The World of Sex  

From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia

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The World of Sex (Chicago: Ben Abramson, Argus Book Shop, 1940) is a book by Henry Miller.

This work, which is an autobiographical essay on his literary influences, mentions the Balzac novels Louis Lambert and Séraphîta and his essay on Balzac "Balzac and his Double".

Excerpt

Thus I came to realize that the problems which I had situated in a vague beyond, like dreamy Zeppelins, were of subterranean essence. For company I had such vital spirits as Nietzsche, Emerson, Thoreau, Whitman, Fabre, Havelock Ellis, Maeterlinck, Strindberg, Dostoievsky, Gorky, Tolstoy, Verhaeren, Bergson, Herbert Spencer. I understood their language. I was at home with them.

Citations

• "Dieu est le grand Solitaire qui ne parle qu'aux solitaires et qui ne fait participer à sa puissance, à sa sagesse, à sa félicité, que ceux qui participent, en quelque manière, à son éternelle solitude!" (Léon Bloy)

• "La vraie trahison est de suivre le monde comme il va et d’employer l’esprit à le justifier." Jean Guéhenno in Caliban parle

From the publisher:

Many people have castigated the shamelessness of the Tropic novels which for a long time were widely suppressed and illicitly supplied under the counter and have been at a loss to explain how their author could have simultaneously maintained a career as a serious essayist. In this book, Miller seeks to set the record straight and argues that there is no contradiction between his salacious novels and his philosophy. Throughout his pamphlet, Miller makes liberal use of raw language to narrate his own experiences as a young man and formulate his philosophical conclusions. Motivated both by a mischievous desire to shock and by a candid endeavour to achieve a crude and precise language, Miller triumphs thanks to his entertaining and seductive enthusiasm.

See also

• Henry Miller: the 100 Books that influenced me most
• Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch