HENRY MILLER

There is only one thing which interests me vitally now, and that is the recording of all that which is omitted in books. Nobody, so far as I can see, is making use of those elements in the air which give direction and motivation to our lives. Only the killers seem to be extracting from life some satisfactory measure of what they are putting into it. The age demands violence, but we are getting only abortive explosions. Revolutions are nipped in the bud, or else succeed too quickly. Passion is quickly exhausted. Men fall back on ideas, comme d'habitude. Nothing is proposed that can last more than twenty-four hours. We are living a million lives in the space of a generation. In the study of entomology, or of deep sea life, or cellular activity, we derive more...

So fast and furiously am I compelled to live now that there is scarcely time to record even these fragmentary notes. 

 

Tom Schiller's 1975 short documentary (35mins) follows Miller from the microcosmos of his very own shit-hole to a mock-up 1890s New York of his childhood -- or "that old shit-hole, New York'" (in fact the set for Hello Dolly, with Barbra Streisand & Walter Matthau, 1969). Schiller describes his documentary this way: 'A guided tour of the pictures and artefacts of his bathroom' ... though it feels to be very much more than that.