Staying Sane: A Year in Reading (Part 9)

I was in search of something light after Libra and turned to Henry Miller’s Under the Roofs of Paris. Miller wrote this piece for spare money after his return from Paris by submitting 5-10 pages at a time. He got paid $1 for each page and submitted them to a Mr. xxxx who ran a bookstore in LA. One day he dropped off 10 pages and let Mr. xxxx know that this was it, the novel was complete. The catch is that Mr. xxxx also carried nude pictures and pornographic literature at the back of his store. I don’t know if you already guessed but Miller was writing for the illicit part of the store, hence Under The Roofs of Paris is pure pornography, and well, it is sick. I enjoyed the book immensely, mostly because it left me gaping at the obscenity Miller put into words: incest relationships, black masses at the French countryside, tricking prudent American women into orgies, and teenager whores are just the beginning in this 126 page book. There is a very loose plot that revolves around sex and I would suggest that you do not approach Under The Roofs of Paris unless you are already perverted or have a desire to be.

To snap out of the ludicrous state of mind Miller put me in, I turned to Alvaro Mutis’ The Adventures and Misadventures of Maqroll, which I had been meaning to read for a second time since November ’03. [Emre’s piece on Maqroll previously appeared here.]

After Maqroll I could not bring myself to start a new novel and turned to Jorge Luis Borges’ Collected Fictions. I had kept my brother John Leahy’s present at my bedside table for most of the year but the period immediately after Maqroll is when I turned my full attention to Borges’ labyrinths and tried to decipher them. I must admit that I feel very illiterate while reading Borges and have quite a difficult time connecting certain dots in his stories, mostly because of all the literary references that I cannot catch. Still, I enjoy Borges’ stories a lot and value his old-school language, use of fairy/folk tale language, and matter-of-fact style. He drops gems such as “One man’s dream is part of all men’s memory” in each story, which I believe Maqroll would value greatly and inscribe on the walls of the restroom corridor at The Snow of the Admiral. Collected Fictions is best read in a coffee shop, Lucy’s, or in bed, accompanied by black coffee, vodka, or water.

Previously: Part 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8