Books About Greece: The Colossus of Maroussi by Henry Miller

Have you thought, "I wish I could meet that author!" after finishing a good book?

I have that feeling a lot, especially when reading about Greece. I can imagine the wine-fueled discussions I'd have with Gerald Durrell, John Fowles, Cavafy and Homer sitting around a little table in a local taverna. 

But that's not how I felt about Henry Miller. I'd like to give Henry Miller a good slap in the face. He is one stuck-up, pretentious son-of-a-gun. 

When Miller indulges himself, The Colossus of Maroussi becomes a real slog to get through. For example, a long fantasy about Saturn where he writes sentences like "Saturn is life in suspense, not dead so much as deathless, i.e. incapable of dying... Saturn is postponement manifesting itself as an accomplishment in itself."

If you have any idea what he is talking about, you deserve an award.

I'm amazed that some other parts of the travelogue survived an editor, like the line "As I was leaving the museum I got the jitterbugs so bad that I made caca in my pants."

But the book is still worth reading because when Miller turns his gaze to Greece, he comes up with some incredible descriptions of this country and its people. 

Some of my favorites:

"In Greece one has the desire to bathe in the sky. You want to rid yourself of your clothes, take a running leap and vault into the blue. You want to float in the air like an angel or lie in the grass rigid and enjoy the cataleptic trance. Stone and sky, they marry here."

"Athens and New York are electrically charged cities, unique in my experience. But Athens is permeated with a violet-blue reality which envelops you with a caress; New York has a trip-hammer vitality which drives you insane with restlessness, if you have no inner stabilizer. In both cases, the air is like champagne-- a tonic, a revivifier."

"It seems ridiculous to say so, yet I have the feeling that in Athens the miraculous light of day never entirely vanishes; in some mysterious way this soft, peaceful city never wholly lets the sun out of its grasp, never quite believes the day is done."