Photo by Ben Wilkin on Unsplash
There's enough written about Holden Caulfield and his creator to fill a small library. When you come upon a nugget of gold you keep digging and the gleam of greed is in your eyes and you're drooling with the hunger and your fingers are cracked and bleeding in the earth.
It's hard to follow that nugget. I kept reading his other works and what I read was mostly good and kept my interest. What I found strange were the stories that fell flat. How can that be? How can you write magic and other stuff that doesn't sing?
This only shows how ignorant, judgemental and lacking in true insight I was when I read those works.
There's a big leap of something or other from 'Much Ado About Nothing' to 'Macbeth'.
The trouble with creating anything that stands out is the follow-up. The man Shakespeare was obviously a genius, but I have to say (and it's only my opinion remember), he wrote quite a bit of fluff for the masses. What's wrong with that? Nothing at all.
There are as many opinions of what is right, good etc as stars in the firmament.
Someone I admire precisely because he couldn't care less what other people thought and who changed the landscape forever was Henry Miller.
I consider him to be one of the greatest writers of modern times. Not because his writing was great, which I think it is, but because he dared to write it. Miller wrote what he perceived to be the truth and nobody liked it. He wrote what he lived and nobody could take it.
My own perception is that his genius came from a searing honesty he could not lie to, could not compromise with. You may not like his writing but you know its as real as your next breath.
He fascinated and repulsed me in equal measure and yet I knew there was something here very few writers reach.
The journey for self-knowledge led me, eventually, away from fiction and I found the truth of J. Krishnamurti. Strangely, I found that Miller also admired this man. Here's a little of what Miller says about him:
"His language is naked, revelatory and inspiring. It pierces the clouds of philosophy which confound our thought and restores the springs of action. He initiated no new faith or dogma, questioned everything, cultivated doubt and perseverance, freed himself of illusion and enchantment of pride, vanity, and every subtle form of dominion over others. . . . I know of no other living man whose thought is more inspiring."
As to the man Miller, he seems to have been a wonderful anomaly. Here's a link to a short piece by Michael Ventura about him.
This one is a little more on what Miller thought about Krishnamurti.
Why is this of interest to me and my blog?
The answer is simple enough. We all seek some confirmation of what we know, who we are, whether deludedly or not doesn't matter. Who's to judge? I concur with many of my Masters that only what I live is real. What comes out of my mouth is suspect.
As an addendum, my own perception of sexuality runs far away from many of Miller's perceptions. Perhaps when I was younger I could understand Miller's sexual universe but by grace, my own experience changed to an understanding of love that is diametrically different in many respects.
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