In the introduction to George Orwell’s Animal Farm, C.M. Woodhouse points out (in a 1954 London Times Literary Supplement) that, in Orwell’s criticism of other authors,
“his recurrent theme was their failure to protest against the world they lived in. This is the whole burden of his longest and most serious piece of literary criticism, written in 1940 on Henry Miller; and he called it ‘Inside the Whale’ to illustrate this same point that Miller had failed in his duty to protest, had ‘performed the essential Jonah act of allowing himself to be swallowed, remaining passive, accepting” (p. viii)
I stopped reading the introduction around this point, with the intention of returning later, because Woodhouse had begun — as many book introduction writers do — to give away too many elements of Animal Farm that I preferred to learn on my own by reading the book. However, I have already read 1984, and I know how Orwell felt about modern governments and their leanings, especially in the early-20th Century, towards totalitarianism.
And Orwell was far from alone in espousing that sentiment. Hermann Hesse’s great work Steppenwolf comes to mind, in which protagonist Harry Haller learns to shape his life into one of constant and unending revolt against the world. The Beats were a definite incarnation of this mentality in America in the ’50s and ’60s. But this idea of constant rebellion, with recurring attempts at revolution, reminds me of two recent posts on this blog: one about David Foster Wallace and his discussion of institutionalized irony; one about Adam Curtis and his documentary The Trap, which addressed the problems of a Western world that has rejected positive liberty for the safer, more stable negative liberty.
I don’t need to double back on those previous posts; I only hope to bring up the point that successful revolution against any vast power in this post Y2K world seems impossible. As The Trap states, negative liberty allows institutions to imprison people, though the people remain under the impression that they are free. Likewise, government and society in the West has become more static and difficult to change.
Curtis concludes by stating that the world is no longer run by ideologies. This makes sense, considering how exhausting it is for a modern individual to remain idealistic for longer than a few years. Anyone can begin a lifestyle of constant revolt against tyranny, but all who do will eventually feel like a shadowboxer, fighting against ghosts and making insignificant progress. And naturally that leads to the classic novel Don Quixote, and the resulting adjective quixotic. Wikipedia (via the Google define tool) defines it as “a person or an act that is caught up in the romance of noble deeds and the pursuit of unreachable goals. It also serves to describe an idealism without regard to practicality.”
Of course this probably deserves a deeper analysis of the types of revolt, ranging from internal (i.e. – individual psychology) to a governmental coup. However, this still relates to a question a Spanish friend asked in the fall, regarding the fact that Americans should be protesting constantly in the street, when in reality they never do. The first conclusion would be that they’re busy watching TV and playing video games, but I think it goes deeper than that (thanks to Curtis for clarifying the situation). Americans can sense that there is no effective target for their revolt. For example, even if Bush had been impeached, Cheney would have taken over and the situation probably would have gotten even worse. But I digress…
I don’t think that Miller’s style of writing — or of living, for that matter — can be written off as anything but brilliant. I would even go so far as to suggest that Miller’s first two books, Tropic of Cancer and Tropic of Capricorn, would more appropriately have been called How to Live a Sane Life in a World That Has Gone Mad, parts I and II. Either that, or How to Live in a World Where Successful Revolution Has Become an Impossibility.
Yes, Miller spent more of his adult life in France than in his native country of America, where he probably could have done a lot of good. But he valued freedom of expression above all else, and he recognized that America was about 30 years behind the curve in that area (Cancer was published in Paris in 1934, but, because of obscenity laws, wasn’t published in America until 1961). Yes, Miller seemed to preach passivity and indifference over constant worrying and revolt. But no, this should not be interpreted through Orwell’s method.
Miller did speak of floating down the river of life and taking things as they came, but this was simply his way of making peace with the terrifying nature of life and the world, following the acknowledgment that one person can only change so much, especially through direct physical action. Miller did do more than his share of protesting, but he only did it on his own terms — in a way that would echo through time in an invincible manner. As a result, Miller’s works are almost more useful than Orwell’s, because Orwell wrote from a stance that could be manipulated by governments and institutions. Anyone who has read 1984 wouldn’t doubt that the scariest governments in the world today — including the American government — have probably used the same tactics that Orwell warned against.
Miller called his first attempts at writing “a phantom struggle”:
“It came without effort, born of a second, a miracle you might say, except that everything which happens is miraculous. Things happen or they don’t happen, that’s all. Nothing is accomplished by sweat and struggle. Nearly everything which we call life is just insomnia, an agony because we’ve lost the habit of falling asleep. We don’t know how to let go” (p. 283, Tropic of Capricorn).
If you want revolt, Miller provided it by the ton:
“Any primitive man would have understood me…only those about me, that is to say, a continent of a hundred million people, failed to understand my language. [...] The one thing they did not want to hear about was that life was indestructible. Was not their precious new world reared on the destruction of the innocent, on rape and plunder and torture and devastation? [...] No greater humiliation, it seems to me, was meted out to any man than to Montezuma; no race was ever more ruthlessly wiped out than the American Indian; no land was ever raped in the foul and bloody way that California was raped by the gold diggers. I blush to think of our origins—our hands are steeped in blood and crime. [...] Down to the closest friend every man is a potential murderer” (pp. 287-288).
I’ve pulled these quotes almost at random, but one further down the page seems key:
“Every one who has not fully accepted life, who is not incrementing life, is helping to fill the world with death. [...] Activity in itself means nothing: it is often a sign of death. [...] By the very climate which activity engenders, one can become part of a monstrous death machine, such as America, for example” (pp. 288-289).
Keep in mind that this was first published in 1938, thus preceding not only the U.S. atom bomb attacks on Nagasaki and Hiroshima, but also this whole post-war mess that America has seen over the last 50 or 60 years. Seen from this angle, I would argue that Miller’s duty to protest has been more successfully fulfilled than Orwell’s.
Similar Posts:
- The Pen Is Mightier Than The Bomb (March 21, 2009)
- We Must Give the Void Its Colors (September 3, 2009)
- To Write for the Sake of Writing (May 3, 2009)
- Welcome! (May 28, 2008)
- The Sin of Lifelessness (November 25, 2008)
