Air-Conditioned Nightmare

"Henry Miller is the nearest thing to Céline America has produced.... He aims not at the ears, brains, or consciences, but at the viscera and solar plexus."—The New Leader.

Henry Miller (1891-1980) was an American writer and painter infamous for breaking with existing literary forms and developing a new sort of "novel" that is a mixture of novel, autobiography, social criticism, philosophical reflection, surrealist free association, and mysticism, one that is distinctly always about and expressive of the real-life Henry Miller and yet is also fictional. His most characteristic works of this kind are Tropic of Cancer, Tropic of Capricorn, and Black Spring. His books were banned in the United States for their lewd content until 1964 when a court ruling overturned this order, acknowledging Miller’s work as literature in what became one of the most celebrated victories of the sexual revolution.