The Henry Miller Library in Big Sur, California
A Must-See Stop for Lovers of Literature and the Central Coast of CA
Sep 12, 2009
The Henry Miller Library is located on Highway One in Big Sur, California and is not to be missed by anyone interested in twentieth century United States literature or simply impressed by the majesty of the Big Sur coastline. Despite the name, one should not expect to find a lending library a quarter mile south of Nepenthe Restaurant in Big Sur. Instead the visitor to the Henry Miller Library will find a “memorial trying not to be a memorial,” a community center, a place to learn more about Henry Miller, a sculpture garden, a local center of the arts, and simply a pleasant spot to check one’s email courtesy of free WiFi.
Henry Miller the Writer
According to Norman Mailer, Henry Miller (1891-1980) “at his best wrote a prose grander than Faulkner’s, and wilder–the good reader is revolved in a farrago of light with words heavy as velvet, brilliant as gems, eruptions of thought cover the page. You could be in the vortex of one of Turner’s oceanic holocausts when the sun shines in the very center of the storm.” The controversial, yet critically acclaimed author of Tropic of Cancer (1934), Black Spring (1936), Tropic of Capricorn (1939), and The Rosy Crucifixion (1949-1960) lived in Big Sur between 1944 and 1962. In 1957 he wrote Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch. Miller was nominated for the Nobel Prize in literature, and Tropic of Cancer is often cited as one of the most important novels of the twentieth Century.
The Henry Miller Library
The Henry Miller Library is not, as some assume, the home in which Miller lived. The home originally belonged to the Austrian-born Emil White. White, who served as Miller’s personal assistant, moved to Big Sur in 1944 with Miller. Paid $5 a week to handle Miller’s correspondence, White became one of the writer’s closest friends. Miller dedicated Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch to White, writing that White was “One of the few friends who has never failed me.” White purchased the property on which the Henry Miller Library stands today in the 1960s. The main structure was built in 1966 on the site of a landfill dating back to the construction of Highway One. White founded the Henry Miller Library in 1981 and administered it until his death eight years later.
White left the Henry Miller Library to the Big Sur Land Trust (BSLT) at the time of his death, and roughly a decade later, the Henry Miller Library became an independent organization committed to, in the words of White, “encouraging support and maintenance of [the Henry Miller Library], and to promote and enhance the scholarly research and worldwide enjoyment of Henry Miller's literary and artistic works.”
A Place for Those Inspired by the Beauty of Big Sur
Even for travelers to the Central Coast that do not know or appreciate Miller’s work, the Henry Miller Library celebrates a love of the landscape that makes a stop at the Library worthwhile. Henry Miller was deeply inspired by Big Sur. “It was here in Big Sur,” he said, “I first learned to say Amen!” He also wrote, “Here I will find peace. Here I shall find the strength to do the work I was made to do.”
Events at the Henry Miller Library
Today the Henry Miller Library is administered by a non-profit organization of the same name, and the Library is the site of many ongoing events including the West Coast Regional Poetry Slam, open poetry readings, the Big Sur Watersheds Fair, an annual children's writing workshop, and painting and poetry workshops.
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