Binding: Paperback
Publisher: New Directions Publishing Corporation
Date Published: 1957-06
ISBN-13:9780811201070ISBN:0811201074
Description: Very Good. Very slight wear to cover and corners. Slight age spotting on top page edges from extended shelving. No marks or highlighting. Clean, crisp pages. Spine is not creased. Not an ex-library book. read more
Binding: Softcover
Publisher: New Directions
Date Published: 1957
ISBN-13:9780811201070ISBN:0811201074
Description: ISBN 0811201074. Trade Paperback. Reading Copy Only, due to some spine cock and creasing, slight rippling to pages, small waterspot on front cover, minor creasing to covers, some pages slightly dogeared. Tight, sound, unmarked copy. Later Printing. read more
Binding: Softcover
Publisher: New Directions
Date Published: 1957-06-01
ISBN-13:9780811201070ISBN:0811201074
Description: NEW. Softcover. From an inventory that is 100% brand-new, 100% direct from the publishers' distribution channel. We carry NO pre-owned, NO remaindered. We pack in CARDBOARD to ensure the pristine quality is maintained. (Bubble-wrap alone is NOT sufficient to protect from USPS equipment. ) Guaranteed brand-NEW, protected with CARDBOARD, your satisfaction is guaranteed. BKLUVID: 9780811201070. read more
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: New Directions Publishing Corpor
Date Published: 1957
ISBN-13:9780811201070ISBN:0811201074
Description: New. Brand New! Buy with confidence-your satisfaction is guaranteed at B-Logistics! Due to the large scale of our operation, we do not have access to the specific contents/condition of our items. Please note that Expedited shipping is not available at this time. read more
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: New Directions
Date Published: 1957
Description: Very Good. No Jacket. Orange boards with black imprint on spine. Boards are unworn but have a smudgy look. Some notes and foxing on FEP. 6 or 7 pages with minor underlining or margin marks. Turned page corners. Binding is tight. Black and white photos...many by Wynn Bullock. read more
Binding: wrappers
Publisher: New Directions, New York
Date Published: 1957
Description: Bound in card covers with fantasy photo of Big Sur on cover. 8vo, 404 pp. The first soft cover edition. Spine and front cover creased, edges sl. "thumbed", contents clean; overall vg condition. read more
Edition: 1st Printing
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: New Directions Books, New York
Date Published: 1957
Description: Illustrated with Black & White Photos. Good Condition. Good Dustjacket/Some Wear. 5x8 Inches. Hieronymus Bosch, in his paintings, used oranges and other fruits to symbolize the delights of Paradise. In this book Henry Miller uses Bosch's metaphor to describe what he feels about the Earthly Paradise where he lived, along the rugged coast of California near Big Sur. This book is a First Printing of the hardcover edition. It is in Good Condition with a Good Dustjacket which shows some wear, and ... read more
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: New Directions, New York
Date Published: 1957
Description: Octavo. Original orange cloth, titles to spine in black. With the dust jacket. With black and white photographs. Tips of the spine lightly rubbed, a very good copy in the frayed and creased dust jacket with some visible tape repair. First Edition, First Printing. With the author's signed presentation inscription to the front free endpaper “To Roland E. Ginsburg from the old man of the mountain-alias “the Brooklyn Boy”! Henry Miller 2/6/65. ” read more
"Henry Miller is not easy to read. If you intend to grok the jumbled thoughts and messages in Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymous Bosch, you need to find some sun, quiet, and solitude - and prepare to re-read whole pages if your attention lapses.
This book is fundamentally similar to Hemingway's A Moveable Feast. Both are stream-of-consciousness narratives with the air of a self-eulogy by the author. Both make use of very graphic, descriptive language (although Hemingway uses his rare adjectives on food and drink, while Miller lavishes descriptions on landscapes and people), and both are weighted heavily with character studies. But, despite all Miller's seeming disdain for his peers (he derides Hemingway and Steinbeck repeatedly in Big Sur), Hemingway is the better writer by far. Hemingway uses words sparsely and places them with precision, constructing beautiful sentences that describe people, places, and things effectively enough to provoke the reader's mind, yet lightly enough that the reader's imagination can play. Miller, however, falls into the Pynchon trap, seeming to write directly from his own mind - which is perfectly legitimate for first-draft material, but Miller also seems allergic to editing. As a result, the reader must put himself in the author's mental state as it was during the writing process in order to understand what Miller wishes to say. If good writing is defined as effective communication, Henry Miller is not a good writer.
Miller is pedantic, intolerant, angry, hypocritical, and unstable bordering on insane. He alternately rants and raves as the pages flow, seeming to forget what he said in the last paragraph in order to make a new (sometimes relevant, usually irrelevant, sometimes contradictory) point in the next. But despite all this, Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymous Bosch is worth reading. If the reader is patient enough to separate the wheat from the chaff, he will find several very engaging ideas about life, politics, nature, religion, and child-rearing - among other topics - buried in Miller's ravings... true gems in the mud."
"This is a fascinating look at Henry Miller in his later stage of life, while living in Big Sur California. It was a humane view into the being of a man who was known for his life long pursuits of societal ills, and his acceptance and willingness to finally have a place to call home and feel peace."
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