What About Henry Miller (and Why?): A Presentation by Magnus Toren, Director of the Henry Miller Memorial Library

Magnus Toren has been the Director of the Henry Miller Memorial Library, a nonprofit art center and book store in Big Sur, since 1993. Prior to making landfall in area, he circumnavigated the globe, delivering yachts across five of the seven oceans of the world. Magnus will talk about one of the most influential, controversial, misunderstood, and (relatively) unknown writers of the 20th century — Henry Miller, the man, who according to scholar James Decker, is “responsible for the free speech that we now take for granted in literature.”

Central to Miller’s legacy is Tropic of Cancer, “one of the ten or twenty great novels of our century, a revolution in consciousness,” according to Norman Mailer. First published in France in 1934, the book was deemed obscene by authorities in the United States and banned in the US until 1964. His freewheeling, expressive, and genre-bending style paved the way for writers like Jack Kerouac, Hunter S. Thompson, Thomas Pynchon, and David Foster Wallace. George Orwell heralded Miller as “the only imaginative prose-writer of the slightest value who has appeared among the English-speaking races for some years past.”

The first time Bruce Springsteen heard a Bob Dylan song, he felt as if “somebody kicked open the door” to his mind. Miller’s impact on modern literature is equally profound. Heck, even Dylan himself called Miller “the greatest American writer.” Magnus will also explore Miller’s time in Big Sur in the 40s and 50s, his tumultuous personal life, his struggles for acceptance by critics in his native land (he’s a demigod in Europe), and his motley band of artists, seekers, and outcasts on Partington Ridge.

Lastly, Magnus will talk about his own time as Director of the Henry Miller Library and its connection to those bohemian halcyon days of old. The Library has hosted many acclaimed performers across the past 23 years, including Arcade Fire, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Neil Young, Philip Glass, Flaming Lips, Woody Harrelson, Henry Rollins, The Pixies, and more. The Library was the recipient of the ‘Champion of the Arts Award’ in 2012 presented by the Arts Council of Monterey County.

And as a bonus, he’ll bring his guitar and sing a couple of songs apropos the subject of his talk.

Magnus lives in Big Sur on Partington Ridge. He is married to Mary Lu and has a son, Stefan.

Join him!

Location: William Tell Coleman Library