Tell me it isn't so...
Sexus
...No man would set a word down on paper if he had the courage to live out what he believed in. His inspiration is deflected at the source. If it is a world of truth and beauty and magic that he desires to create, why does he put millions of words between himself and the reality of that world? Why does he defer action--unless it be that, like other men, what he really desires is power, fame, success. 'Books are human actions in death,' said Balzac. Yet having perceived the truth, he deliberately surrendered the angel to the demon which possessed him.
A writer woos his public just as ignominiously as a politician or any other mountebank; he loves to finger the great pulse, to prescribe like a physician, to win a place for himself, to be recognized as a force, to receive the full cup of adulation, even if it be deferred a thousand years. He doesn't want a new world which might be established immediately, because he knows it would never suit him. He wants an impossible world which he is the crowned puppet-ruler dominated by forces utterly beyond his control. He is content to rule insidiously--in the fictive world of symbols--because the very thought of contact with rude and brutal realities frightens him. True, he has a greater grasp of reality than other men, but he makes no effort to impose that higher reality on the world by force of example. He is satisfied just to preach to drag along in the wake of disasters and catastrophes, a death--croaking prophet always with honor, always stoned, always shunned by those who, however unsuited for their tasks, are ready and willing to assume responsibility for the affairs of the world. The truly great writer does not want to write: he wants the world to be a place in which he can live the life of the imagination. The first quivering word he puts to paper is the word of the wounded angel: pain. The process of putting down words is the equivalent to giving oneself a narcotic. Observing the growth of a book under his hands, the author swells with delusions of grandeur. 'I too am a conqueror--perhaps the greatest conqueror of all! My day is coming. I will enslave the world--by the magic of words...' Et cetera ad nauseum...
Henry Miller
...No man would set a word down on paper if he had the courage to live out what he believed in. His inspiration is deflected at the source. If it is a world of truth and beauty and magic that he desires to create, why does he put millions of words between himself and the reality of that world? Why does he defer action--unless it be that, like other men, what he really desires is power, fame, success. 'Books are human actions in death,' said Balzac. Yet having perceived the truth, he deliberately surrendered the angel to the demon which possessed him.
A writer woos his public just as ignominiously as a politician or any other mountebank; he loves to finger the great pulse, to prescribe like a physician, to win a place for himself, to be recognized as a force, to receive the full cup of adulation, even if it be deferred a thousand years. He doesn't want a new world which might be established immediately, because he knows it would never suit him. He wants an impossible world which he is the crowned puppet-ruler dominated by forces utterly beyond his control. He is content to rule insidiously--in the fictive world of symbols--because the very thought of contact with rude and brutal realities frightens him. True, he has a greater grasp of reality than other men, but he makes no effort to impose that higher reality on the world by force of example. He is satisfied just to preach to drag along in the wake of disasters and catastrophes, a death--croaking prophet always with honor, always stoned, always shunned by those who, however unsuited for their tasks, are ready and willing to assume responsibility for the affairs of the world. The truly great writer does not want to write: he wants the world to be a place in which he can live the life of the imagination. The first quivering word he puts to paper is the word of the wounded angel: pain. The process of putting down words is the equivalent to giving oneself a narcotic. Observing the growth of a book under his hands, the author swells with delusions of grandeur. 'I too am a conqueror--perhaps the greatest conqueror of all! My day is coming. I will enslave the world--by the magic of words...' Et cetera ad nauseum...
Henry Miller
posted by rocelyn at 8:19 PM
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