SE : Just in the last two months, I was asked by a magazine in America called "Conjunctions" to write a piece on an American novelist who influenced me. It was for a special issue and the main theme would be "Current American Novelists Talk About Novelists who Influenced Them." I wrote about Henry Miller who, except perhaps for Faulkner, had the biggest impact on me. I suspect that part of the piece I wrote came up sounding a little defensive, because Miller is still very controversial in the United States. He used to be condemned by the moralists on the right side, but now he is condemned by the politically correct on the left.

Well, there are things about Miller that are unsettling even to somebody who admires him. He clearly has problems with women. And there are occasional moments of anti-Semitism in him. But I still think that he was a brave writer who has changed the face of the twentieth century's fiction. He was not just the exibitionist of the body, but he was the exibitionist of the soul. Reading his works for the first time was one of those " epiphanies ". Like hearing Ray Charles or Bob Dylan's "Highway 61 Revisited" (1965) for the first time, or as if seeing Orson Well's film, or seeing an old silent film called "The Passion of Joan of Arc" (1928).

I think Faulkner is the greater novelist, but Miller's "Tropic of Cancer" (1934/1962) is the novel I read more than any other novel. And it is still the defining novel.

RM : To tell the truth, I don't like Henry Miller so much because he seems to speak too much in one line. That's why, I guess, he needed to get married to a Japanese woman, in order not to speak too much in his actual daily life.

SE : Well, I worry about how Miller would have translated into any other language. Because all of the greatness of "Tropic of Cancer" is found in his voice. Yes, as you mentioned, it is Miller being full of himself and just talking, talking, talking, talking.

RM : I like novels, pictures, and movies that have a certain kind of shyness behind them. There is this shyness behind your work. Even though it's rather talkative, still it has shyness. People tend to envy those who have something that they don't have so maybe that is why you like Henry Miller so much.

SE : Yes. I respond so much to "Tropic of Cancer" because there is a bravura and an exhilaration about Miller's voice that I don't have in my voice. This is what moves me and energizes me. And even though I can't approximate that voice, I can be changed by it in a way.

I think Miller has almost been dismissed in America. He was quite popular in the 60s and 70s. Now I think he is out of favor. Salman Rushdie wrote a withering piece on Henry Miller in "The New York Times Book Review," which is ironic because the kind of provocation that had made Salman Rushdie notorious was. . . the right to that provocation was won for him by Henry Miller.

RM : Probably when you think you like Henry Miller, you must be vigorous and energetic and high-spirited. Comparatively, when you are slowing down and feeling depressed, you can't read his works.

SE : But I read "Tropic of Cancer" when I am really depressed and can't stand the snobbishness of myself, and I suddenly become high-spirited. The basic jest of the book is, "Eat a lot of food, drink a lot of liquor, have sex with a lot of people, and find God." And "Stop thinking so much."

RM : The generation before AIDS.

SE : The generation of AIDS resents all of the generations that came before it, because it believes that AIDS has made sex deadly. Preceding the generations of AIDS, sex seemed to be without consequences. You didn't have to worry about pregnancy and people didn't have to worry about venereal disease.

But up until the twentieth century, sex always had deadly consequences. Syphilis, women died of childbirth. It's the generation of aids that is really more typical of the history of sex than of the generation that precedes it. Maybe sex is supposed to be risky.

RM : Well, perhaps the phrase "generation before AIDS" is not correct. I think it should be "generation before people realized that the natural resourses are limited." I feel terrible whenever I hear somebody saying that there is a limit to natural resources on this earth. Gas, oil, petrol. It is like you are told not to use them, and this makes you very conservative.

SE : Yes. But it's still true that in Henry Miller's age, sex was an act of courage.

RM : Nowadays, before you make love, you have to think. "Hmm, if I make love now and this woman becomes pregnant, and a new child is born, this means an increase of another human being who will consume the limited resources." If there were no limit, people can become really adventurous. By the way it was the oil shock in the 1960s that killed rock'n roll. People said " We don't need this high-volume amplifier. It consumes too much energy."

SE : That's an interesting opinion.

RM : Ever since the Oil Shock in the 1960s, no rock'n roll that is worth hearing has been born.

SE : I think I've found another similarity to you. We both think too much before having sex.

RM : Of course as soon as we get started, we don't really think any more. There seems to be, in a certain way in your fiction, a policy. In your works you seem to think that the earth is something that would be consumed and there is no way to prevent it.

SE : Well, I think civilization or whatever the order we cling to is destined to consume.

RM : The main characters in your books, they keep exhausting all kinds of things, for example, energy of other people as well as of themselves; they are very exhaustive. The relationships that the characters in your book try to establish is more of a consuming kind, not the saving kind, exhausting all the energy they have. "Being tired" and "being exhausted" are two different things. Even though you exhaust yourself, you will always get more energy from somewhere else.

YK: You might feel liberated after the exhaustion.

SE : I think you are right, but I don't know why. There is an obsessive quality. Just thinking about it makes me want more vodka.