While one may see in this book many of the characteristics, themes and incidents of Miller's writing that would one day cause him to be recognized a true original, if not truely great, I doubt that this is a book that anyone other than a die hard Miller fan would like. It is early stuff for Miller, who was just learning his own voice as a writer, and lacks the exuberance and passion of his later work. It probably will find its place mostly as an item to be studied by Miller scholars but I can't imagine actually reading it for pleasure when one could turn to the later and much better books like the 'Tropic' books and Sexus, Nexus and Plexus.

Some of us think that Miller is a great writer, but he had not yet become one when he wrote this.

Although, Mr. Miller, was not young when he wrote this novel, he was without a doubt, still in his full mental faculties. I love this man. When you can't sleep at night, or want something to make you laugh, or cry (at times). The works of Henr Miller fits just what you are looking for at all times. Every concievable emotion is in every book by him. Every soul should at least read one of his novels before they die! This man was a truly unrecognized genius and it is a shame that we live in this modern age and still can't give some credit to a man who revolutionized literature for an entire generation

I'm glad I didn't miss this book. So many literary works seem to contain some vengeance or spite, but this is the first work of criticism that I've come across which studies the constant of revenge across a number of authors.

The betrayals described in the book are extreme, and include a homosexual husband writing of his bride's "frigidity" while the two are still on their honeymoon. The book is not for the young or squeamish reader, as Desalvo describes in detail some bizarrely depraved acts committed by adults upon the chidren in their care. There were a few letters from an incestuous grandmother that I found quite disturbing, and would prefer to have skipped.

This is a type of book I never thought I would encounter - an absolutely captivating work of literary criticism. I couldn't put it down.

quirky, interesting letters written by Miller on a variety of subjects with some common themes running throughout.

Hilarious, educational and moving pieces that make for a nice complement to your Miller collection.

This history of the early years of the Dallas Opera covers the period from 1957, when the Dallas Civic Opera was inaugurated by Lawrence Kelly and Nicola Rescigno, to 1976, two years after Kelly's death. If nothing else, the profusion of production photographs, many rarely seen, would make this book worth perusal. Ronald L. Davis is a professor of history who has written about opera before. His workmanlike writing style cannot entirely avoid the occasional feeling of simply plodding through descriptions of the productions, with these singers, that producer, that director, et al. Still, overall, he manages to convey the excitement of these years, when the Dallas company brought stars of the caliber of Callas, Sutherland and Zeffirelli, in operas that the Met and other mainstream companies wouldn't touch, such as Alcina, Medea and L'Italiana in Algeri. The brashness and charm of Lawrence Kelly, whose vision started the company and whose charm and persuasiveness often kept it going through financial crises that would have sunk other organizations, emerges clearly as well.

I read this book years ago. It was all too brief. I wanted to know more, much more about Cabeza de Vaca. Henry Miller offers an amusing introduction to this short work.

This is an unclassified version of a study originally done by OSS psychologists on the selection of personnel suitable for clandestine operations. This means those in which the individual is inserted into enemy territory and then left alone to live under deep cover, always living in a state of stress and tension.
Compare this with covert operations in which groups of individuals are inserted for the purpose of operational support to indigenous forces or for independent raids and sabotage. On covert ops there is usually a safe zone where some can relax and unwind while others watch and the individual is not only armed but often uniformed as well. Wearing a uniform does not protect one from summary execution as a spy if captured but it does gives a valid claim to POW status and one can hope it will be granted.
Thus, it takes a very special mental state to operate alone and to expect nothing but torture and death if captured. And hope that execution will be swift. Few can stand the tension that results from being alone in a hostile environment.

Henry Miller kind of arrived late to the whole expatriate game of the 1920's in which writers like Hemingway and Fitzgerald blazed their way across the literary firmament. By the time Miller had gotten there, America was in the throws of the Great Depression and the shadow of Hitler was beginning to move across Europe. Miller moved to Paris at the instigation, or more likely, manipulation of his wife June. Soon after he met and began a long affair with Anais Nin. In 1935, Miller went to New York, his former home, in pursuit of Nin and produced Aller Retour New York, about his adventures in his old home city.

This book is actually a 77 page letter to his friend Alfred Perles back in Paris. On the surface it seems a letter of hate about the United States. Miller had found his place in France and after that, no other country could come close to him. They were all inferior. He resents the fact that America is new and has no real history. Miller feels more at home with decadence and rot and ruins, decay. He says that "nothing vital was ever begun here....nothing of value." He offers up critiques of the artistic types in Greewich Village by showing up the literary salon hags who vampire off of writers and artists. Miller hates technology and prophecizes about the time when skyscrapers will rule the horizons. I'm sure if he had lived to our day, he would have hated the internet and computers. Most of his hate seems artifical, maybe a defense mechanism that allows him to escape his past, for instance, the first wife and child that he abandoned. Or to do away with what he considers the past, he has to insult it. He has some nice descriptive passages and even though he wrote one thing, you can sense that underneath it, he enjoys writing about New York.

Aller Retour is very instructive in showing the underside of literature, in the sense that for every famous writer around back then, there was a Henry Miller type scumming around in the gutters looking for bare subsistence. It also offers nice vignettes of the artistic life of the time and a glimpse into the philosophy that he lived his life by.

Aller Retour New York.. This book was written between the time of Tropic of Cancer and Tropic of Capricorn. If you are unknown to Henry Miller, I highly recommend that you read Tropic of Cancer first. In this short but good book, Miller reflects on the gay time he has while he is home visiting New York and getting ready to travel back to Paris. His writting style is more like a journal than a novel. He speeks of the I. State building.. the travel back on board a ship over the Atlantic... About the complete emptiness the sea cause a person to have.. about the mindnumbing boredom of life.. The entire novel is just one long letter which he continues over an extended period of time. I am an avid fan of millers way of writting because I connect so much to it, I hope you do too.

