels scandalized readers and remade the literature of his day. In this uncompromising literary manifesto he argues that sex is at the heart of his writing because it is at the heart of life - a vital force as essential as bread, money, work or play. Drawing on his own experiences and on the writing of his famously banned novels in Paris, he shows sex as a mysterious realm that must be explored if we are to be truly free.

Genres: Nonfiction, Philosophy, Essays, American, Classics, Erotica, 20th Century

86 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1940

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

[anarki · Rating 4 out of 5]

As you can see in the title, it seems to be so taboo-ish that you will not seem to wonder it had been banned and will come to the point that no one will have the courage to publish it. Luckily, there were people who got the balls. Thanks to them, I was given this wonderful chance to read it.

World of Sex. Long ago when I was a still a participant in our organization, there was this Fat and Scary Alumni Facilitator who gave us a lecture about Psychoanalysis. He asked “Why are there Human Beings? One of my co-participants immediately answered “We evolved from apes.” Then another one answered “It was written in the bible that God created us.” To my surprise, there was someone who answered “It was because of malakas and maganda.” He meant that the first humans came from a split of a bamboo tree –The Anak sa Liking Kawayan Theory. After hearing their answers, I said woooh, just inside my head. Throughout hearing the answers, the Fat and Scary Alumni Facilitator was laughing sarcastically. “You know what guys,” He responded. “You're wrong.” He said “I wasn't asking where we came from. I was asking you why are we here.” We were all silent trying to get his point. Then he stopped talking for a brief moment and asked “You wanna know why guys?” Obviously. He smiled then –it was pretty obvious that he was preparing a big laugh. He said with a funny voice of conviction “It's because of SEX. We have a lot of people here in this world because a lot of people FUCK. That's why we are still here. Human Beings." Huge laughs blew the roof away out of the room. Not to mention we are having the session in a Holy place. It was a Religious Renewal Center. Imagine we having this kind of talk here.

Psychoanalysis is the school of thought in Psychology that primarily deals with the Unconscious –the unconscious drive w/c are pleasure oriented and sexual in nature.

Because of my Psychoanalytic background. I had a fun and easy time understanding this book. We people have this repressed energy in us. Energy is life. Doesn't matter whether it's positive or negative. And a suppressed or repressed energy can mean less life –lesser being. The book says the same thing. The only difference is, it also talks about love. Love and Sex. Two of the most interesting matters here in this world. It will usually take a huge amount of time ─life to understand this. Sex can strengthen love, but love is just not all about sex (But for some, it is). It can even destroy love. Sex does more than the procreational process. It also gives off hot pleasure that can make you go crazy about it if you're using only your dick when you are doing some fucking. But when you fuck with your heart, body, and soul and being, if that happens, you'll discover the deeper meaning of sex.

I'll make sure the girl I love won't feel fucked –but loved. I learned that valuable lesson from one of my favorite books, A Million Little Pieces by James Frey.

Sex is a gift in which everyone have to receive. Not really. Birth is. Sex does not only give birth to babies –it also gives AIDS. What I am trying to say is –not figuratively, is Birth. Our ability to give birth to moments, friendships, dreams, life, inspiration, and more. Perhaps, sex was nothing but a symbolism that we misunderstood.

We have our desires. To destroy or to procreate or to whatever. One can't be free from desires –it takes desire in the first place to do so. A desire suppressed or repressed can mean a lot of trouble. You can delve inside you desires and understand it. You can control these desires –be a master of it. Not the other way around.

And as the cliché says “It always starts with a choice.”

[Po Po · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ha!! Very entertaining quickie. Miller writes about the bush and the slit that lurks beneath. I am not sure "the world of sex" is an appropriate title because this , in totality, is about the search for truth and meaning, and finding one's own way in life and living with some semblance of integrity without being destroyed by the supposed advances of society.

