Ping-Pong Magazine, Henry Miller Library, Big Sur, California
Dear Reader,
I am writing at the end of an amazing year. What you are holding in your hands is the culmination of an idea which began in a little cabin next to the Pacific where Henry Miller’s best friend, Emil White, decided Henry’s work was worth a memorial.
Henry Miller wrote volumes and volumes of letters, some of which are archived at the library. He was, if nothing else, prolific. This got me thinking about writers and writing. Why do we do it? Who will see it? Does it matter? Anais Nin’s unexpurgated diaries were published posthumously, as well as most of Emily Dickinson’s poems. A writer, it seems to me, is an artist who will write whether anyone ever sees it or not: this is secondary to the form. Some writers are published in spite of themselves, by people who believe that what they have to say needs to be heard. Others struggle for years to get their work into the public eye, only to be shut out by mainstream publishers who are becoming more and more homogeneous. Read More >
