Henry Miller Quotes
Cluster together like stars!
Miller, Henry. The Colossus of Maroussi. New Directions, 1941, p. 243.
Hall’s novel was banned in England and America on obscenity grounds for the quoted sentence. The characters were both women and the veiled implication of possible sex between two women was then considered pornography per se. The New York Judge who found the publisher guilty said “the book tends to debauch public morals.” The guilty verdict was overturned on appeal. As a result of the “negative publicity” the book sold over 1 million copies in the author’s lifetime and was translated into 11 languages. Suppression had the effect of giving the book enormous publicity which is often true in censorship cases. If nothing else, people want to see what the society says that they should not read.
Henry Valentine Miller was an American writer and artist. He was known for breaking with existing literary forms and developing a new type of semi-autobiographical novel that blended character study, social criticism, philosophical reflection, stream of consciousness, explicit language, sex, surrealist free association, and mysticism. His most characteristic works of this kind are Tropic of Cancer, Black Spring, Tropic of Capricorn and The Rosy Crucifixion trilogy, which are based on his experiences in New York and Paris (all of which were banned in the United States until 1961). He also wrote travel memoirs and literary criticism, and painted watercolors.
