Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch

by Miller, Henry

  After making a few lame efforts to place his book with a publisher he gave up. Soon the job at Lucia petered out and he was obliged to return to the city. The next thing I knew, he had taken a job as janitor in the University of California at Berkeley. It was a night job and it gave him the opportunity to write during the day. Now and then he sat in on a lecture. Ironic to think that our humble janitor was possibly better equipped to lecture on such subjects as mathematics, history, economics, sociology, literature, than the professors he dropped in to listen to occasionally. What wonderful lectures he could have given on the art of being a janitor, I often thought. For, whatever Norman tackled he made an art of. That was his greatest fault, in the eyes of the worldly, this insistence on making an art of everything.

  To my mind it is utterly unimportant whether Norman Mini becomes a recognized writer or not. What is important is that such an American continues to be in our midst.

  The man who could write like a breeze was Walker Winslow. Walker had written several books, under various names, before coming to Big Sur. He had also written heaps of poems. But it was not until he began his autobiographical novel, If a Man Be Mad,* that he found his true vein. Every day he wrote fifteen, twenty or thirty pages. He was at the machine from early morn till sundown. He never touched a drop of liquor during the few months it took him to finish this book. He drank huge quantities of coffee and smoked several packs of cigarettes a day. He did a lot of rewriting too, mostly condensation. While writing the book he received commissions to do other books. At one time, I remember, he was trying to write three books at once.

  But, just as with Norman, writing was a secondary affair. Walker’s forte was people. Most of his life he had been a tramp, a bum, a hobo, a beachcomber. With the soul of a saint. When he was not getting into trouble he was helping others. There were no lengths to which he would not go to aid a man in distress: he was a natural crutch for the weak and the afflicted. Writing books could only be in the nature of an interlude for Walker. He was not a Gorky, though in another society, one more receptive, more tolerant, more “reverent” of misfits and outcasts, he might have become another Gorky. Certainly Walker knew and understood the bottom dog as well as any Gorky. He also knew and understood John Barleycorn as few writers ever have. His problem was, and still is, not to master the literary craft but to master his own abysmal hunger for limitless experience.

  Another writer with a great sense of humanity whom I feel impelled to say a word about is Jake Kenney. Jake is not a resident of Big Sur, but he is limitrophe to it. He is a Russian at heart—Dostoevskian, in a large sense. Like so many potentially great writers, Jake is unable to get a look-in with the publishers. I read the manuscript of his first novel several times. The Falling Sleep he calls it. A marvelous title, when one knows the book. The only title. In spite of its faults—minor faults—the book has qualities one does not often encounter in American literature: sensitivity, passion, brotherhood. Too warm-blooded, no doubt. Makes one laugh and weep in a way that Americans resent, because they are ashamed to laugh and weep unrestrainedly.

  Unfortunately, Jake Kenney is a capable man with his hands. He is a carpenter and builder as well as writer. Most unfortunate. Because, failing to earn a living with the pen, he can always earn it with his bare hands. And “we” who care not much how a man makes his living will never know what we have lost. Besides, do we really want The Falling Sleep? Or do we not prefer the “Put Me to Sleep” kind of literature?

  Paul Rink, a near neighbor, is a similar “unfortunate.” Being a jack of all trades, he’s even worse off. He too has written his novel, and it has gone a-begging—to over twenty-five publishers. “Too good,” they say. “Too this, too that.” Foolishly, in my opinion, he has rewritten his opus several times. One publisher will accept it if he will reduce the first section of the book; another will take it if he will change the ending; a third will “consider” it if he will develop this character, this incident, this that and this other. Paul, believing them to be well-meaning, struggles to fit into the straitjacket—without being untrue to himself. Hopeless task! One should never, never do as publishers request. Put your manuscripts aside, write another and another and another. When they finally accept you, throw the first one at them again. Then they will say: “Why didn’t you ever show us this work? It’s a masterpiece!” Editors frequently forget what they’ve read, or what they’ve rejected. Somebody else read it, not me, they will say. Or, “we had a different policy then.” With publishers the climate is always changing. However, to tell a writer who has yet to get his first book accepted that editors and publishers are idiotic and as lacking in judgment as other mortals, that they are not interested in literature per se, that their standards of value are as shifting as the sands, is useless. Some where, some how, some day, reasons the author. Good! “Advance always!” as Rimbaud says.

