In Praise of John Cowper Powys's 'The Meaning of Culture'

Big Sur – 5/22/51

 Dear John

                I borrowed your ‘Meaning of Culture’ from my friend Boris Vieren in Carmel and had read only a chapter of two when Lepska snatched it away and began devouring it.  Wants me to tell you, said Lepska, what a grand and glorious book it is – though she couldn’t read your ‘Autobiography’ (sic).  The other day my friend Emil White (of Big Sur), an Austrian Jew from Vienna, who came here 7 years ago to aid me in whatever way he could – literally – confessed to me that some twelve years ago, having left Chicago on foot to search for a job in another town, only modestly acquainted then with the English language, he took your book with him; when he came to a barn (somewhere) he sat down to look at it; he didn’t get up for thirty-six hours!  It was one of the great events in his life; as we say over here….
 
Extract of letter to John Cowper Powys from Henry Miller

(Proteus and the Magician – The Letters of Henry Miller & John Cowper Powys)