[Jo · Rating 3 out of 5]

I felt like I needed to visit something from Miller since my beautiful, but complex experience that I had with Henry and June: From "A Journal of Love": The Unexpurgated Diary of Anaïs Nin, 1931-1932. Miller has somewhat of a reputation, and to be honest, I was desperately curious to discover Miller for myself.

This is a short book, which comprises of an essay style read. This wasn't an issue, but admittedly, I kind of wanted a little more substance. I like my books fairly meaty, and this was lacking around the edges.

First off, I don't think 'The world of sex' is a suitable title for this book. I mean sex is discussed, and mentioned in various ways, but this essay is really about discovering oneself, and not playing the culprit to social norms. We all know that there is life beyond those.

This book is both fiction and non-fiction, as Miller regularly refers to his personal life experiences, involving love and sex, sometimes in an explicit manner, and sometimes in a vulgar one. I can take both of these, but there were certain parts that kind of screamed sexism in my ear, and caused me to raise that eyebrow.

I enjoyed the section where Miller speaks of living life to the fullest, to live while one can. I wasn't expecting that from Miller, so it was a welcome section.

Overall, I did enjoy this essay of splendidly assembled words, and I also have another impressive looking book for the collection.

[Muhammed Hebala · Rating 4 out of 5]

"To be in love, to be utterly alone."

That was a quick good read.
I am not sure "the world of sex" is an appropriate title because this , in totality, is about the search for truth and meaning, and finding one's own way in life.

"Like every man, I am my own worst enemy. Unlike most men, however, I also know that I am my own savior."

" The American ... oblivious of everything a woman has to offer except her body. He will treat an exceptional woman like a whore and fall madly in love with a nitwit ... What frightens the shit out of him is to give himself body and soul. The American woman, consequently, is frequently a love starved creature, clamouring for the moon. She will make a man work himself to the bone to satisfy her silly whims. Given free rein, she becomes truly insatiable."

A very truthful book. A very deep thinking.

"No matter how attached I became to a 'cunt', I was always more interested in the person who owned it. A cunt doesn't live a separate, independent existence. Nothing does. Everything is interrelated."

"Not to go the full length, that is man's fatal error. As Jean Guehenno puts it "The true treason is to follow the way of the crowd, and to use the intellect to justify it.""

"The sexual drama is a partial aspect of the greater drama perpetually enacted in the soul of man. As the individual becomes more integrated, more unified, the sex problem falls into its proper perspective. The genitals are impressed, so to speak, into the service of the whole being. There is simultaneous procreation in all spheres. What is new, original and fecund issues only from a complete entity. One can fuck not only with heart and soul, as we say, but as a new being. A new being is a product of mind, created through desire, love and atonement, not through gestation in the womb. The as yet unborn are all around us, locked in the womb of time; when our hunger for true life deepens we feel their presence and make way for their coming."

“All goes hand in hand. Sanity keeps no truck with compromise and artificiality. If we live like weasels, we fuck like weasels; if we behave like monsters, we die like monsters. Now we eat, sleep, work, play – and even fuck! – like automatons. It is the Land of Nod, with everyone spinning like tops."

[Ana · Rating 5 out of 5]

It is not on my behalf to say something against Miller. Not at this point in my life. Not at all.

I love him, and maybe it's sometimes wrong of me to do so, or redundant. However much I can still find flaws in his writing, the overall feeling that I get from every one of his books is humanity, a lively smell of mistaken-ship, something I can cling to and identify with. He is everything but a perfect individual, and that is the point of his writing, the way I see it, to expose flaws, to bathe in imperfections and to show readers how life can be lived while hopping from mistake to mistake.

[Ivan Lutz · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sex kao pogon, ali ne i poriv; kao gorivo, ali ne opterećenje. Žene kao božice, muškarci kao bogovi... MIller je sveo priču o seksualnosti na jedan super liberalni nivo, što podržavam, volim i obožavam. A i mislim da svi oni koji misle da su jeb..či, ako pročitaju ovo, poklope se ušima i ništa im nije jasno. Ima odličnih citata, al to ću vaditi jedan drugi dan. Piše savršeno jasno, a misli su mu precizne kao infarkt!

