Genius and Lust: A Journey through the Major Writings of Henry Miller
Mailer's anthology of Henry Miller's writing with 88 pages of his own commentary - his lengthiest piece of literary criticism. Grove, October 1976; jacket drawing of Miller by Norris Church Mailer.
Genius and Lust: A Journey through the Major Writings of Henry Miller is Mailer’s anthology of Henry Miller, published by Grove in October 1976. Across 576 pages it gathers excerpts from ten of Miller’s books — Black Spring, the two Tropics, the Rosy Crucifixion trilogy, Sunday after the War, The Colossus of Maroussi, Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch, and The Air-Conditioned Nightmare — framed by a foreword and nine sections of commentary, some 88 pages in all: Mailer’s lengthiest piece of sustained literary criticism. The book is dedicated “to Henry Miller”; its jacket drawing of Miller is by Norris Church Mailer. Discarded titles included “Mailer on Miller” and “The Cosmic Demon.”
Mailer’s case for Miller is extravagant — “One had to go back to Melville to find a rhetoric which could prove as noble under full sail … there is nothing like Henry Miller when he gets rolling” — and reads Miller as a writer of American genius warring with his own narcissism. Sections of the commentary appeared in advance as “Henry Miller: Celebrating a Cause Célèbre” (76.3) and “Genius and Lust, Narcissism” (76.4); excerpts reappear in Pieces and Pontifications (82.16).
Related pages
- Henry Miller | Norris Church Mailer
- “Cause Célèbre” (76.3) | “Genius and Lust, Narcissism” (76.4)
- 1976
- Henry Miller (66.14) | The Idol and the Octopus: Political Writings by Norman Mailer on the Kennedy and Johnson Administrations (68.11) | Writers' Writers (77.11)
- Pieces and Pontifications (82.16)