The Art and Wisdom of Living by Henry Hand
Henry Miller (Dec 26, 1891–June vii, 1980) was a notoriously disciplined writer. Information technology comes as no surprise, then — given the human relationship between reading and writing, and the importance of learning the parallel skills of both — that he was as well a voracious reader, unafraid to acknowledge the borrowing and repurposing of ideas. In The Books in My Life (public library; public domain), originally published in 1952, he offers a singular lens on his arroyo to reading, using that as a vehicle for a larger meditation on our culture's relationship non just with books, but with cognition itself.
Miller'due south insights touch on modern concerns about the brokenness of industrialized education and repeat Abraham Flexner's 1939 essay on the usefulness of useless cognition:
In this age, which believes that there is a short cut to everything, the greatest lesson to be learned is that the most difficult way is, in the long run, the easiest. All that is set along in books, all that seems so terribly vital and significant, is simply an iota of that from which it stems and which it is inside everyone'southward power to tap. Our whole theory of education is based on the absurd notion that we must learn to swim on state before tackling the h2o. It applies to the pursuit of the arts every bit well equally to the pursuit of knowledge. Men are still existence taught to create past studying other men's works or by making plans and sketches never intended to materialize. The art of writing is taught in the classroom instead of in the thick of life. Students are nonetheless being handed models which are supposed to fit all temperaments, all kinds of intelligence. No wonder we produce better engineers than writers, better industrial experts than painters.
My encounters with books I regard very much as my encounters with other phenomena of life or thought. All encounters are configurate, not isolate. In this sense, and in this sense only, books are as much a office of life as trees, stars or dung. I have no reverence for them per se. Nor do I put authors in any special, privileged category. They are similar other men, no better, no worse. They exploit the powers given them, but every bit any other guild of human being being. If I defend them now and and then — as a class — it is because I believe that, in our social club at to the lowest degree, they have never accomplished the status and the consideration they merit. The great ones, especially, have virtually e'er been treated as scapegoats.
But Miller's fundamental concern is a kind of beefcake of influence, a hope to reverse-engineer the alchemy of where a writer's skillful ideas come up from by honoring his sources of creative spark:
The principal aim underlying this work is to render homage where homage is due, a job which I know beforehand is impossible of accomplishment. Were I to practise it properly, I would have to go downwardly on my knees and thank each bract of grass for rearing its caput. What chiefly motivates me in this vain task is the fact that in general we know all too niggling about the influences which shape a writer's life and work. The critic, in his pompous conceit and arrogance, distorts the true picture beyond all recognition. The author, withal truthful he may retrieve himself to be, inevitably disguises the picture. The psychologist, with his unmarried-track view of things, simply deepens the blur. As writer, I exercise not recollect myself an exception to the rule. I, too, am guilty of altering, distorting and disguising the facts — if 'facts' in that location exist. My conscious effort, withal, has been — peradventure to a fault– in the reverse management. I am on the side of revelation, if non always on the side of dazzler, truth, wisdom, harmony and ever-evolving perfection. In this piece of work I am throwing out fresh data, to be judged and analyzed, or accepted and enjoyed for enjoyment's sake. Naturally I cannot write about all the books, or even all the significant ones, which I accept read in the class of my life. But I do intend to go on writing virtually books and authors until I have exhausted the importance (for me) of this domain of reality.
To have undertaken the thankless task of listing all the books I can call up ever reading gives me extreme pleasure and satisfaction. I know of no author who has been mad enough to attempt this. Perhaps my listing will give rising to more than confusion — but its purpose is not that. Those who know how to read a homo know how to read his books.
(Acquire how to read Carl Sagan and Alan Turing through their reading lists.)
In the preface, reflecting upon the feel of putting his list together, Miller echoes previous considerations of non-reading as an intellectual selection on par with reading itself:
1 of the results of this self-exam — for that is what the writing of this volume amounts to — is the confirmed belief that i should read less and less, not more and more…. I have not read almost as much as the scholar, the bookworm, or fifty-fifty the 'well-educated' man — however I have undoubtedly read a hundred times more I should have read for my own good. But ane out of five in America, information technology is said, are readers of 'books.' But even this small number read far too much. Scarcely any one lives wisely or fully.
Reiterating his ain insights on originality and offering a complement to Susan Sontag's advocacy of direct experience over "ideas," he continues:
The vast body of literature, in every domain, is composed of mitt-me-down ideas. The question — never resolved, alas! — is to what extent information technology would exist efficacious to curtail the overwhelming supply of cheap fodder. One thing is certain today — the illiterate are definitely non the least intelligent among united states. If it be knowledge or wisdom one is seeking, then one had better go direct to the source. And the source is not the scholar or philosopher, not the principal, saint, or teacher, but life itself — direct experience of life. The same is true for art. Here, too, we can manipulate with 'the masters.'
The Books in My Life goes on to explore the cloth of Miller'southward intellectual life, woven of a broader soapbox on creativity and knowledge. Six decades after its publication, it remains equal parts timeless and timely.
↬ Maria Bustillos
Source: https://www.themarginalian.org/2012/07/30/henry-miller-the-books-in-my-life/
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