[Ying Ying · Rating 5 out of 5]

Exquisite. Henry's writing is almost orgasmic. Love to read about the possibility of passionate moments, if we only set ourselves free.

[Emma Angeline · Rating 3 out of 5]

look at that I finally finished it. I first attempted to read this when I was 17, gave up, and now here we are. It had been burning a whole in my bookshelf ever since. He’s an interesting bloke. Next to read, Tropic of Capricorn

[Debo · Rating 1 out of 5]

The misogynistic bullshit of it all...astonishing.
I think I figured that a man deemed fuckable by Anaïs Nin would have some flourish about him, but this was a terrible read. I can wholly recognise that by the standard of 1940 to publicly talk about sex, with the intent to promote a more liberated enjoyment of it, is a daring thing. But why declare this to be a classic and not just a historical document? It's beyond me. Miller seems to look at sex embedded in a rather misanthropic worldview, paired with heaps of sexism, classism and the n-word. And I get why in 1940 one would be fed up with the state of things, but to qualify as an "uncompromising literary manifesto" (borrowed from the Penguin Modern Classics 2015 edition) I sure expected the demand of the manifesto to have more depth and care (dare I say, fun?) for its subject. But no, in the exclusively male PoV analysis of heterosexual relationships only, women are described in vile language and dependency to men and I wouldn't wish this read on anybody.

[Tim Pendry · Rating 3 out of 5]

Henry Miller wrote the original draft of this long essay when he was about to turn 50, somewhat of a turning point for any redblooded male, but the text was substantially revised for a secondary publication in 1957 when he was nearing 70.

This is a relevant set of facts. This is not a male view of sex so much as that of a highly sexualised male past his powers and frustrated at a world that had always failed to accept him publicly for what he was.

He would not have been alone in that frustration - America 're-moralised' itself in the wake of the Great Depression and the Second World War. The 1950s, even in California where he revised his text, was the high point of an age of sexual repression with few outlets for public discussion of the themes that were close to Miller's heart.

This is why this text is confusing and is going to be of limited interest to all but specialists in cultural or literary studies. It is one third deep wisdom about the human condition (of which more in a moment), one third confused and confusing memoire that clearly has meaning to him but little to us and one third apocalyptic rant against American culture and its in-built propensity to violence.

The rant is violent in its attack on violence and there are layers of meaning here that are quite Reichian (though Reich is never mentioned) but this component does not stand up to much intellectual scrutiny. Given that this essay was really for the few who already knew of Miller and his views (there is a touch of 'Apologia Pro Vita Sua' in all this), it nevertheless gives us an insight into the rage and frustration of a certain proportion of males under the grey moralism of American public culture of the day.

To his credit, and against the portentous style of the public intellectual of his day, whether liberal or Marxist, Miller does not say that all men should be as he is but only that society would be better if it allowed space for the free expression of his attitude to love and sex - and, of course, since then, our culture has given more of that space and some of us do indeed think the world is, if not actually then potentially, a better place as a result.

What is most interesting in this small book of 110 pages of script (actually more like 55 in any normal sized paperback) lies not in the ranting which is set firmly in its period (and which we won't even bother to analyse here) but in the first 30 pages where he describes a vision of love and sex which this author could identify with even if he could not identify with the man in his time.

In a better time and place, these thirty pages, with a dash of thoughts from the end, would have been distilled into an opinion piece in a modern newspaper, the sort that Norman Mailer did so well, but the subject matter (and the liberal and determined use of street terms for private parts and acts) would not have permitted it in his day. So he writes for close friends and posterity and we must read this as the latter.

As a result, the essay is self-indulgent. Yet it contains truths, albeit often expressed in that classically elliptical literary form that American essayists can prefer over simple clarity as if being an intellectual demands that some things not be explained further even if it might be easy to do so.