  Near the Little Sur River, in a windy cove—a bitch of a place!—Eric Barker, an English poet, works as caretaker for the owner of a large cattle ranch.* The pay is meager, the task light, the hours are his own. In the morning he takes a dip in the icy canyon stream, in the afternoon in the sea. Between times he wards off fishermen, hunters, drunks—and rustlers, presumably. Sounds divine, if only the wind didn’t blow steadily twenty-four hours of the day nine months of the year.

  Eric has been writing poetry, nothing but poetry, for twenty-five years. He is a good poet. A modest, humble one, who never pushes himself. Men like John Cowper Powys and Robinson Jeffers esteem his work. Not until a few months ago did Eric receive his first recognition, in the shape of an award. It may be another twenty-five years before he receives another award. Eric doesn’t seem to mind. He knows how to live with himself and with his fellowman. When he gets an inspiration he puts it down on paper. If he doesn’t feel inspired he doesn’t worry. He is a poet and he lives like a poet. Few writers can do it.

  Hugh O’Neill is another poet. He lived at Anderson Creek for several years. Lived on less than a shoestring, I might say. I never saw him other than serene. As a rule he was silent; sometimes it was a grim silence he gave off, but usually it was pleasant, not deadening. Until he came to Big Sur, Hugh O’Neill had never done a thing with his hands. He was the scholarly type. Suddenly, out of necessity no doubt, he discovered that he could do all manner of work. He even hired himself out as carpenter, plumber, mason. He made fireplaces for his neighbors; some worked, some didn’t. But they were all beautiful and sturdy to behold. Then he took to gardening—maintained an enormous patch of vegetables, meant for a single family, but sufficient to feed the entire colony at Anderson Creek. He took to fishing and hunting. He made pottery. He painted pictures. He learned how to put patches in his pants, darn his own socks, iron his clothes. Never have I seen a poet blossom into such a useful creature as did Hugh O’Neill. And remain poor at the same time. Deliberately so. He would say that he hated work. Yet there was no more active worker, no more industrious being, than this same Hugh O’Neill. What he hated was the workaday world, work that was meaningless. He preferred to starve rather than join up. And he could starve just as beautifully as he could labor. He did it graciously, almost as if to prove that starving was a pastime. He seemed to live on air. His walk too was a sort of walking on air. He was swift and noiseless.

  Like Harvey, he could expatiate on a book with all the charm, subtlety and penetration of a professional lecturer. Being Irish, he could also twist a subject to fantastic proportions. One had to go back and reread the novel he was describing to find out how much of it was Hugh O’Neill’s and how much the author’s. He did the same with his own stories—I mean stories out of his life. Each time he told them he gave them a new angle. The best ones were about the war, about his days as a German prisoner. They were very much in the tone and spirit of the man who wrote Men in War: Andreas Latzko. They stressed the ridiculous—and the sublime-aspects which men reveal even in the worst situations. Hugh O’Neill was always laughing at himself, at the predicaments he found himself in.
As if they were happening to someone else. Even in Germany, as a prisoner of war, ragged, hungry, wounded, hardly able to see, he found life amusing, grotesque, ridiculous. There was not an ounce of hatred in him. He told of his humiliations almost as if he were sorry for the Germans, sorry that they, being men and no more, were put in the position they were.

  But Hugh O’Neill could never put these stories to paper. He had material enough to make (at least) another great war novel. He always promised to write this book but he never did. Instead he would write stories, essays, poems, none of them anything like the yarns which captivated us. The war had marked him; it made ordinary life seem drab and senseless. He was happy doing nothing of importance. He loved to idle his time away, and to me it was a pleasure to watch him do it. Why should he write, after all? Would it not entrain the same bedevilment which other pursuits land men in, the men who keep the wheels turning?

