HENRY MILLER

Henry Miller exploded existing literary forms by combining autobiography, social criticism, philosophical reflection, surrealist free association, and mysticism into an expressive fiction that was based on his own experiences.

His works were controversial for the unashamed and detailed depictions of sex, and his work was banned in the United States and other countries for being obscene until 1961.

Miller grew up in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, but spent the 1930s in Paris. He was employed by the Chicago Tribune (Paris edition) as a proofreader. He was highly creative in this period, writing Tropic of Cancer (1934), Black Spring (1936), and Tropic of Capricorn (1939). During this period Miller met Anais NIn and her husband Hugh Guiler and they supported him during this period. Miller became lovers with Nin, and she financed the first printing of Tropic of Cancer with money from Otto Rank. Henry and June was diary-like novel by Nin that documented their relationship and was made into a film in the 1990s.

Tropic of Cancer is set in Paris and centers around Miller's life as a struggling writer. Some of the chapters follow a narrative and there are references to Miller's actual friends, colleagues, and workplaces. Other chapters are written as stream-of-consciousness reflections, and the book being in the first person, does not have a linear organization, but fluctuates between the past and the present. The central character who pulls us through the book suffers from hunger, homelessness, loneliness, and despair, and can be abhorrent at times, yet ecstatic with life at others. There are explicit passages of his sexual encounters, but overall the book acts as an immersive meditation on the human condition.

Samuel Beckett hailed Tropic of Cancer as a momentous event in the history of modern writing. Norman Mailer felt it was one of the greatest novels of the 20th century. Others hated it, including Edmund Wilson who said it was the lowest book of any literary merit he could remember reading, and found it disgusting and tiresome.

After being declared not to be obscene, the book was finally published in 1961 by Grove Press. One judge wrote that "Tropic of Cancer is not a book, but a cesspool, an open sewer, a pit of putrefaction, a slimy gathering of all that is rotten in the debris of human depravity."

Black Spring is a collection of shorter pieces and displays Miller's dazzling use of language and his incredible build-up of detail while chronicling both life in Paris and flashing back to his days in Brooklyn.

Tropic of Capricorn is an extension of Tropic of Cancer, but actually goes back to 1920s New York where the narrator works for telegraph company as Miller did in real life. It is told as a spiritual awakening and centers around Miller's struggle with his wife June Miller, and the process of finding his voice as a writer.

In 1939, the writer Lawrence Durrell invited Miller to the Greek island of Corfu where he was living. Miller wrote about the experience in The Colossus of Maroussi, an impressionistic travelogue that was published in 1941.

In 1940, Miller returned to the US, and settled in Big Sur, California and continued to write works that challenged contemporary American cultural values and moral attitudes. The Air-Conditioned Nightmare (1945) documented Miller's travels through the US and he was critical of the consumerist boom in America.

The first part of The Rosy Crucifixion titled Sexus was published in 1949 and detailed Miller's divorce from his first wife and covers the period up until the early part of his marriage to his second wife, June Miller. Set in New York it includes many portraits of friends and lovers and provides a view into Miller's ambition to be a writer. The book uses detailed sex scenes as a catalyst for philisophical discussions on self, love, marriage, and happiness.

The second book of The Rosy Crucifixion was called Plexus and came out in 1953 and documents more of the period of his marriage to June Miller who is called Mona in the novel. In the book Miller also writes about many of his strange and symbolic dreams.

Nexus was the third and final book of the trilogy and was published in 1960. It documents Miller's troubles with his second wife Mona (June Miller) and her lover Anastasia (Jean Kronski) and the period before his departure for Paris.

Other notable works include Quiet Days In Clichy which dates from the same period as Tropic of Cancer but wasn't published until 1956. It is more of a tender and nostalgic work and is a celebration of love, art, and the Bohemian life of a young obscure writer living in Paris when life was slower and simpler.

Under The Roofs of Paris wasn't published until much later as well, but was written in 1941 when MIller was commissioned by a LA bookseller to write an erotic novel for a dollar a page. Miller is direct, honest, and self-mocking and lives life as an odyssey in search of the perfect job, the perfect woman, and the perfect experience.

Crazy Cock was also published much later but was actually written before Tropic of Cancer and tells the story of Miller's rage over his second wife's lesbian lover. He wrote about this period later in Nexus. There are many passages of verbal power, but mostly the book is interesting as an early example of Miller's evolution as a writer. It is also written in the third-person before Miller decided the first-person was his natural voice.

Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch was published in 1957 and is a portrait of one of the most colorful places in the US. Miller writes with a brimming energy and the book is quite funny and includes a cast or extradordinary people and interesting characters.

The Time of the Assassins (1962) was a chronicle of Miller's obsession and admiration for the poet Arthur Rimbaud and provides great insight into the two great writers of subversive, apocalyptic literature.

Henry Miller lived until the age of 88, dying in 1989. Miller did receive criticism for the racism and misogeny that was depicted in his early works. He could be cynical and railed against phoniness. In his later work he wrote in a calmer voice, almost like a zen master. Henry Miller changed the face of literature with his autobiographical works and his honest and poetic prose.

LAST TANGO IN PARIS

A friend of mine once told me that Last Tango In Paris was about nothing. After I saw the film for myself, I wondered if he saw the same film that I did, or perhaps he had been blinded by the sexual content. I felt Last Tango was a powerful, emotional, and profound statement about the relationship between men and women. The film deals with the themes of love and sex, fear and desire, anger and betrayal, and how we deal with both the ecstacy of love and the intense pain when it all comes down. Anyone, who had ever been in love and experienced the pain of a failed relationship can relate to this film. That being said, Last Tango is not always a pleasurable experience to watch.

The credit sequence shows us two paintings - one of man, and one of a woman, both in a room by themselves, by the painter Francis Bacon who was known for his anguished depictions of the human form. The soundtrack has the expressive voice of Gato Barbieri's saxophone.

The opening shot is a close-up of Marlon Brando (Paul) screaming the words "Fucking God!" as a train roars past on the bridge above. The young, beautiful Jeanne (Maria Schneider) notices the distressed middle-aged man as they both cross the river where they come across a sign for an open apartment. They both look at it simultaneously, and after a game of cat and mouse, they have a spontaneous sexual experience that was shocking when the film came out in 1972. They now embark on an affair where they meet at the apartment to have sex, but Paul wants no names and no past history. Pure sex and human connection without the social conventions of the outside world. For Jeanne, it is also an escape from her privileged background and her filmmaker boyfriend (Jean-Pierre Leaud) who is constantly putting her on a pedestal and has the camera rolling at all times. He is trying to understand her and know her, but her secret meetings with Paul are all for herself.

As the film evolves we see that Paul is destroyed, because his wife, Rosa, has committed suicide. He knows she had a lover, and he has to deal with her mother, who insists on a religious funeral, even though Paul has lost all faith. He is not only hurt, but he is angry at Rosa as well. In a powerful and shocking scene he berates her in tears as she lies in her coffin surrounded by flowers.

Last Tango In Paris was directed by the Italian director Bernardo Bertolucci, and the film was controversial when it came out because of the graphic sexual scenes between Brando, who was 48 at the time, and Schneider, who was only 19. Bertolucci's films push the envelope and often deal with sexual taboos. There are powerful, disturbing scenes in the film and both actors later said they felt manipulated and exploited by Bertolucci.

Bertolucci is a master filmmaker and his visual style in Last Tango is astounding as it is shot by the great cinematographer Vittorio Storaro. There is a great use of warm colors especially yellows and reds and a magnificent play of light and shadow. There is a Rembrandt quality to the images in Last Tango.

In the end, Paul and Jeanne can't avoid or escape the conventions of daily life. The breakdown of the walls they have constructed leads to tragedy. Last Tango in Paris is tough and full of turmoil, but it is also a beautiful and powerful work of cinema.

Bertolucci has made many interesting films, but one of his strongest and the one that set the tone for his distinct visual style was the The Conformist which was made two years before Last Tango in 1970. The film is based on the novel by Alberto Moravia and stars Jean-Louis Trintignant, Stefania Sandrelli, and Dominique Sanda. The film is a case study of fascism, and centers around a man who is a bureaucrat, and who has been dehumanized by a dysfunctional middle class family and a childhood sexual trauma. He accepts his assignment to assassinate his former professor and mentor who is now living in exile. Bertolucci makes use of the 1930s art, architecture, and decor with an amazing use of light and shadow that create striking visual patterns. Like in all of his films, Bertolucci layers politics and psychology into the story and lives of his characters.

1900 came out in 1976, and was an international epic that starred Robert De Niro, Gerard Depardieu, Dominique Sanda, Stefania Sandrelli, Donald Sutherland, Sterling Hayden, and Burt Lancaster. The original director's cut by Bertolucci was 311 minutes long, but was shortened to 180 minutes for theatrical release. At the film's center are Alfredo (DeNiro) and Olmo (Depardieu), friends who were born on the same day at the turn of the twentieth century. They are from opposite ends of the social spectrum as Alfredo is the son of the landowner played by Lancaster, and Olmo is the illegitimate son of the foreman of the peasants played by Hayden. The film is a classic confrontation between capitalism and socialism. Donald Sutherland's character embodies the rise of fascism and is decadent and sadistic. The film is full of interesting scenes and again contains graphic depictions of sex and violence and has that distinct beautiful visual style that Bertolucci is known for.

