This joyful rant expressed the rage and the hopes of mine and every other generation. There was no hint of objectivity, balance or fairness. His emotional investigation of the wild Greek spirit was not just a spit in the eye of the European establishment – who, if they had read Maroussi would have dismissed him as patently dislodged, inflamed, surreal and even mad – but a giant gob in the face of all that was curmudgeonly and mean. Into this heady political and social mix came Miller's hilarious and breathtaking demolition of the stupidity, greed and hypocrisy of those who had wrought continuing poverty, war and despair on Europe and the world. Students were rioting, hippies were rampant and there was a sense of social disorder and deep generational divide. The cold war was raging, Middle East conflict was brewing, the price of oil was quadrupling, and nuclear conflagration seemed entirely possible. Miller had gone to Greece to escape the war clouds, and there I was living with Chileans fleeing a military junta and Vietnam draft dodgers. We both suspected that the man with the fewest needs was the happiest. We were both on the road, poor as tramps, living in a foreign country with no possessions, responsibilities or certain future. I had no idea if it was fact or fiction, but I saw parallels in our situations. In fact it was a celebration of friendship, spirit and life – all that seemed authentic and valuable and which was on the point of being destroyed. Written in 1939 as all Europe prepared for inevitable war, it was superficially a travelogue and a character study of the great Greek poet George Katsimbalis. I had found a dog-eared copy and, knowing nothing of the man or his reputation, devoured it. Henry Miller's Colossus of Maroussi was tinder for the blaze to come.
After 15 years' toiling in English educational factories, bunged up with textbooks, manners, literature and theory, I wanted neither work nor authority figures – I was burning for expression, experience, ideas and meaning. But there was no way back – and even if there had been, to what? This was a new life, beyond the social and intellectual straitjacket of parochial England, its tribal politics, drab cities and smothering politeness.
Paris was bone-grey and lonely, and I hated it.
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