One of Henry Miller's most luminous statements of his personal philosophy of life, Stand Still Like the Hummingbird, provides a symbolic title for this collection of stories and essays.

Henry Miller called The Smile at the Foot of the Ladder his most singular story.

Admittedly inspired by lonesco and the Theatre of the Absurd, Miller's tragicomic slapstick is nevertheless as American as the Marx Brothers and the blues--the simple story of a heartless Harry (the one the ladies are wild about) who learns a bittersweet lesson about life, death, and love.

Letters written to his childhood friend and chief mentor, commercial artist Emil Schnellock, from 1922 through 1934 demonstrate Miller's growth as a writer and the development of his earthy yet philosophical style.

Here is the inimitable Henry Miller (1891-1980) speaking candidly about himself and his robust fiction--Tropic of Cancer, Tropic of Capricorn, The Air-Conditioned Nightmare. In this enticing collection he argues convincingly for the things that have mattered in his full and exhilarating life. He and his interviewers cover the range of his engrossing works that stirred obscenity charges, as well as his life as an expatriate, his loves and conquests, his goals, his beliefs, and his probing insights into the culture that produced him and repulsed him.

These conversations...