Miller has a vision of sex that might be called sacred-sexual today. He cannot divorce it from the emotion of love. He regards with contempt (as he notices women do) the tough guy obsessed with sexual performance and unable to make a commitment (though Miller is not talking about the commitment of traditional Judaeo-Christian morality).

Indeed, to be a man for Miller is not to bed women (as male culture crudely suggested until quite recently) but to love women and seek out a communion with life. In this sense, there are very few real men in the world - a more startling proposition to the reader then than today when a real man would have been widely seen as an unemotional potential killing machine and home provider. This was, after all, only twelve years on from the Second World War.

He is sharp on the effects of this on women ...

" The American ... oblivious of everything a woman has to offer except her body. He will treat an exceptional woman like a whore and fall madly in love with a nitwit ... What frightens the shit out of him is to give himself body and soul. The American woman, consequently, is frequently a love starved creature, clamouring for the moon. She will make a man work himself to the bone to satisfy her silly whims. Given free rein, she becomes truly insatiable."

Ouch! - does that not capture perfectly the Judaeo-Christian Anglo-Saxon culture of convention that has neither truly happy men or truly happy women in it? Or rather where some who are happy in such an environment have the help of an entire culture in bearing down on a partner, male or female, who is not.

And that is the point. Some men and some women have been oppressed by their brothers and sisters. This is not a system that works exclusively for men against women or women against men but in favour of the conventional and timid against the creative and lively. It is not a gender war but a war between personality types: "For some sex leads to sainthood; for others it is the road to hell."

There is also a tantric quality to his thinking - not in that cod-'namaste' form so beloved of modern thirty-somethings in California and North London but in its true nature as an engagement with the left hand path of darkness, repulsion and the margins. He refers once to Buddhism but only to make the point that desire cannot be eradicated but must be used for self development (though he is not crystal clear on this or, indeed, most points).

This aspect of self development is where I probably come closest to his views - not in the primacy of sex (although sexual, I see it as merely a facet of the diamond and not the diamond itself as does Miller himself) but in the value of sexuality as tool of personal development for oneself and one's partner.

I also share his view, partly Reichian we suspect, that the actual health of a culture and its propensity to violence and brutality does have some connection to the level at which persons with differing sexualities (including the wholly a-sexual) are allowed to be free in their expression without causing harm to others.

Miller goes into a somewhat fantastic riff on the new society that might emerge if this was recognised - this is his one lapse into daft 'public intellectualism' - but his mix of noble savage meets new age is rather silly. There is some 'age of innocence' stuff that really does not stand up to scrutiny at all. He is still a man of his time in believing in exceptional men and great religious leaders, a position scarcely tenable amongst most thinking people today.

Yet his analysis of the culture of his day is not stupid, although, in my view, the process of social improvement through sexual freedom may be possible, it is a long process involving the settling of more material concerns and a determined assault on authority.

Resources are scarce and authority bites back so the good society is a long way off yet. It cannot be hurried. Free spirits would do well to conserve their agenda, protect their freedoms, cut back the ambitions of any future Constantines and assist others in making society prosperous. But still, as Miller puts it, "If there is something wrong about our attitude to sex then there is something wrong with our attitude towards bread, towards money, towards work, towards play, towards everything."

His approach is not only avowedly 'spiritual' but seen in religious terms (I go with the former but not the latter). He also sees women as persons in themselves rather than as objects for use. Indeed, the first thirty pages, though perhaps unsatisfactorily for many modern women, is a determined assault on the idea that men and women should treat each other clinically or as tools.

Beneath his maleness and use of prostitutes and easy sex, a sex-positive feminist is working hard to get out. It is no accident that it is often women who prefer to read Miller (and Anis Nin) nowadays rather than men, who can get meatier fare elsewhere. But, at the end of the day, he is still caught between worlds with no public debate to help hone his thoughts. Even his five marriages testify to ambiguity (the last to a Japanese pop singer nearly fifty years his junior) - the jewel of high sexuality is still being set in the stone of convention.