  There was a period when he owned an Irish harp. It suited him perfectly. It would have suited him even better could he have picked up his harp and wandered over the earth, singing his chanties, telling his tales, repairing a fence here, building a walk there, and so on. He was so light on his feet, so airy, so blithe, so absolutely unconcerned about the work of the world! What a pity that ours is not a society which permits a man to squander his days and rewards him—with a crust of bread and a thimbleful of whisky—for keeping his tail clear of trouble and ennui.

  Some take it easy and get there just the same, some belabor themselves and make life hell for wife and children, some sweat it out, some have only to turn on the faucet and let it pour out, some start and never finish, and some are finished before they start. In the long run it doesn’t make much difference, I suppose. Certainly not to publishers, and even less to the great reading public. If we don’t produce Gorkys, Pushkins and Dostoevskys we produce Hemingways, Steinbecks and Tennessee Williamses. Nobody suffers. Only literature suffers. Stendhal wrote his Chartreuse de Parme in less than sixty days; Goethe took a lifetime to finish Faust. The comics and the Bible sell better than either of these.

  Now and then I hear from Georges Simenon, one of the most prolific writers alive, and the best in his genre. When he gets ready to write another book—the task of a few weeks—he notifies his friends that he will be obliged to neglect his correspondence for a while. Often I think to myself how wonderful it would be to complete a book in just a few months. How wonderful to notify all and sundry that you will be “off the air” for a time!

  But to get back to the slave coast…. One man who seemed to have no trouble whatever turning it out was Rog Rogaway. Rogaway lived in the abandoned schoolhouse near Krenkel Corners; he lived there by permission of Ben Bufano who, in turn, had received permission from the authorities to use the place as a studio.

  Rogaway was a tall, easygoing, sailorman type, with bones of rubber. He suffered from a serious intestinal ailment which he had contracted as a result of being blown up, along with his ship, by a submarine. He was so happy to receive the absurd pension which gave him leisure to paint that I’m sure he wouldn’t have complained had his legs been blown off. He was a fool about dancing and about painting. He cultivated a sort of “Shuffle off to Buffalo” swing which, when combined with just the right (dirty) leer, gave him the look of Priapus with a cannon cracker up his ass.

  Rogaway turned out a finished canvas every day, sometimes two or three. None ever seemed to give him satisfaction. Nevertheless he continued to turn them out day after day, and faster and faster, convinced that one day he would strike oil. When he ran out of canvas he took the ones that were a month old and painted over them. There was a gay, musical quality to all his work. Perhaps his paintings were no more than exercises, but they were not Swedish exercises.

  The impressive thing about these “exercises” was where he practiced them. He might have worked in the schoolhouse—it was large enough—but Rog had a wife and two children, one an infant, and children drove him crazy. Bright and early every morning he disappeared behind the schoolhouse to follow a hidden trail which led him, after a few hundred yards, to what looked like an out-house. This contraption which Rog had hastily slapped together later served Bufano as a place of meditation. No one rambling through the hills would ever have suspected that hidden in the brush was this den austerely decorated with Chinese silk paintings, Tibetan scrolls, pre-Columbian figurines and so forth, which Bufano had collected in his travels. Nor would the straggler ever dream that a painter, particularly one the size of Rogaway, had fashioned such a cubicle to work in. Bufano, who is short, had to make an opening in the wall, through which he stuck his feet, before he could stretch out full length to take a nap.

  Even now I can see Rogaway in the fever of excitement which always seized him when tackling a fresh canvas. To take a squint at his work he was obliged to back out the doorway. Stepping inside again, he could see nothing but black spots. Now and then, backing out too ecstatically, he would trip on a strip of greasewood and tumble ass backwards into the brambles and nettles. He never bothered to brush himself off: the sting and prickle helped speed up his tempo. Rogaway’s one and only concern was to produce the maximum before the sun lost its strength.

  Evenings he relaxed. If there was no one to share the wine and the music, he drank and danced by himself. Wine was bad for his complaint; he drank it because there was nothing better he could afford. It required only a cupful to put him in the mood. Sometimes he danced without moving from the spot, just shaking his rubbery members like a deboned sardine. At times he disarticulated so perfectly that he resembled an octopus in the throes of ecstasy.

