Customer Reviews: Read 25 more reviews...
 AMONG MILLER'S BEST WORKS!!! A MUST READ!!! October 29, 2008
RIZZOB [Rizzob.com] (People's Repubic of Earth)
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
I'm a BIG fan of Henry Miller. The Tropics are among my favorite novels of all times however I do have to agree w/ Bukowski when he says that when Miller's good he's real good & when he's bad he's real bad. I didn't enjoy the Rosy Crucifixion' series that much & his analysis of Rimbaud I found lacking & pedestrian but this book is pure genius! I would rank it third in Miller's library. Exuberant, manic, gleeful, arresting . . . Filled w/ breathless descriptions of the Greek countryside & vibrant portraits of its peoples. However, one must keep in mind of course Miller was over there during the 1930's when Greek people still admired Americans. Nowadays, like everybody else in Europe, they hate us & have no shame in constantly letting you know, so don't use this as a kind of guidebook whilst planning a trip to Greece but rather as a sketch of what it used to be like.
The only drawback I see is that Miller is a little too enthralled w/ the culture. He wrote it shortly after returning, thus, some of his joyful glee is a bit exaggerated. For example, when he says that Greek people are the most beautiful in the world, etc. I spent some time in Greece & all the women I saw over the age of 35 were twice as wide as they were tall & invariably dressed in black for some reason. He also attests to their honest nature but I noticed, while over there, that once I learned a little bit of Greek, the price for a lot of things dropped by half; like speaking Catalan in Barcelona as opposed to Castellano.
Miller rails against fellow travellers, especially the English whom he portrays rather ruthlessly though spend a month in Malaga, Spain or Koh Tao, Thailand & you'll see why.
He also writes that Whitman was the `only great writer America's ever had,' Twain is `for adolescents,' & Rimbaud is 'the greatest of all French poets.' Personally, I agree w/ all three of those crazy statements.
Anyways, brilliant travel writing, not quite up there w/ the Tropics, but definitely worth a read. If you like this one, check out Miller's 'Letters to Emil' which is along the same line. CHEERS Henry, what would we do without you?
rizzob.com
An inner journey through Greece August 3, 2008
Gary Ware (Lake County, California)
Following Henry Miller's Greek adventure on the page nails
the experience of actually being there and following his
footsteps as well.
Love it or hate it: it's a good book February 23, 2008
Diana (Portugal)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I have read many of Miller's books and though I understand that people do have different tastes, I like him so much that it's almost impossible to believe that someone may actually not like him.
Having said this my impression on this book may be suspicious but it's my favorite Miller book. If usually the occasional sex scenes and hard language distract you form evaluating Miller's writing qualities, you have here a great opportunity.
Excellent descriptions (of inner moods and outer landscapes), passionate tone and people oriented. Also a good option for someone who likes travel diaries and an excellent chance to meet Miller's essence: a wanderer.
On this one there's only two options either you find it a drag (and don't even finish it) or you love it. This means that whether you like it or not, it's a good book!
What a writer January 19, 2008
Shalom Freedman (Jerusalem,Israel)
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
What a writer Miller is in this book. It is an autobiographical account of a trip he took to Greece in the late thirties. He had been living in Paris for a couple of years, and makes a lot of denigrating remarks about the rational, limited French in comparison to the adventurous open- minded Greeks. Miller is opinionated, often wrong- headed, narrowly and stupidly anti- American, mistaken completely in his analysis of the poltiical conditions of the world in his time, egoistically lost in his own way of seeing things. But he is also linguistically brilliant, visionary, inspiring and tremendously alive. His accounts of the characters he meets including the Durrells, Seferis and above all the major figure the storyteller, Katzambis are electifying . His love of and appreciation of the Greek landscape and civilization are strong and convincing. At times the feelings he presents seem to be close to being religious visions.
So despite all the carping and the ranting, the slights and mistaken judgments the book thrills by its beauty of language and its celebration of life.
