Big Sur is the portrait of a place--one of the most colorful in the U.S.--and of the extraordinary people Miller knew there: writers (& writers who didnt write), mystics seeking truth in meditation (& the not-so-saintly looking for sex-cults or celebrity), sophisticated children & adult innocents; geniuses, cranks & the unclassifiable. Henry Miller writes with a buoyancy & brimming energy that are infectious. He has a fine touch for comedy. But this is also a serious book--the testament of a free spirit who has broken through the restraints & cliches of modern life to find within himself his own kind of paradise.