Henry Miller and How He Got That Way - Hardcover

Masuga, Katy

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0748641181 ISBN 13: 9780748641185

Publisher: Edinburgh University Press, 2011

Synopsis

Identifying six significant writers--Whitman, Dostoevsky, Rimbaud, Lewis Carroll, Proust and D. H. Lawrence--Katy Masuga examines their influence on Miller's work as well as Miller's retroactive impact on their writing. She explores four forms of intertextuality in relation to each 'ancestral' author: direct allusions, unconscious style, reverse influence and participation of the ancestral author as part of the story within the text. The study is informed by the theories of polyvocity from Bakhtin, Barthes and Kristeva and of language games and the indefatigability of writing in the work of Blanchot, Wittgenstein and Deleuze.By presenting Miller in intertextual context, he emerges as a noteworthy modernist writer whose contributions to literature include the struggle to find a distinctive voice alongside a distinguished lineage of literary figures.

About this title

About the Author:

Katy Masuga is Associated Researcher at the University of Paris-Sorbonne

Review:

Katy Masuga seamlessly weaves high brow literary theory with laugh-out-loud, casual Millerian prose, that only a real Miller fan could concoct. Both scholarly and broadly accessible, Henry Miller and How He Got That Way is an indispensable read for anyone interested in the real meaning of the words and connections behind the stories of one of the twentieth century's most underestimated and poorly understood writers.

(Jim Haynes, Founder of the Traverse Theatre)

Books may be, as Miller said, "as much a part of life as trees, stars or dung," but he also said 90% of them "could be thrown on the junk heap." As for the 10% which contributed to the often overlooked intelligence of his seemingly pornographic, idiosyncratic prose, Katy Masuga's much-needed study discretely shows why, and how, with suggestive attention to the writer writing about writing itself.

(Herbert Blau, Byron W. and Alice L. Lockwood Professor of the Humanities University of Washington)

About this edition

• Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
• Publication date: 2011
• ISBN 10: 0748641181
• ISBN 13: 9780748641185
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 208