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# 2024-08-25 - More Miles by Harry Kemp
Recently i read the autobiographical novel Tramping On Life,
which ends abruptly.
(DIR) gopher://tilde.pink/1/~bencollver/log/2024-07-25-tramping-on-life-by-harry-kemp/
More Miles abruptly picks up where Tramping On Life left off.
Personally, i found the first book more interesting. In More Miles,
the author is primarily chasing after women one after another, a
series of disappointments in search of The One. I felt pity for the
author's compulsive behavior because it never seemed to get him
anywhere.
Below are quotes from the book.
I realized that, from now on, I could never again live for any length
of time without the complete companionship of a woman.
I knew that my solitary vagrant life of the Past would never again be
possible for me.
My poverty rather forwarded than hindered the thriving of my mind.
... my true reason [for visiting Ruth] was that I was beginning to
suffer from the desperate loneliness that living, solitary, among
crowds creates--more desperate than the loneliness of forests and
plains. At first good for the creative mind, soon it devolves into a
species of solitary confinement...
People's worst weakness was clinging to other people with whom they
had lived through a vital crisis. The crisis over, one should go on
to others, who had something fresh and unknown to give...
"I'd rather die than be so ignorant as to have a prejudice against
any racial group, Jew, Irish, Scotch, German, American, Negro--I'm
often in doubt about economic problems. I never doubt, in this
case."
Leaving the big, forlorn house, I commented on what an actual crime
it was for the Idle Rich to own houses unoccupied and completely
furnished and equipped--houses dotting the landscape all about the
country from Maine to California...
"The Spanish have a proverb," observed Ruth, "that there are three
topics that must be avoided, to keep the peace, in any
discussion--the other man's religion, the other man's politics, [and]
the other man's wife!"
Free love, I still believed in it, but the fight against stupidity
was too savage and hard... my game, I was at last convinced, must be
the literary game...
... for I must not leave out the things that hurt (they more than
any, belong to my spiritual evolution, and must be acknowledged.)
Rankin contended that he was a "perfectionist" ... that it ought to
be possible, if you kept on seeking--to find the ideal in everything;
the trouble with most people was, that they grew discourages: the
perfect physical condition; the perfect mate; the perfect
environment;--they were all attainable and practicable--if one
persisted in the quest.
The life of the poet ought, primarily, to be the life of the
imagination.
With a small income and plenty of books, I (I was sure) could put all
active life by, and retreat entirely into the life of the imagination.
I was always glad to be back again among my few, silent, wise books
of poetry; glad to be back where I could stretch unclothed, in the
sun again... to swim, unimpeded, from isolated points along the
lake's extended shore.
I liked especially to slip out of my shack in the deep of the night,
for a swim...
It was glorious to float under the star-sprinkled dark, seeming to be
poised alone in the endless space and time that lapsed quietly into
infinity and eternity like noiseless water lapsing into an immense
ocean...
"... concerning husbands--I have no feeling ... but I respect the
rights of sweethearts... Radical lovers take a chance--husbands have
the laws and the conventions on their side."
* * *
"If you'd keep abreast of the times in your craft, Gregory--leave off
your exclusive reading of the classics--you might have spared
yourself a lot of trouble."
* * *
"The need of men and women for each other is so great," Janice
continued, "and yet so simple, that a civilized being ought never to
forgive either Church or State, for fastening vampire-like on that
primal, simple need,--battening on it, turning it into a thing
difficult and complex, and so deranging the happiness of the world."
* * *
[The author was offered an editorial job on a new magazine. It paid
well, only required one week of work per month, and was for a
political cause he believed in. Most of it was writing of very poor
quality.]
The wrenching and tearing of divided purpose began within me. I
revolted against reading this truck, sifting through it further for
the one good bit of prose or verse that waited here and there;
animated it was true, with thrusts of fierce, bitter energy, and at
times, greatness.
I forecast that "The Proletariat" would help, on the whole, many
artists and writers to find themselves, and strike their own gait
afterward...
But--was this my job?--to give my creative energy in this way?
I shoved the heap of manuscript to the floor. I couldn't go ahead
with it. Regretfully, I saw the last glimmer of the sixty dollars a
month departing.
I caught up Milton's Paradise Lost and read page after page of sure,
sublime melody to counterbalance the effect of the stuff with which I
had been infesting my thought.
