May 30, Friday afternoon -- Reading Henry Miller

Selling photographs at Post and Grant, at an intersection between Chinatown, Union Square and the Financial District. Other days he can be found down by the Embarcadero--he has two kids, age 20 and 17, to put through college! Photographs are from his travels around Europe, Cuba, Thailand, Mexico, India.

Reading Henry Miller on Writing, by (I'm guessing here) Henry Miller.

For the past four months he's been writing a novel, sending it to a friend in Berlin for feedback and, during that time, he's been reading voraciously. The novel is about politics, women, and travel. Throughout there will be photographs, like of a gypsy camp in Mexico. His friend advises, write for yourself. It's hard, he said, and went on to say that it's difficult to write about what you got away with.

When he was in his twenties Henry Miller's Tropic of Cancer really shook him.

Authors he wrote down for me: Ivan Klima, Lawrence Durrell for Justine (a book that inspired his daughter's name), and Joseph Roth for Hotel Savoy--it has just 120 pages, he said....I stopped at the Mission District library on the way home, but it was closed, cerrado.

What has he been reading voraciously? The Power and the Glory, by Graham Greene; Great Short Stories by Fyodor Dostoevsky; Lovers for a Day, by Ivan Klima.

Next to him, on a stack of photographs, to read interchangeably with Henry Miller on Writing, Love and Garbage, by Ivan Klima.

He doesn't read contemporary fiction, he said. There are too many good classics.

Again, I feel compelled to pack a suitcase of books and move to a desert island for a year. Where would your island be? Mine might just be the coffee shop down the street.