Attention Miller-lovers in London! Announcing Sept 19: ‘A Gob of Spit in the Face of Art’ – A Symposium on Henry Miller

This one-day event marks the 80th Anniversary of Henry Miller’s controversial debut novel, ‘Tropic of Cancer’. Register here.

An extraordinary picaresque combining high modernist literary styles with graphic and irreverent portrayals of sex, ‘Cancer’ was immediately banned throughout the English-speaking world.

Despite high praise from T.S Eliot, Ezra Pound and George Orwell as well as later homages from Allen Ginsberg, William Burroughs and Norman Mailer, Miller is still widely dismissed as an unreconstructed mysogynist or producer of adolescent smut.

This symposium brings together eight international scholars whose work attempts to restore his reputation in the twenty first century. The aim is to build on a growing body of research that reassesses Miller’s literary and cultural contribution by moving beyond his image as a pornographer as well as the equally reductive notion that he was some kind of sexual prophet.

How does Henry Miller fit in to the modernist lineage – particularly in relation to those ‘high’ early modernists who marked him out for glory? Most importantly, what is Miller’s relevance now, in an age that imagines itself free of the repressive taboos he was blacklisted for challenging?

The event will take place in the Richard Hoggart building, Room 137a, Goldsmith’s, University of London.

For a preliminary programme go to: https://agobofspitinthefaceofart.wordpress.com/
For news/updates:
https://twitter.com/agobofspit

While it is free, to ensure admission please register at: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/a-gob-of-spit-in-the-face-of-art-a-symposium-to-mark-the-80th-anniversary-of-henry-millers-tropic-tickets-12588415289?aff=es2&rank=0