Written by American author Henry Miller, “The Air-Conditioned Nightmare” is a poignant and lasting piece of non-fiction, mainly due to the fact that the book displays an America not so dissimilar from modern America.
I still cannot believe this book was published in 1945; it felt like I was reading something written from the present. Henry Miller strikes me as having the ability to see into the future.
Miller’s view of the U.S. as a land where the artist is pushed down, business and money have a chokehold on society and thugs rule and domineer, is just as true today as it was in 1945.
This book reminds me that the more things change, the more they stay the same. Despite the passage of time, culture remains frozen in this country. The U.S. still worships money and power, blames immigrants for all its problems and is a heavily divided and hostile nation.
The plot follows Miller’s three-year journey across the U.S. after living in Paris for roughly a decade.
The journey begins in Miller’s birthplace, New York City, before Miller and his friend Abe Rattner travel south and then west. While he finds some parts of the country inspiring, others simply depress him.
Miller is immediately disappointed upon arriving in NYC. Between the ugly architecture and the poor conditions, he finds the city revolting.
“Nowhere else in the world is the divorce between man and nature so complete,” Miller remarks.
Despite this, he searches far and wide for characters and locations to act as a light in the darkness that is America.
Miller travels across the country, from Hollywood to Louisiana, and meets a wide range of artists. These are people who he feels contradict the American philosophy of big business.
He meets a painter who doubles as a surgeon, an auto mechanic, a Freemason and other colorful characters. Miller is a magnet for people who make up the strange yet wonderful underbelly of America. He describes these characters with a clarity and earnestness unmatched by other writers.
Miller strikes at the rotten core of this country, tears out the heart of darkness and displays it for all to see. He describes poverty, racism and cruelty and exposes the broken prison system and the sheer anger that infects this country.
“Such is the state of the art in America to-day. How long will it endure…Perhaps, after we have gone through another blood bath, we will give heed to men who seek to arrange life in other terms than greed, rivalry, hatred, death and destruction,” stated Miller.
He also describes more positive aspects of America, finding the beauty of nature in the great vistas of the Grand Canyon and the flora of Louisiana.
Miller takes joy in the art of automobile repair when he has to fix his busted-up Ford, which overheats constantly during his trips through the desert.
One of the more meaningful chapters in the book, “Soiree in Hollywood,” features Miller roaming about a party filled with the most grotesque examples of American wealth.
At a millionaire’s home, he witnesses a drunken football player arrogantly boasting about being one-hundred-percent American and telling an Englishwoman to go back to her country.
Later, he meets an elderly union-buster, who harbors utter hatred for the working class and their attempts to fight for their rights.
Truly, Miller finds himself in an air-conditioned nightmare. A country that is advanced with its shiny cars and gleaming skyscrapers, yet shallow on a cultural and emotional level. A place that is perfectly sanitized but hides a dark secret underneath its clean surface.
This book is more important than ever in an age where the American nightmare is rearing its ugly head and staring us all in the face. Miller, essentially an outsider in his own home country, can describe the horror with clarity.
Despite its often dark and solemn tone, “The Air-Conditioned Nightmare” is actually quite inspiring.
It provides a blueprint of how to be better, how to improve yourself as an individual and how to create a better America that values all of its residents.
