Miller Time-- On Henry Miller

" Henry Miller is not a writer; he’s a friend you turn to when your apartment walls close in on you and all the world begins to stink. When you’re most exasperated, Miller is there with his alternately cajoling, absurd, sincere, outraged, sage-like, funny voice, ruminating and gassing in a calm way. Miller’s voice always comes from the quietest corner of the bar. The rest of the occupants are slaughtering each other, offering polemical speeches, toasting their various diseases, and gouging their own thighs and arms with their fingernails in an effort to rid themselves of the itch of being truly alive. Unlike his distant cousin Céline, Miller never gets clobbered by these barroom brawlers. He gets close enough to the action to observe the lice and the whispered endearments between blows, but he never gets whacked by a piece of flying furniture. “Don’t struggle; get in the flow,” he advises in book after book. Much of this “flow” for Miller is in the flotsam – all sorts of deranged and eccentric characters – who are both more lively and can tell us more about life than comfortable citizens at the center. He doesn’t see the same divisions the rest of us have been taught to see. Wealthy hoarders or bourgeoisie hoarders may be deplorable, but the feeling I get after 30 years of browsing through Miller is that he’d knocked aside all compartmentalization; he would sit down for a meal with anybody who was unaffected and learn from him, provided of course that the companion sprung for the meal. Miller is the greatest of all freeloaders, surpassing even that other Joyce."...............

This is the opening lines from the opening essay in "MILLER , BUKOWSKI AND THEIR ENEMIES " (2nd Edition) Quite simply one of the best and most invigorating books you could ever read. Guillermo/William 

writes with passion, integrity ,fire, passion and a whole lot of bile about a range of writers he loves and the industry he has plenty of reason to despise. It is magnificent.

Go buy it. You won't regret it.

It's available on Kindle too.  

The Trump Effect

I can't turn on the TV or Radio now without having to put up with one man. Donald J Trump. The whole world seems hypnotised by his every act and word. I'm no Trump advocate (He clearly is dangerous on certain points) but no one seems to be able to find anyone who supports him to talk to. It reminds me of the post crash Ireland where I could not find one person who had ever (Ever,  ever) voted for Fianna Foul. The non presence of ordinary people who happen to agree with 'The Wall' or 'The Muslim Ban' says a lot about both the political climate and the quality of a lot of mainstream media who have an agenda of their own to push. The visceral anger I see not only on television but as I walk and live on the streets of Dublin seems to me to be in at least some sense false. 

I mean it seems to cloak a rage at almost everything in life and Trump is just an easy, open, acceptable target to voice off against. Those who I do find who apologetically say "Trump is kinda right" or who immediately go on a rant about 'Foreigners' or 'Bankers' also seem to be using the 'Trump' brand as leverage to vent some spleen.  This crippling modern western system of living never gets a mention.  

The fact that the man or woman next to you may be struggling too never gets a mention. Forget politics, that man there, that woman there, maybe even that child there is probably experiencing something akin to how you feel. We all seem to ignore that simple human truth.

William Joyce never ignores the Human. He is no fan of the 'Mob' as he often calls it, in fact I can't think of many who rage as hard against it as he does, or so successfully guards his personal borders, and I know on this issue he would tell me to "Go for a swim and forget about it" but it is his very humanity which draws me in. He sees those that struggle even in the heart of all the glitter and can't tolerate those who don't. He'll give you a chance but forget you as quickly if you don't grasp it with both hands. He is for and with the outsider, be that a Trump outsider or an AntiTrump outsider. It's a rare gift from a rare man. 

Go read him.