Plexus, by Henry Miller

I finished reading this a few days ago, and I think it is probably the second foray I've made into modern American literature, after Kafka's America. The novel is essentially a mix of autobiographical narrative, fictionalised exaggerations of character and philosophical meanderings over various literature the author has read. An anonymous critic on the back cover makes the case that if you are bored with this book, then you are bored with life, and that is, in my opinion, an excellent insight into the very nature of the novel and how it manages keeps your attention, despite (or perhaps because of) a narrative form that lacks coherent structure. Characters appear and disappear without explanation beyond the 'this is how it happened' justification, and since they are depicted as real people and nothing more, with the garnish of Miller's own (usually high) opinion of them, they are not missed more than their presence is enjoyed. Miller's entourage of colourful friends, including a variety of socialites, lawyers, artists, 'pollocks', widows and Jews, seem almost too bizarre to be real, and one suspects he has exaggerated from time to time. The content of this work is quite free from the accepted moral restrictions at its time of publication (1953), describing unapologetically group sex, drunken abuse of colleagues, scatological enterprise, what may amount to rape in the modern context and various illegal activities. One may question the ethics of Miller living off his wife's prostitution and the extracted charity of his close and not-so-close friends, but he certainly never does. He is seemingly a man with an unnatural ability to ignore remorse (and later describe it great detail when it suits him), and has no qualms with writing large paragraphs about what other people think of him. Reading this is an exercise in endurance, but having said that the book has a grip on you and won't let go easily. I guess I'm not well-read enough to analyse just what exactly in the author's technique grabs a hold of you, but I can recommend this novel (the second in a trilogy of sorts).