New Directions called this a Travel Book, it's not, it's an EPIC...redeeming, uplifting and poetry in motion. July 10, 2007
ken Oconnell (Newport, RI)
4 out of 5 found this review helpful
I don't think anyone, but Miller, could have painted the splendor of the poverty, beauty and surrealness during 1930's Greece; Miller's Greece and his alone. He saw things like no other person saw them; {"A Greek is alive to the finger-tips; he oozes vitality, he's effervescent, he's ubiquitous in spirit"} to us it's a blade of grass or a branch or a rock, to him it was a testimonial to the times of the people of Greece, and I have never wanted to go anywhere in the world than to Miller's Greece, after reading this journey of cleansing, healing and metaphysical bliss. This is indeed an Epic adventure. An epic indeed: an endless surprise of wonderous expeditions, dangers, wine and friends in a style that is all Miller.
I was 14 when I found this book in my 94 year old grandmothers bookcase in the back den. The intriguing cover pulled me in, and I opened it to a random page, and to this day, nearly 15 years later or so, I come back to it again and again, for guidance, for awakening, for a smile. It is the one book I bring with me on long flights, and the one book I have shared with friends more than any other. It is not so much a view of the places and people of Greece, but more a testimonial to an era, and Miller sure shows he is more Greek than American. This book isn't just about Greece and its magnificent towns, it's about seeing things like no other sees them, and then throwing it up again for us to read and indulge in. The passage:
['No man can really say what joy is until he has experienced peace. And without joy there is no life, even if you have a dozen cars, six butlers, a castle, a private chapel, and a bomb-proof vault. Our diseases are our attachments, be they habits, ideologies, ideals, principles, possessions, phobias, gods, cults, relegions, what you please. Good wages can be a disease just as much as bad wages. Leisure can be just as great a disease as work...surrenderis absolute: if you cling to even the tiniest crumb you nourish the germ which will devour you. As for clinging to God, God long ago abandoned us in order that me might realize the joy of attaining godhood through our own efforts.']
Delecious eh? I remember not being able to sleep that night; being so young, but wanting to understand so much.
The Great Starfish is someone in whom I would have loved to have romped with on the island of Poros. For if I ever go to Greece, if I ever attain this nirvana in which the Buddhist speak of, that in which Miller speaks of when entering Poros for the first time-{"...when suddenly I realized that we were sailing through the streets. If there is one dream which I like above all others it is that of sailing on land. Coming into Poros gives the illusion of the deep dream."} I hope it is, even nearly 80 years later, somewhat the same. I want to smell the lemon groves. I want to sail on the streets coming into Poros. I want to feel like that gentle idiot swaying on the mast, like he says, as if I am 'en route for a shave'. I want to see the bearded men, and ladies hanging their wash out right above my head. I want to sit and have Turkish Coffee with the natives on Hydra and be led around as If I was a spectacle from a native world.
Lawrence Durrell, George Seferiades and Katsimbalis and Miller all indulging in abundant foods, endless wine, and conversation in which I would have loved to have partaken in, must have been intoxicating, rewarding, and full of gusto and history, that I envy. At college I had an advanced fiction class with Stratis Havarias, the founding editor of the Harvard Review, who's father was killed in the concentration camps, and who teaches writing in Greece in the winter, when not doing his only course in summers at the college. He told me he knew George well and had been friends with relatives of Ghika the painter. When he asked the class what their favorite book was, and I told him Colossus, he just beemed, "OHHHHHhhhhh." He said, "Miller's Greece can be yours Ken, if you want it to be. If one thing hasn't changed for your image of Greece once you get there, it's the light. Piercing, unfathomable."
On the last page of my grandmothers copy, which is now part of my collection of novels, because this is most certainly a non-fiction epic, she says, "It's so mystical here, the light, oh my, oh...oh...the light, it's like nothing I have seen anywhrere in my travels. The light is pouring in everywhere, on everything on every surface, and making it all come alive."
{"Light acquires a transcendental quality: it is not the light of the Mediterranean alone, it is something more, something unfathomable, something holy."} *cool, eh*
Miller's light, my grandmothers light, that epic beauty that has made the Colossus my favorite book of all time. I would have liked to have been Miller's friend, yes, I would have liked that very much.
I implore you, lover of books, to read this and take some of the passages and prose with you for eternity, it is that type of writing that sets Miller apart from all the rest.
Thank you.
ken
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