Someone has observed that Isaiah Berlin’s essays on European thinkers are more interesting that the thinkers themselves. I am reminded of this truism as I put down Miller’s The Colossus of Maroussi. In his The Durrell’s of Corfu, Hage says it is the best the man has ever written. Great, I thought, no need to dare The Tropic of Cancer, why not start from the top. But I didn’t get very far before my mind began to wonder and I began to skip around. Yes, the man can be mildly entertaining — he is passionate about his views — which probably accounted for his social success, something normally quite useful in the pursuit of any entertainment career, that of published author also — people are suckers to witness the passions of others perhaps because they themselves by and large have none — and does occasionally manage a deft phrase (“we baptised ourselves in the raw” — i.e. “we swam naked”). But that’s… all. He has no insights nor knowledge to impart, he does not manage his life in a way worth studying. And if this is his best book, well, no need to bother with The Tropic of Cancer.
Mencken, Orwell and Beckett thought Miller was great?
Oltre Mare 