Writers Write II

I have been reading Henry Miller On Writing and it is just wonderful. Ironically, Robert Ellis over at Mystics of the Ordinary and I discovered this book at the same time and have both been reading it. He has blogged about it before. There is just noone like Henry Miller – for better or for ill – but, even at his most raw, Miller manages to be likeable. Hemingway once said, "There is no malice in Henry." Miller was critical of much of Hemingway’s work but then admitted that he never would have gone to Paris had it not been for The Sun Also Rises.

But Miller loved writing and in this book, culled from segments of his other work, he talks about that over and over. His oft-repeated premise is that writers must write and not give a damn what people think of their writing. If you write you do so because that is what you do and whether or not others approve of what you have to say or how you say it is immaterial. I certainly appreciate his sentiments. "Being an artist," Miller says, "is a process of stripping away. A successful artist dies completely naked."

I’ve been thinking about that a lot because I know how true it is and how hard it is. In order to survive in any art form you have to develop a very thick skin and not give in to the soul-killers and the wet blankets. I suppose that might be said of any endeavor that is worth pursuing but in the arts it is particularly necessary – in no small part due to the fact that for ever artist there are fifty critics and, as has been pointed out time and again, scratch a critic and you’ll find a failed artist.

Julia Cameron says there are artists and shadow-artists. I suppose that is not unlike the shadow side of the personality in Jung – the dark side that most people don’t want to own. Those without the nerve or tenacity or plain old bullheadedness to stick with their own art are often the most brutally critical of others.

So how do you strip away the layers, bare the self, and maintain a tough hide at the same time? Good question. Miller would say, just do it. Just write and don’t worry about who reads your work and what they think of it. God knows he didn’t.

When I was much younger and read his Tropic books I, like many people, was dumbfounded by his graphic talk about sex. Later, when I understood more about writing (and about sex) I understood that all Miller’s painstaking descriptions of his own sexual exploits were a somewhat clumsy attempt to unveil a greater, more profound reality in the sexual act. Now, considerably older, more experienced and wiser, I think Miller was on to something but that he made one very bad mistake in his endless sexual passages – he tended to forget there was someone else there with him. Still, it is hard to miss the celebratory tone of his writing – he wanted sex to be brought out of the Victorian closet it had been stuffed in for so long and appreciated for its own sweet sake. I wonder what he would think of the state of American sexuality today!

Miller once said, "I feel that America is essentially against the artist, that the enemy of America is the artist, because he stands for individuality and creativeness, and that’s unAmerican somehow." Interesting sentiments in these schizophrenic times! American duality is everywhere – we celebrate the notion of individuality but deplore people who chose to veer from the norm and go their own way. We use sex as a standard of everything - success, attractiveness, entertainment – but we deplore immorality. We make an entire industry of entertainment but belittle artists who don’t give us what we want. Miller had it right.

But writers write, painters paint, dancers dance, and singers sing. And the shadow artists carp and complain while life – and art – go on.

Thanks for reading.