Henry Miller Describes The Beauty Of Big Sur Giving Literature The Oranges Of Hieronymus Bosch: Part III
for the wilderness wearing no clothing, with a book in his hand desiring to become a writer himself. Ralph resembled numerous younger artists or social outcasts in their twenties from that era. Many of these lost souls had no idea where their lives were leading, only vague notions of dreams that they seemed to be following. Like the character Holden Caulfied from the novel, "The Cathcer In The Rye" by J.D. Salinger, they seemed to have left the confines of prep school for the real world; but instead of becoming lost in the playground had somehow landed in the confines of California.
Ralph had read of the wonderful life to be found in Northern California. He had heard stories of sexual orgies or wild parties lasting until the mid-morning hours of the next day. Miller describes his frustration in dealing with Ralph, as he attempts to explain to him that he has failed to see through the illusion created by the media.
"He continued by informing me that he too was a writer, that he had run away from it all (meaning job and home) to live his own life. 'I came to join the cult of sex and anarchy,' he said, quietly and evenly, as if he were talking about toast and coffee. I told him there was no such colony." (pp.45-46)
His words go unheaded, and Ralph suffers for months at Big Sur; until he finally leaves in a cloud of rain mixed around a foggy misty haze. He describes several other patrons of the arts; each seeking to express themselves through the arts: writers who read literature, but cannot write, painters who fail to place brush upon oil, rabid fans who seek to meet Miller for his fame and notireity. One woman could not believe that he only wished to make a cup of coffee in the morning. Because he was a writer, she assumes that there must be more to his day. In the end, she does not seem ready to admit to herself that he is merely a man of flesh and blood, as all other men. Miller describes these tragic situations with humor; never failing to see the positive underside to the darkness that abounds in the real natural world; which helps t o keep the novel from becoming another narrative in the long tradition of wallowing self-pitying prose.
Three series of stories move into the third section, Paradise Lost. As he enters this part of the book, Miller refers to Big Sur and California as going through a great amount of change. This section also seems to center around his encounter with astrologer Conrad
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