What Miller is really doing is trying to create space for 'his' world, as we all do. With some courage, given the period, he calls this world, the 'Land of Fuck'. The cognitive assault here is as sharp now as then but he is not talking about some cold-hearted permanent orgy amongst strangers - quite the opposite. He is struggling towards another vision where emotional engagement is not sanctified as eternal, caught in aspic, but is still recognised as 'true', naturally driven towards its physical expression.

Both parties in a relationship (although he does not state this directly, being a little egotistic as artists often are) should leave the process in better state than when they left it. The biological truth is probably that, for whatever neurochemical reason, Miller needs the process of 'fuck', actually the process of intimate confused engagement with another person, in order to be Henry Miller and that this process of discovery inevitably reaches a natural termination unless renewed positively through consent and understanding (perhaps the private dream of all such men).

In a sense, not truly being a 'swinger' (where emotion is deliberately laid aside from sex) or a 'romantic' (where sex is something inconvenient and perhaps to be avoided as soiling a dream), Miller insists on merging the two - even with prostitutes. He may not love a hooker in quite the same way as a wife but he is determined that she be treated as a person and not an object - a lesson for the drafters of current legislation going through the British Parliament.

Nor does he claim to understand sexuality. He is not interested in understanding it. He is interested in experiencing it. To him (indeed, I share this) it is a component of the 'life force', that which drives us to creativity and becoming. Life is not linear nor is it ordered. Sexual expression, by its very nature, represents the non-linear and disordered nature of being more than do most other expressions of that force.

His vision is existentialist, there is no doubt about that. It is also a life of struggle freely chosen. He points out that there is disconnect between the person he is to those who know him and his writings and that this exists in their minds not his.

His book reeks with frustration at not being understood. He is not the hypocrite. They are blind to his nature. He is not even a proselytiser for sex but for a freedom of which he would be a beneficiary. If we have to bring politics into this, he is an anarchist.

And what he says about 1940 and 1957 could equally apply to 2009 - "Today we seem animated almost exclusively by fear. We fear even that which is good, that which is healthy, that which is joyous." Fear, he appears to suggest, can only be overcome by taking calculated risks or, in the words of others, 'just do it!' And do it with integrity - "If we live like weasels, we fuck like weasels; if we behave like monsters, we die like monsters. Now we eat, sleep, work, play - and even fuck - like automatons. It is the land of nod, with everyone spinning like tops."

He adds: "If we were truly awake we would be stunned by the horror of everyday life. No one in his right senses could possibly do the crazy things which are now demanded of us every moment of the day. We are all victims, whether on top, at the bottom or in the middle. There is no escape, no immunity."

In fact, things are not that bad now. A residual fear is still there but the instincts of the population are increasingly to resist being treated as an object by authority. Sexual expression is still naive and perhaps not overly spiritual but great strides have been made in liberating the creative and the lively without oppressing those who prefer convention.

How less resources and the fight-back of authority will affect this balance has yet to be seen, but we are reaching a point of critical mass, assisted by the internet, for libertarians. People who think like Miller are now easily available as bloggers and twitterers without any attempt at censorship. The rage is subsiding and resistance is growing to an inherited culture of violence, especially state violence. Things could even get better.

[m]

My first Henry Miller read! I think I’m going to learn a lot from him, i already have, just from this.

[Fală Victor · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mi se făcuse dor de vocea lui Miller și am recitit acest eseu: cu alți ochi, cu alte gânduri năclăindu-mi înțelesul și aproape că, aș zice, cu o cu totul altă poftă de viață.

Ai senzația că te-ai așezat la terasa din colț de pe Avenue du Chateau și din întâmplare dai peste Henry Miller la masa alăturată, iar el, în plină dispoziție, îți vorbește despre Lumea Futului, cu toată deplinătatea experienței lui biografice și îți mai dă și niște sfaturi despre scris.

