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HENRY MILLER: REFLECTIONS ON WRITING A film by Robert Snyder An expansion of The Henry Miller Odyssey on the subject of writing. Miller discusses his views on writing with the likes of Anaïs Nin, Lawrence Durrell and Lawrence Clarke Powell. 60-minutes. With LAWRENCE CLARKE POWELL (At UCLA’s Powell Library Special Collection.) LCP: “This must be the cast of characters - For what? Capricorn. Ideas... obsessions, descriptive bits; the old neighbourhood... father’s shop... styles...“ HM: “Styles. Let’s see that one... see what a cunning bastard I am, and what shall I say, a cheat? Still, I’m thinking what style I can use, not my own do y’understand.“ With ANAÏS NIN HM: “Now how is it possible to change humanity so we can live in a world that at least has a semblance of sanity? How is it possible? The Hindus can take a long term view and say, it can be accomplished 50 million years from now. What difference does it make?“ AN: “Someone wrote me a very amusing letter, from Australia, and said that you had rearranged his molecules... which I thought was a wonderful expression. That’s being effective, you see, that is a change.“ With LAWRENCE DURRELL HM: “My loyalty and admiration has been constant for the same men all through my life: Whitman, Emerson, Thoreau, Rabelais above all. I still think no one has had a larger, healthier view of man and his universe than Walt Whitman. And there was Mao Tse, even before I read him... and from him the line of Zen masters which I only got wise to from the Villa Seurat days on; when you walk, walk. When you sit, sit. But don’t wobble.“