* * *
Janice was right. It was awful, being a man. The hot, surging blood
pulsing full and painful within me, as if constrained and to the
bursting point, by abstinence; the hurting fullness in my veins and
nerves beating blindly to escape, to find avenues of ease!
Around and around and about on the continual, hopeless quest I
whirled, seeking, in every group I knew, a woman's intimate
companionship ... running hectically top parties ... drinking,
debating, philandering, reading aloud my latest poems; enduring the
companionship of people I did not even like--all to alleviate the
misery of my solitariness,--to find, perhaps this time, in some
woman, more than a passing affair ... a woman, rather, who would mean
enough to me, to hold me to more than the temporary; to find, at
last, the beautiful golden-haired creature that obsessed the dreams
of all my imagination!
* * *
Stories, authentically attested, came to us, of striking miners in
Colorado first cast out of their company-owned hovels (that they were
forced to rent of the companies, no other places being available)...
We heard of evicted miners taking to the hillsides, inhabiting tents
furnished by friendly groups of other working men--
Tents that were no sooner occupied than they were wantonly shot into,
by the assembled State militia... enfiladed and fusilladed into, and
riddled through and through causelessly--as if the assembled soldiery
of the commonwealth took the whole life-and-death struggle as a
savage lark.
Not only the miners, but wives and children of the miners, were
wounded, in some cases, ti was reported--slain!
* * *
I was glad that my pursuit was, in spite of all deviations from
it--the writing of my poetry, the following of a literary career.
I avowed revolutionary principles, and wrote poems for the Cause.
But inwardly I was not sure of the innocency of the proletariat, not
so sure of the millennium that would be brought about on earth,
through their rising to power...
"Capitalism stands solid because, at heart, every worker is a
would-be Capitalist--"
I was not so sure that the régime of the Proletariat, when it had its
turn, would not bring upon humanity abuses more atrocious than any
that saw day under the present system of exploiters and exploited.
* * *
"There'll be a period of readjustment that will hurt us ... unless
we're settled on a farm where we can grow our own food ... but the
Capitalists will bring about several world wars first, to head the
Revolution off.
* * *
I hate the changing-changeless moon,
The iteration of the sun,
The regularity of noon
And systems that like clockwork run;
And I would leap and clap for joy
If morn for once would enter late
His empire, like a careless boy,
And make, expectant twilight wait;
And I would dance for joy, and shot,
If the sun bartered gold for green,
Or if the moon would turn about,
The silver side I've never seen!
* * *
"I ask you are WE reporting the truth about this strike?--the way the
strikers are being rough-housed, and framed up? the way the women
and children are being treated?--bot much!"
"And if we did report the facts--would our papers print them?--"
"You fellows know damn well they wouldn't--and that we'd lose our jobs!"
* * *
Very well, I would give them a talk on the Ultimate Ideal--
The Ultimate Ideal of the world set free to write poems, paint
pictures, model statuary, read in great libraries the classics of all
literatures,--discuss, put on plays, make love: after a marginal
general hour or two of daily necessary work, shared in, without
respect to person, by all mankind. ...
Soon I felt a chill, invisible but real Something vastly lapping up
about me ... though psychic, as actual as the platform I was standing
on--a wide propulsion sweeping up from that restless mob against me...
Their first vague restless whispering mounted to an audible murmur.
They began milling about like a great herd of restless cattle...
They were talking openly now, back and forth with each other--those
hundreds of strikers, standing on the floor... packed there without
seats... not understanding a word of what I was saying.
I shrank back from them, drawing myself into an infinitesimal point
of dividuality.
I stopped, put my hand to my head, stumbled out--sick!
Riding back to the city on the train with Lilla and the bunch, I was,
for me, unusually silent.
For the first time in my life, I had sensed directly that enormous,
ruthless, unthinking and idiot power latent in masses of people...
and it had appalled me.
author: Kemp, Harry, 1883-1960
(TXT) detail: gopher://gopherpedia.com/0/Harry_Kemp
LOC: PS3521.E45 Z52
(HTM) source: https://archive.org/details/moremilesanautob012531mbp
tags: biography,ebook,non-fiction,vagabond
title: More Miles
# Tags
(DIR) biography
(DIR) ebook
(DIR) non-fiction
(DIR) vagabond