Apoi îi arăți că ai și tu o carte iar el îți laudă titlul. Minunat. )))))

[Matthew Ted · Rating 3 out of 5]

75th book of 2020.

Fairly interesting, but not nearly as interesting as the writing which Miller displays in his fiction, or notably the only fiction of his I've read so far: Black Spring. Without his incredible writing to go with it, this wasn't nearly as impressive. Miller was a bit of an arse, I suppose. But he wrote well. I'll put some quotes below - the language is awful. C-words, the lot. Avert your eyes here if you'd rather not read about them. It's about to get vulgar and crude.

Ergo, fuck your brains out while there is still time!

No matter how attached I became to a 'cunt', I was always more interested in the person who owned it. A cunt doesn't live a separate, independent existence. Nothing does. Everything is interrelated. Perhaps a cunt, smelly though it may be, is one of the prime symbols for the connection between all things. To enter life by way of the vagina is a good a way as any. If you enter deep enough, remain long enough, you will find what you seek. But you've got to enter with heart and soul - and check your belongings outside. (By belongings I mean - fears, prejudices, superstitious.)

In short- nice sentiments, but horribly put.

[Solodchi Andreea · Rating 3 out of 5]

Un eseu despre lumea erotică și-a decadenței umane, redat c-un limbaj direct, lipsit de pudoare, în care autorul își relevă experiențele sale sexuale din anii clocotitori ai junimii. Pe baza lor, el își formulează propriile concluzii filozofice, destul de deșănțat și licențios exprimate. O lume a desfrâului cu rădăcini adânc înfipte în dorințe dezinhibate de nestăvilit, mustind de nebunii ani ai tinereții.

[Nara · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Para viver, devemos não só estar despertos, mas ser despertados. Se estivéssemos realmente acordados, ficaríamos chocados com o horror da vida cotidiana. Ninguém em posse das suas faculdades mentais seria capaz de fazer as coisas que exigem de nós a todo momento do dia. Somos todos vítimas, quer no topo, na base ou no meio. Não há escape, nem imunidade."

[Courtney · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read this through twice. Tough to wade through but starting to love this style of writing, maybe because I started with Breakfast at Tiffany's and just have to get used to the turn of phrase? Either way, some real fucking gems of wisdom in this stream of consciousness, sometimes I just stopped and reread passages over and over and then took photos of them. I'd love to make some into posters and read every day. Now I'm just being a sap.

Gotta read more classics...

[Quân Khuê]

It'd be immoral to rate this book, but I'm sure I will read it again :)

[Elena Neacşu · Rating 3 out of 5]

Carte a justificării alegerilor scriitoricești precedente, Henry Miller amestecă printre argumente si episoade fundamentale pentru formarea percepției si a convingerilor sale nu numai asupra sexului, dar si a vieții in sine. Spune, intr-adevăr, niște lucruri interesante, dar nu nemaiauzite. 3.5

"Totul merge mână-n mână. Sănătatea psihică nu face casa buna cu compromisul si artificialitatea. Daca trăim ca nevăstuicile, ne futem ca nevăstuicile; daca ne comportam ca niște monștri, murim ca niște monștri. Acum mâncam, dormim, muncim ca niște automate. Țara adormiților - toți ne învârtim ca niște sfârleze.
Ca sa trăiască, cineva nu trebuie doar sa fie treaz, ci si trezit. Daca am fi cu adevărat treji am ramane înmărmuriți in fata ororii de zi cu zi. Nimeni in toate mințile n-ar putea face lucrurile nebunești care ni se cer in fiecare moment al zilei. Suntem cu toții victime, fie ca suntem deasupra, la fund ori la mijloc. Nu exista scăpare, nici imunitate."

[Ada Brito · Rating 4 out of 5]

“He argues that sex is at the heart of his writing because it is at the heart of life - a vital force as essential as bread, money, work or play”.

