Today's Digest finds us wearing our clumsy rubber rain boots from Prim's, our "water resistant" rain jacket (which is more or less useless if you're outside for more than five minutes), and listening to this Mike Nesmith mix on a gratefully wet afternoon here at the Library.

We need the rain, and boy are we relieved! (Here's the forecast. It's kind of ideal. Spurts of rain mixed with stretches of sun. Not much wind. That said, they closed, then opened, the highway south of us as a precautionary measure.)

Anyway, where were we?

Oh yeah. The Digest. You're reading it! Start scrolling....now!!

(Photo above features Henry along with Lolly and Bill Fasset at Nepenthe in 1950. Photo courtesy of Nepenthe Restaurant) 

More good news!
St. Emil Joins Henry Miller 
now on YouTube! 

Among Emil's friends an neighbors appearing in the video are Henry Miller, Stefan White, Teresa Bradford, Zad Leavy, Edna Bullock, Alisa Fineman and many more. Thank you Joe Kishton for making this film and for now publishing it on YouTube for all to see!

Henry's embrace of Big Sur can be seen as merely another manifestation of the "California Dream/Myth" and its promise of rebirth, renewal, and reinvention.

This New Yorker piece looks at how authors like F. Scott Fitzgerald, Joan Didion, and Jennifer Egan have attempted to capture the various strains of this complex essence.

A must read!!

People often ask us, “Why do you choose these certain books for the Library?”

To the casual observer, the selection may come across as random and scattershot. But a closer look reveals a method to the curatorial madness. Click here!

How is it, in this Amazon age, a small publisher like New Directions—Henry's publisher!—continues to thrive by publishing challenging and experimental works by authors like Roberto Bolaño, W. G. Sebald, and László Krasznahorkai?

Click here to find out how!

(Pictured above: James Laughlin, the founder of New Directions Press, with the playwright Tennessee Williams and the poet and philanthropist Ruth Walgreen Stephan, in 1969.)

In lieu of news that 42 million Americas died in the "bloodiest Black Friday Weekend On Record," we figured it's a good a time as any (albeit belatedly) to revisiting our own unique commercial approach to the day after Thanksgiving.

Check out the video above! Well worth it!

The classic 1959 Twilight Zone episode "Time Enough at Last"* portrays Henry Bemis, a bank clerk who loves books, yet is surrounded by those who would prevent him from reading them.

Finally, after he survives a nuclear blast he gets his chance. Click here to see what happens next!

Now the sun turns out his light.** Thanks for reading!  We'll see you next month!!

** Apple Records just released a remastered box set of the White Album, replete with alternate takes, and the famous Esher Demos—27 stripped-down demos of the songs that the boys laid down at George’s house prior to rolling up to Abby Road.

What you hear above is the Esther demo of “Good Night." Rolling Stone says it steals the show.