This collection of letters makes Henry Miller look like a pathetic old geezer. Miller, who if you read multiple biographic works on him, never was much of a "real person", but some kind of morphic creature who would become fascinated with something for a while & his entire existence would be geared towards that thing. Sometimes it was UFOs, sometimes the idea of what he thought China was....seemingly anything and everything, just so long as Miller could run away & hide from being an actual individual. During the part of his life covering these letters, he was in his "Japanese phase". Hoki Miller was an attractive woman who was a cheesy lounge singer & wannabe actress working at a Los Angeles Japanese resteraunt. Miller fell in love with some image he concocted & Hoki saw him for the patsy he was. All this woman did was tease & lead on Miller, and like a fool, he went right along. She never gave him the sexual play he so longed for, but he bought her a new white Jaguar that she quickly smashed up. Miller kept tossing money at her, and even went to Japan with her to try to use his fame there to promote Hoki The Hack's failing acting career. The letters in this collection are no literary masterpieces, and would only be of intrest to hardcore Miller fans or maybe somebody looking for a laugh at a rich & famous old man's expense. If you're not really interested in Miller's personal life, I'd suggest spending your money on something else.

This is a great collection of letters that will give great insight to Henry Miller's fans. The letters follow this tumultuous relationship & show Henry Miller at his most childish and pathetic. Hoki was a scam artist extraordinaire & Henry went along for the ride, while paying for the car, the insurance, gas, food along the way, etc. This is a must read for any Henry Miller fan. Others will find it kind of pointlessly pitiful.

I read this book as part of an English course on late-19th and 20th century American literature. It's the first time I've read a novel by Henry James, having so far only seen the movie adaptations of 'Portrait of a Lady' and 'Washington Square'. Having been wary of reading James (because of his reputation for dense, convoluted prose) I was surprised at this novel's relatively brisk plot and overall readability. The story itself, ostensibly a simple one about one man's inability to understand a seemingly complicated woman, also has interesting things to say about gender, class and the relationship between the United States (personified by the heroine) and the rest of the Western world. I was actually somewhat amazed that the image of America created through the characterization of Daisy Miller still rings true 125 years after this book's publication.

As is often the case for Henry James, there is scarcely a detail of his work that can be made better somehow.

DAISY MILLER: A STUDY, 1878, is among the principal novellas of history and literature. Very simply, the story involves a young girl Daisy Miller, wandering through Europe, and from America. She is sensitive and capricious. Her ways attract attention, such that perhaps she appears a lustrous woman of carnal desires, or disrespectful to cultures not her own, or stupid. At any event, she catches the eye of another tourist, Mr. Winterbourne, a "nice guy" who not unlike the nice guys of our own world lucks out. He does not get Daisy, but watches as she kisses another and loses herself to unappreciatve men. She does this from anger, resentment, and want of attention. She becomes a symbol of many things, and in the end she dies. The book has been debated for decades.

The dialogue is so well crafted as to be sacred. No further editing of this story is possible, for James took very great pains to edit his work multiple times over. And here, we see a flow of talking and happenings that seem to real to even be on the page. As for instance the communication of Mr. Winterbourne and Daisy's little brother (I believe). The little boys talks, and behaves, as a little boy would. And, Mr. Winterbourne likewise behaves as a young man would to a young boy. Greatest of all are the marvellous dialogues between Daisy and Mr. Winterbourne. They flirt at times, and one feels Winterbourne's longing for her. They feel his sadness, a real sadness, as when she is not feeling for him nearly as deeply. I likened myself to to the man.

I am glad to know that Mr. James was credited as having been "the Master."

I hadn't read James for about eight years or so when I came across a copy of Daisy Miller in a pile of discarded books at a local university. It sat on my shelf for a while longer, as I knew full well that James writes in thick sentences, making up for the lack of volume by quite a bit.

What I found was what I have come to expect from James, even in his early works. This book does a great deal in terms of pulling together many levels of interpretaion: Old World versus New World, common versus exclusive, and also the chaser and the chased.

This last viewpoint in particular is what stuck with me. We have a young girl, and a young man. They meet once for a few days, and the young man becomes utterly fixated on her, if for any other reason that she is playing, in his view, hard to get. When she turns her attention elsewhere, the ante is doubled and tripled when, for a variety of reasons most likely centered around our young hero Winterbourne, the American society in Rome starts to give our heroin the "cold shoulder". Given that James writes most often to examine the person most in focus in the novel, I tend to atribute most of the troubles of this young girl to both herself and Winterbourne, not just the society of the time. This is far from a safe academic interpretation, however.

The notes included in the book are helpful for getting into the mindset of the typical reader of James' day, but are not distracting. Overall, this would probably be suitible for an ambitios middle school student, and just right for most high school students.

Crazy Cock is Henry Miller's third full length novel and it tells the tale of the triangle between Henry, June and Mara Andrews (aka Jean Kronski). The novel is not very well written, filled with pedantic, prolix and baroque passages, as Miller struggles mightily to find his voice. Miller fans will find this work quite interesting, as it is another variation on The Rosy Crucifixion. However, this book is definately not a good place to start your journey through the works of Henry Miller, as there are many better places to begin (Tropic of Cancer, Air Conditioned Nightmare) your journey.

a prelude to te tropic novels. a journey to the buildup to the better books afterwards

Miller is undeniably one of the literary giants. This is a wonderful and enlightening insight into his sourjorn to that height. It's far from perfect, but to any hardcore Miller fan it will be a treat. They will get a real sense of "the master" chipping away at the almost singular stone that would forever be his muse.