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Originally Posted by Glice
From you, this astonishes me. Miller, I maintain, was like the beats but had a much firmer grip on his subservience to better writers. By which I mean he dicks about with stream of consciousness but doesn't quite turn into the mawkish terror that is Kerouac. He talks like a snake-oil charmer but is just Jewish enough to get away with it - sorry, Burroughs acolytes. Also, he's a bit of a pathetic character, something I've always found lacking from a lot of American writers - someone like Easton-Ellis always heads towards this pseudo-nihilism that just galls.
Ok, so I've just insulted most of your taste in books, but a lot of you really need to stop reading like a 19-year-old.
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The thing about him being pathetic. See I agree with that, and it's usually something that endears me to a person/writer. With Miller though (and admittedly it was a long time ago when i read him) I always felt it was a bit too heroic in its pathetic-ness. A bit posturing. Like a down on his luck Hemingway (another writer I don't get on with). He's certainly less irritating than Kerouac though (although they're ultimately so different that they're almost incomparable).
I'll give Miller another try this summer though.