We’ve just published a new anthology, The Mysterious Life of the Heart: Writing from The Sun about Passion, Longing, and Love. In fifty personal essays, short stories, and poems that originally appeared in the magazine, some of our most talented writers offer an unforgettable tapestry of love: vibrant, messy, enigmatic, and enduring. Here we’re reprinting the book’s introduction. To find out more or to order the book, please visit www.thesunmagazine.org.
— Ed.
When I was in my twenties, I came across a new essay by Henry Miller, then nearly eighty, about his obsession with a beautiful, mysterious, and, as I recall, not entirely available young woman. One of the twentieth century’s most influential writers, a fearless cultural provocateur and irrepressible ladies’ man, Miller was shamelessly in love. Hopelessly and pathetically in love. He thought of the woman constantly. When he couldn’t be with her, he wrote to her every day. At the end of his rope — unable to work, unable to sleep — he was, he admitted, as confused and insecure as a love-struck teenager.
