Truth in Words

Here is a passage written by Henry Miller in his book titled 'The Air-Conditioned Nightmare' in which he talks about the America he returned to in the mid-forties that mirrors the America we live in today...

In fact, I think I am safe in saying that the greatest periods of art have coincided with the periods of greatest misery and suffering on the part of the common people. If one quarter of American people are today living on a level of subsistence far below the norm, there remain nevertheless a hundred million who enjoy comforts and advantages unknown to men in any period of the past. What is to hinder them from revealing their talents? Or is it that our talents lie in other directions? Is it that the great goal of American manhood is to become the successful business man? Or just a "success", regardless of what form or shape, what purpose or significance, success manifests itself in and through? There is no doubt in my mind that art comes last in the things of life which preoccupy us. The young man who shows signs of becoming an artist is looked upon as a crackpot, or else as a lazy, worthless encumbrance. He has to follow his inspiration at the cost of starvation, humiliation and ridicule. He can earn a living at his calling only by producing the kind of art which he despises. If he is a painter the surest way for him to survive is to make stupid portraits of stupid people, or sell his services to the advertising monarchs who, in my opinion, have done more to ruin art than any other single factor I know of. Take the murals which adorn the walls of our public buildings - most of them belong in the realm of commercial art. Some of them, in technique and conception, are even below the aesthetic level of the Arrow collar artist. The great concern has been to please the public, a public whose taste has been vitiated by Maxfield Parrish chromos and posters concieved with only one idea, "to put it over."

Needless to say, I am a fan of Henry Miller...

One of the greatest passages he ever wrote, from the book 'The Tropic of Cancer':

"I have no money, no resources, no hopes. I am the happiest man alive."