Locked up in the toilet.

I can think of no street in America, or of people inhabiting such a street, capable of leading one on toward the discovery of the self.
I have walked the streets in many countries of the world but nowhere have I felt so degraded and humiliated as in America.
I think of all the streets in America combined as forming a huge cesspool.
A cesspool of the spirit in which everything is sucked down and drained away to everlasting shit.
Over this cesspool the spirit of work weaves a magic wand; palaces and factories spring up side by side, and munitions plants and chemical works and steel mills and sanatoriums and prisons and insane asylums.
The whole continent is a nightmare producing the greatest misery of the greatest number.

The whole continent of America is a huge volcano whose crater is temporarily concealed by a moving panorama which is partly dream , partly fear, partly despair.
Everywhere is the same fundamental urge to slay, to ravage, to plunder.
Outwardly they seem like a fine outstanding people: healthy, optimistic, courageous.
Inwardly they are filled with worms.
A tiny spark and they blow up.

In America they are constantly running amok.
What they need is an outlet for their energy, for their blood lust.
Europe is bled regularly by war.
America is pacifistic and cannibalistic.
Outwardly it seems to be a beautiful honeycomb, with all the drones crawling over each other in a frenzy of work; inwardly it is a slaughterhouse, each man killing off his neighbour and sucking the juice from his bones.
Superficially it looks like a bold, masculine world; actually it’s a whorehouse run by women, with the native sons acting as pimps and the bloody foreigners selling their flesh.
Nobody knows what it is to sit on his ass and be content.
That happens only in the films where everything is faked, even the fires of hell.
The whole continent is sound asleep and in that sleep a grand nightmare is taking place.

Every time something critical about the United States is published on this blog, several fervent and loyal blog readers send hate mail.
Anonymously of course and in the worst language only found in the gutter.
Reading today’s posting and the opinion expressed above about the United States, the hate mailers will jump on the opportunity.
But they are too quick.

The text about America we are reading today in this posting is not written nor representing the opinion of this nomadic photographer.
It comes from an author called Henry Miller and can be found in his book “Tropic of Capricorn” written in 1938….

Henry Miller, born in New York, who lived from December 26, 1891 to June 7, 1980, is considered one of the greatest American authors.




Several of his books were banned in the United States for decades because he wrote rather explicitly about sexuality.

As a student at art school in the late 60’s, Henry Miller’s books Tropic of Cancer, Nexus, Plexus and Sexus were read.
At the time fascinating books to read but only for the explicit sexuality.

Recently, in the Paperback Shack in Temecula, California, a second hand bookstore where most books are purchased to have in the library in the Fuso Szulc, Henry Miller’s “Tropic of Capricorn” was found.
As this particular book of Miller was never read it was purchased.
In the last couple of days a serious effort was made to read “Tropic of Capricorn”.
The truth is that half way, deeply disgusted, Henry Miller’s book was thrown into the farthest corner.

Also in this book is explicit sexuality but contrary to the 60’s, in this epoch it is not shocking or even interesting anymore.
The rest of the story is such a strong demonstration of nihilism that it is sickening.

But most shocking is what is Henry Miller’s opinion about his own country and his compatriots.
He seemed to need to justify at the time his move to Paris, France, where he lived as the lover boy of Anais Nin who paid his food and the publication of his first book “Tropic of cancer”.
His emigration to Europe made him piss and shit on where he came from in a flagrant way.

There are American writers who lived and worked during the era of Henry Miller who are highly admired and appreciated.
But Henry Miller is locked up in the toilet for now and forever.

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Henry Miller's book "Tropic of capricorn" can be found by clicking on:
http://books.google.com/books?id=_HAhCxNs-QUC&dq=tropic+of+capricorn&pg=PP1&ots=ONF53_N7p3&sig=xTXaywa-QPaOnh31vmOnvkf1ai0&prev=http://www.google.com/search%3Fq%3Dtropic%2Bof%2Bcapricorn%26ie%3Dutf-8%26oe%3Dutf-8%26aq%3Dt%26rls%3Dorg.mozilla:nl:official%26client%3Dfirefox-a&sa=X&oi=print&ct=title&cad=one-book-with-thumbnail#PPA1,M1








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