Sou fã assumida do Henry Miller e da sua autenticidade. E a beleza da natureza humana não tem de preencher necessariamente os padrões. Somos, primariamente, seres animais e carnais.

[Rob Van Heijningen · Rating 3 out of 5]

grappig mannetje, die Henry Miller!

[Krikri Leigh · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book feels like a horcrux for rape culture and toxic masculinity. Miller brags about his sexual exploits under the guise of some half-assed philosophical musings. He brags about having sex with his wife's mother and basically raping women. He also just kind of pompously talks about his own work? This book was so short but I still zoned out after he referred to women as c****, "Puritanical bitches", "whores" and more in the span of 70 pages. He also bemoans the fact that he has to pay prostitutes. Literally shut up Henry.

If you want to read non fiction about sexuality in the early 20th century, please read anything else.

[Giulia Yoko Galbarini · Rating 4 out of 5]

Why are we so full of restraint? Why do we not give in all directions? Is it fear of losing ourselves?

[Emma Martin · Rating 2 out of 5]

Some parts were really interesting and insightful, but I didn't like some of the author's views on womens' attitude to sex and love as they seemed misguided and ignorant.

[Lukáš Palán · Rating 4 out of 5]

Čauky mňauky.

Vydání, co jsem šlohl u dvou taliánů na večeři, obsahuje též povídku Max, která byla tak za 6 z 10. Že mi ale Riccardo udělal dobrý rizoto a Deborah jednou šáhla na koleno, zvedám na 7/10.

The World of Sex začíná klasickýma kundovinama, který Miller šlehá zprava zleva a to hned od útlého věku, kdy první vagíny viděl již v šesti letech. Jiná doba! Za mě už byly holky na pískovišti dost cudný. Poté se Svět sexu přelije do vyprávění o jeho manželství, kdy klátil matku manželky a její kamarádky, když šel ven s kočárkem a jestli tohle není ráj, tak nevím co už. Možná jist pizzu udělanou jenom z Jaggermeistera? Nicméně, vše finišuje ve větších rozměrech, dojde na život, osud, náš úděl a podobný věci a za tenhle Camusovský twist dávám 9/10.

[Ramakanth Domada · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed the book at some parts. Author presents an atrociously liberal view of sex and it's nature in an honest way. I will have to read author's previous work and read the book again to grasp it better.

[Zenon Mesić · Rating 5 out of 5]

A very well needed refreshment after Tropic of Cancer and Black Spring.

[kaleigh · Rating 4 out of 5]

so much more than just discourse on sex; there’s love and light and life and death — death and sex. definitely weird at times but what’s henry miller without a little weirdness

[angel]

He's an entertaining writer but I didn't care for this much

[Jim Beatty · Rating 5 out of 5]

For company I had such vital spirits as Nietzsche, Emerson, Thoreau, Whitman, Fabre, Havelock, Ellis, Maeterlinck, Strindberg, Burgson, Herbert Spencer.

[Nate Jordon · Rating 4 out of 5]

A brief look inside the writer's mind, technique, style, philosophy - the method to his madness. As ever when we read Henry Miller, he gives us nothing short of brutal honesty - about himself and the existential world. Though there are countless gems to be mined in Miller's work, here are a few I culled from this short treatise:

"Like every man, I am my own worst enemy. Unlike most men, however, I also know that I am my own savior."

"We clutter the earth with our inventions, never dreaming that possibly they are unnecessary—or disadvantageous. We devise astounding means of communication, but do we communicate with one another? We move our bodies to and fro at incredible speeds, but do we really leave the spot we started from? Mentally, morally, spiritually, we are fettered. What have we achieved in mowing down mountain ranges, harnessing the energy of mighty rivers, or moving whole populations about like chess pieces, if we ourselves remain the same restless, miserable, frustrated creatures we were before? To call such activity progress is utter delusion."