The Air-conditioned Nightmare [Paperback]

These set of essays fit more like social diatribes with travel as a platform to announce them from.Miller relates the decay of the social core in American lifestyle,a way of life which he would gladly secede for the completely human natural way of living.Although his statements are mostly convincing,an objective & critical mind would notice the few slips of his zealous & antagonistic approach where one could suspect that if he did not miss the point of the topic that he assails on,he misses it as a whole.One can sense the innocent exuberance of his dreams & derisions,like a child wishing for his toy or an adult barring a door to the problems he wants to completely forget forever.The style of his writing is vigorous,lively with occasional flashes of grin compelling wit,highlighted at times by paragraph climaxes which round up all the previous sentences to a slap driving whole.Though lacking the spine-cracking,life-altering appeal of Bukowski and the inimitable brilliance of Celine,his adamnant and at times raging missives rarely fail to convince.The work as a whole could have been better if it would have stayed true to the gist of its inception:A Travelogue.But the incongruence hardly affects the work at all,& this has got to be one of Miller's finest moments.

In "The Air-Conditioned Nightmare", Henry Miller writes about an automobile trip he made through the United States in the 1950's. His encounters with colorful characters, and his hilarious and insightful descriptions of the towns he passes through make this a "must read" for Miller fans. His criticisms of the banality and shallowness of American life he observed then still hit the mark. His favorite region was the South, which, as a Southener, I appreciate, and so this part of the book was especially interesting to me. Compared with Jack Kerouac's "On the Road", which was written at about the same time, this is a more cynical and negative view of America, but is saved from being merely depressing by Miller's wonderfully savage sense of humor and his ultimately forgiving human heart.

Henry Miller had just returned from Paris, living there as an expatriate throughout the 1930's, when he decided to become reacquainted with his native land by undertaking a rambling road trip across America, and (naturally) writing about it. If for no other reason, an expat returning to his native land resonates, and is at least one reason why this book has merit for me. In Miller's case, the trip was in 1940-41 (at least a couple Amazon reviewers place the trip after WW II, including one who says it was in the `50's!) Miller has been compared, inter alia, with Louis-Ferdinand Céline, whose most famous work is Céline: Journey to the End of the Night (Landmarks of World Literature). In terms of being acerbic, and relentlessly negative and critical (and thereby feeling better about oneself?), I think the comparison is apt. Yet Miller is an icon, of sorts, having broken down numerous (hypocritical?) boundaries of propriety with his salacious accounts of his life in Paris, starting with Harper Perennial Modern Classics - Tropic of Cancer which was one of the first 20 books I ever read, nervously telling the much older 19-year old sales clerk that it was a "school assignment."

Three-stars certainly imply ambivalence, and I feel much of that towards the author, and this particular work. At some level, he is disgusted with "the game" of making a livelihood, and there is much to be said for that. In general though, he "solves" the problem by being a parasite, looking for the next handout. France had provided him with solace and nurture for a decade. Others have noted his casual "noblesse oblige" attitude towards Hitler. Specifically, he says: "...that I chose to live in Paris is no reason why I should pay with my life for the errors of the French politicians...Moreover, I see no reason why I should lose my balance because a madman named Hitler goes on a rampage. Hitler will pass away, as did Napoleon, Tamerlane, Alexander, and the others. A great scourge never appears unless there is a reason for it." No doubt, Big Sur was a comfortable place to not be inconvenienced from.

One of the stops on Miller's cross-country trip is Mobile, Al., a town I've become familiar with. I'm also familiar with the drug-educed ramblings of William Burroughs, from Naked Lunch: The Restored Text as well as others. Consider Miller's description of Mobile: "Mobile revolves like a torpid astrolabe. Men who knew the shade of the baobab swing lazily in their hammocks. Haunched and dehaunched the boneless bronzed women of the Equatorial regions amble by. Something Mozartian, something Segovian, stirs the air. Maine contributes her virginity, Arabia her spices. It is a merry-go-round standing stock still, the lions affable, the flamingos poised for flight. Take the milk of aloes, mix clove and brandywine, and you have the spiritual elixir of Mobile. There is no hour when things are different, no day which is not the same. It lies in a pocket, is honeycombed with light, and flutters like a plucked cat-gut." What!? No doubt it is the poverty of my own imagination, but it seems a lot more Burroughesque than any Mobile I've seen. And where are the Bellingrath Gardens?

But when Miller is "on," he is "on," oh so well describing some of the eternal truths about America (and some other countries) that are even more valid today than when he first wrote them. Consider: "It is a world cluttered with useless objects which men and women, in order to be exploited and degraded, are taught to regard as useful." "...and we go about our business or we take to dope, the dope which is worse by far than opium or hashish- I mean the newspapers, the radio, the movies." "We have two American flags always: one for the rich and one for the poor. When the rich fly it it means that things are under control; when the poor fly it it means danger, revolution, anarchy."

Miller visits Pittsburgh, and takes a picture of the workers' homes, with the Homestead Steel Works in the background, from high upon the hill. He visits the south side of Chicago, and wonders if their will ever be a revolt. And, as he says: "On the license plates in New Mexico it reads: `The Land of Enchantment'. And that it is, by God! Perhaps the secret of the American continent is contained in this wild, forbidding and partially unexplored territory...Everything is hypnagogic, chthonian and super-celestial." And what about the peyote, Henry?

And there is the matter of the title itself, selected long before one never rolled down the windows on a long car trip. 3-stars.