The Last Emperor (1987) is a biopic about Puyi, the last Emporer of China. The film stars John Lone, Joan Chen, and Peter O'Toole and won nine Academy Awards including Best Picture and Best Director for Bertolucci. It was the first feature where the Chinese government granted filming in the Forbidden City in Beijing. Puyi's life is depicted from his ascent to the throne as a child to his imprisonment and political rehabilitation by the Chinese Communist authorities. As usual the film has a beautiful visual style using rich colors in the scenes of the young Puyi in the Forbidden City contrasted with the muted grays of the structures and clothing of the Maoist revolution. 

Other noteworthy films by Bertolucci are Before The Revolution (1964), The Spider's Stratagem (1970), Luna (1979), The Sheltering Sky (1990), Little Buddha (1993), Stealing Beauty (1996), Besieged (1998), and The Dreamers (2003).

REMBRANDT

Rembrandt van Rijn lived from 1606 to 1669 and was one of the greatest artist of the Dutch Golden Age and one of the most innovative painters in art history. He fused classical iconography with his own experience and used real people as his models for his paintings, drawings, and etchings that were portraits, self-portraits, and depictions of scenes from the bible. Rembrandt seamlessly melded the earthly and spiritual as no other painter in Western art.

The most prominent aspect of his paintings was the light and his use of chiaroscuro, the theatrical employment of light and shadow that came from Caravaggio. There is a loose paint quality to his work, especially in his late paintings where foreground and background elements merge as opposed to being separated and rigidly formal. In his biblical works, such as The Raising of the Cross and The Stoning of Saint Stephen, he often painted himself into the crowd infusing the personal human element into a scene of spirituality. His compositions leave a lot of negative space that adds to the spare emotional beauty of his works. There is a deep compassion for mankind in the faces of his subjects. 

One of his greatest paintings was The Night Watch (1642) which was a massive group portrait, where Rembrandt had to find solutions for narrative and compositional problems. Instead of showing the militia as stately and formal, he created an action scene with the men readying themselves for a mission.

In the 1650s when he was nearly bankrupt, a court ordered the contents of his house in Amsterdam to be inventoried for sale. Among the possessions were three small paintings of Jesus, one listed as "Head of Christ, done from life."  Rembrandt used a young Sephardic Jewish man from his neighborhood as the model of Christ, and again this image fuses the human and the spiritual into a portrait of great beauty.

Rembrandt produced around 40 self-portraits that trace his progression from an uncertain young man, to the successful portrait painter of the 1630s, to the troubled but incredibly powerful portraits of his old age. Late in life, Rembrandt lost his money and had to sell his house and printing press. The late self-portraits are beautifully painted and contain a powerful and tragic quality.

LEONARD COHEN

Leonard Cohen has been making music and songs for over four decades and outside of Bob Dylan is one of the most accomplished and influential singer/songwriters to emerge in the late 20th Century.

Cohen was born and raised in a middle-class Jewish family in Montreal, and published poetry and novels in the early and middle 60s before moving into songwriting and creating music. He achieved high critical acclaim with his novel Beautiful Losers which was published in 1966.

This literary quality transferred into Cohen's songwriting and his first album Songs of Leonard Cohen (1967) was an artfully constructed masterpiece of poetic beauty. The songs depict a world dominated by love and lust, rage and need, and compassion and betrayal. The relationship of men and women are often the framework of Cohen's songs, with love as the catalyst to go deeper into humanity's frequent use of mental and physical abuse, and its occasional use of kindness. Songs of Leonard Cohen creates a stark portrait of men and women trying to come to terms with these relationships. It is mostly acoustic guitar and Cohen's voice, but there are some subtle musical effects that add a touch of polish by producer John Simon. There are many dark, beautiful, and emotionally moving songs on the album including Suzanne, Master Song, The Stranger Song, Sisters of Mercy, and So Long, Marianne. Robert Altman used many of the songs to great effect on the soundtrack of his film McCabe and Mrs. Miller that came out in 1971. Few musicians have ever created a more remarkable or enduring debut.

Cohen's second album Songs From A Room came out in 1969, and is similar in approach but even more simple than the first album. It's a fine album that has many strong and memorable songs, such as Bird On A Wire and You Know Who I Am, but is not quite as consistent as Songs Of Leonard Cohen.

My favorite record by Leonard Cohen is Songs of Love and Hate (1971) which established him as the master of erotic despair. The album is made up of eight emotionally intense songs and encompassed the physical, emotional, and spiritual side of love as expressed in Last Year's man (the physical), Famous Blue Raincoat (the emotional), and Joan of Arc (the spiritual).

The hate, anger, and contempt manifest themselves in Avalanche and Dress Rehearsal Rag where the despair reaches suicidal proportions. The venom that comes out in these songs can only come from someone who once cared deeply.

The production on the album is also different from the first two records in that Cohen's voice is deeper and closer, and the added musical elements of orchestra and a children's choir add an emotionally resonant punctuation to the songs. Still the album's framework allows Cohen's lyrics and voice to be the main focus.

More than anything this album is an emotional powerhouse, one of those records (like Lou Reed's Berlin) that has an effect on me every time I listen to it. Listening to Songs of Love and Hate over and over, saved me, after a the end of a relationship I had many years ago.

New Skin for the Old Ceremony came out in 1974. The songs on this album have a more orchestrated sound using many instruments, but still overall there is a spare effect. One of Cohen's best known and moving songs, Chelsea Hotel #2 is on this record. Cohen lived at the famous New York Hotel when he wasn't in Montreal. It tells the story of meeting a famous singer in an elevator which leads to a sexual encounter described in the song. Other major songs on the record include Is This What You Wanted and Who By Fire. The original cover art had an image from the alchemical text Rosarium philosophorum depicting the sexual embrace of two winged and crowned beings.

Death of a Ladies Man (1977) was a new direction for Cohen as the album was produced by Phil Spector and displayed his famous wall of sound. Some critics liked the record but others felt Cohen was submerged in the mix. It included jazz, rock, and even funk-influenced arrangements and was recorded in LA. Cohen was not happy with the album, but noted that it was the favorite among punksters. 

Recent Songs (1979) was a return to acoustic folk music but still had jazz influences. The album included the Gypsy violin player Raffi Hakopian and the Armenian oud player John Bilezikijian. There was a Mexican Mariachi band on the record and Jennifer Warnes prominently appeared in the vocal tracks. Members of the band Passenger played on four of the songs. They had been introduced to  Cohen by Joni Mitchell. Garth Hudson of The Band also appeared on the album.

Various Positions (1984) turned to a more modern sound including some electronics and also included a major contribution by Jennifer Warnes. It includes the song Hallelujah which is one of Cohen's most beautiful, loved, and covered compositions. Other notable songs on the album include Dance Me to the End of Love and If It Be Your Will.

I'm Your Man came out in 1988, and gained Cohen many new and younger followers. His high baritone voice had now dipped into the lower registers (bass baritone and bass), and the mix included a wide variety of instruments and female backup singers. There are many excellent songs on this record including First We Take Manhattan, Everybody Knows, I'm Your Man, and Tower of Song. Sharon Robinson started writing with Cohen on this record and started a collaboration that would last for many years.

The Future (1992) had a similar sound to I'm Your Man with Cohen's deep voice high in the mix. The music includes gospel-choir choruses (The Future), synthesizer ballads (Waiting for the Miracle), pop country (Closing Time), and staccato-like rhythms (Democracy).

Many of the songs from I'm Your Man and The Future were included in film soundtracks, opening Cohen's music up to a larger audience. Everybody Knows  along with If It Be Your Will were used in the film Pump Up The Volume. Natural Born Killers (1994) used Waiting For A Miracle, Anthem, and The Future to great effect.

In 1994, Cohen retreated the the Mount Baldy Zen Center near LA and embarked on five years of seclusion. He was ordained as a Rinzai Zen Buddhist Monk and took the Dharma name Jikan which means silence.

Leonard Cohen has produced two other studio records in the 21st Century - Ten New Songs (2001), and Dear Heather (2004). Sharon Robinson played a hugh collaborative role on Ten New Songs, and jazz chanteuse Anjani Thomas made a major contribution to Dear Heather.

Over the years, Cohen has produced several live albums. Live Songs came out in 1973 and in recent years Live In London and Songs From The Road were released. Live At The Isle of Wight from1970 also came out recently. All are excellent editions to Cohen's body of work.

Leonard Cohen is a songwriter and vocalist whose literary and poetic work is thought provoking, emotionally moving, and hauntingly beautiful.