  Rogaway’s obsession was to find a still warmer climate, an ocean you could bathe in, and a rate of exchange that would permit him to live even more cheaply than he did at Big Sur. He got off to Mexico one day, stayed a year or so, switched to Majorca, then to the south of France, then Portugal. Of late he has been living—and painting of course!—in Taos, which is certainly far from any ocean, has a mean climate in winter, and is overrun with tourists. Perhaps Rog has persuaded the Indians to let him join them in their snake dances. That’s the only reason I can think of for such a move.

  In the shack at Anderson Creek, where we were lucky to have a toilet, we had to do without music for a spell since we had no radio or phonograph. This didn’t prevent Gilbert Neiman, another writer and a bosom friend, from hearing music. Music from our place, I mean. In the beginning, everyone who goes to live at Anderson Creek hears things. Some hear Beethoven symphonies, some hear military bands, some hear voices, some hear wails and shrieks. Particularly those who live near the canyon creek, which is the source of these eerie, disturbing sounds. Gilbert and his wife and daughter occupied the big house which was once Varda’s. (Varda had converted the living room into a ballroom. It would also have made a wonderful billiard parlor.) But, as I was saying, Gilbert insisted that the “music” came from our house, which was a good hundred yards away. It came mostly at night, which he resented, because he was a poor sleeper. He was also a bad drinker, but I won’t go into that. When I would question him about the music, what kind of music, he would answer: “It’s that Varèse record.” Whether he meant “Ionization,” “Density 21.5,” “Octandre” or “Intégrales,” I never knew. “You know,” he would say, “it’s the one with Chinese blocks, sleigh bells, tambourine, gongs, chains and all that crap.” Gilbert had good taste in music, adored Mozart, and in moments of repose and serenity enjoyed listening to Varèse. In every place they lived, and they always seemed to choose a quaint dump to live it, there were albums of records galore. At Bunker Hill (Los Angeles), which is almost as weird a place as Milwaukee, they often had little to eat but they always had music. In the little green house in Beverly Glen (just outside Hollywood), Gilbert would rub himself down with olive oil and hide behind the bushes in back of the house to take a sun bath, the music going full blast—Shostakovich, Gaspard de la Nuit, Beethoven quartets, Vivaldi, flamenco, Cantor Rosenblatt, and so on. Often the neighbors begge
d him to turn it down a little. When he worked on his book—in the garage—the music was always playing. (He would begin at midnight and finish at dawn.)

  The book he had written at Beverly Glen, called There’s a Tyrant in Every Country,* was accepted and published during his early days at Big Sur. It was a honey of a book, too, though the neighbors were much divided about its merits. Myself, I’ve never read a better novel about Mexico. At any rate, Gilbert was now on a second book, The Underworld. It was during this period, when he had begun to work days instead of nights, that the music—the phantom music—began to disturb him greatly. Of course he was also drinking. He would begin cold sober and finish quite otherwise. Returning to normal, he would become—I can think of no more apt word for it—delicious.

  Sober, Gilbert walked like an Indian—noiselessly, tirelessly, and on the balls of his feet. Drunk, he fell into a weaving motion, like a man in a trance, or a sleepwalker who skirts precipices, stumbles, teeters, totters, yet never goes over. In this condition his talk matched his walk. He literally wove his way through a subject—Leopardi, for instance, or the Tantras, or Paul Valéry—taking the most dangerous detours, hurdling impossible barriers, retracing his steps with infallible accuracy, falling, picking himself up, resort-to pantomime when out of breath or at a loss for the right words…. He could come back to the exact place where he had left off—at the beginning of what was meant to be a parenthesis—an hour, two hours, later. Come back, I mean, to the phrase which he had left dangling in mid-air, and complete it. Now and then, in these flights, he would pause and, forgetting that we were hanging on his words, do a spot of meditation. He had acquired the habit, in Colorado, of being on the alert for messages. The messages were always from “Mamma Kali,” as he called her. Sometimes Mamma Kali appeared to him in person, just as he was about to take a forkful of peas, and then he would go into a trance, the fork halfway to his lips, and gaze at the beloved one adoringly.