December 26th, 2007

It's the birthday of author Henry Miller (books by this author) born in New York City (1891), who wrote about poverty, sex, and squalor in his books Tropic of Cancer and Black Spring after living on the streets in Paris, where he stayed with friends and begged on the street just to get enough money for food. Miller wrote in Tropic of Cancer, "It may be that we are doomed, that there is no hope for us, any of us, but if that is so then let us set up a last agonizing, bloodcurdling howl, a screech of defiance, a war whoop! Away with lamentation! Away with elegies and dirges! Away with biographies and histories, and libraries and museums! Let the dead eat the dead. Let us living ones dance about the rim of the crater, a last expiring dance. But a dance!"