Quotes from book
Plexus

Name: Plexus
Author: Henry Miller

Henry Miller

When Miller the raconteur is on his own . . . he is incomparable, doing his best, in ribald fashion, to laugh the Victorian Age to extinction. -The New Yorker Plexus is the core volume in The Rosy Crucifixion: the volume which has the most complete description of Henry Miller's basic values, beliefs, opinions, judgments, both at the time of his 'Crucifixion' and at the later time when the trilogy was written. Plexus is simply the most marvelous volume of emotion and ideas and visions and nightmares about man and society in the twentieth century-with art as the link perhaps, or as the soul's refuge-that I have read in many a long year. There is absolutely no subject in the world that Henry Miller does not seem to know about, want to talk about, and to evaluate with the deep authority of wisdom. He is probably the most learned of all our American writers, the most open to ideas and feelings, and yes, the most worshipful of all the aspects of life, as well as the most critical literary spokesman of our time. -Maxwell Geismar At times uproariously funny . . . may be Miller's masterpiece. -Choice

“My hunger and curiosity drive me forward in all directions at once.”

Henry Miller book Plexus

Source: The Rosy Crucifixion II: Plexus (1953), p. 61

“Many is the mirage I chased. Always I was overreaching myself. The oftener I touched reality, the harder I bounced back to the world of illusion, which is the name for everyday life. 'Experience! More experience!' I clamored. In a frantic effort to arrive at some kind of order, some tentative working program, I would sit down quietly now and then and spend long, long hours mapping out a plan of procedure. Plans, such as architects and engineers sweat over, were never my forte. But I could always visualize my dreams in a cosmogonic pattern. Though I could never formulate a plot I could balance and weigh opposing forces, characters, situations, events, distribute them in a sort of heavenly lay-out, always with plenty of space between, always with the certitude that there is no end, only worlds within worlds ad infinitum, and that wherever one left off one had created a world, a world finite, total, complete.”

Henry Miller book Plexus

The Rosy Crucifixion II : Plexus (1953)

Henry Miller book Plexus

I clamored. In a frantic effort to arrive at some kind of order, some tentative working program, I would sit down quietly now and then and spend long, long hours mapping out a plan of procedure. Plans, such as architects and engineers sweat over, were never my forte. But I could always visualize my dreams in a cosmogonic pattern. Though I could never formulate a plot I could balance and weigh opposing forces, characters, situations, events, distribute them in a sort of heavenly lay-out, always with plenty of space between, always with the certitude that there is no end, only worlds within worlds ad infinitum, and that wherever one left off one had created a world, a world finite, total, complete.
The Rosy Crucifixion II : Plexus (1953)