Henry Miller and Narrative Form: Constructing the Self, Rejecting Modernity

In this bold study James M. Decker responds to the common charge that Henry Miller's narratives suffer from "formlessness." He instead positions Miller as a stylistic pioneer, whose place must be assured in the American literary canon. From Moloch to Nexus via such widely-read texts as Tropic of Cancer and Tropic of Capricorn, Decker examines what Miller calls his "spiral form," a radically digressive style that shifts wildly between realism and the fantastic. Decker draws on a variety of narratological and critical sources, as well as Miller's own aesthetic theories, in order to argue that this fragmented narrative style formed part of a sustained critique of modern spiritual decay. A deliberate move rather than a compositional weakness, then, Miller's style finds a wide variety of antecedents in the work of such figures as Nietzsche, Rabelais, Joyce, Bergson and Whitman, and is seen by Decker as an attempt to chart the journey of the self through the modern city.

James M. Decker is Associate Professor of English at Illinois Central College.