The Lack of Eternity

Go here to read Hank Rollins discussing Henry Miller, Camus, John Fante, Lautreamont, Baudelaire, Artaud, Rimbaud...

On Miller:

Reading Miller gave me a lot of courage. You know, just to see how completely flat out he was, you know, with his thing, he was so brave. And as a young man reading Black Spring and the Tropics and the Paris writing, of Miller, that gave me a lot of strength too.

On Bukowski:

Bukowski was fun. You know, for a couple of summers when you’re in your early 20s, I think it’s really great reading. I think that to worship him in your 30s is to kind of lose the plot.

A great quote for me is this:

Ben Franklin had a quote, I wish I could pull it out of my mind and say it to you. Basically he said, “It’s okay to have a whole lot of books that you don’t read. Or don’t get all the way through. It’s not a bad thing to be kind of surrounded by books.”

Even better, Rollins paraphrases a Hemingway quote which was actually said as:

“Writing, at its best, is a lonely life. For he does his work alone and if he is a good enough writer he must face eternity, or the lack of it, each day.”