Celebrate Henry Miller with Philip Glass, the Upright Citizens Brigade and more at the Big Sur Brooklyn Bridge

NY Daily News - BY Jeva Lange

The Henry Miller Memorial Library might just be the coolest library ever; that is, if you can get out to Big Sur, Calif. to visit it. However, from May 12-19 you’ll only have to travel as far as Brooklyn to celebrate Henry Miller during their Big Sur Brooklyn Bridge festival, centered at the City Reliquary in Williamsburg, the neighborhood where the "Tropic of Cancer" author was born and raised.

“It’s a no-brainer, it’s been percolating in my mind for a long time,” the Henry Miller Memorial Library’s executive director, Magnus Toren, told Page Views of the event. Since the Henry Miller Memorial Library is located on the “isolated tourist-artery of Highway 1,” Toren sees Williamsburg — Miller’s hometown — as the perfect place to celebrate on a larger scale.
Cue an obligatory "Tropic of Capricorn" quote:

I saw a street called Myrtle Avenue, which runs from Borough Hall to Fresh Pond Road, and down this street no saint ever walked (else it would have crumbled), down this street no miracle ever passed, nor any poet, nor any species of human genius, nor did any flower ever grow there, not did the sun strike it squarely, nor did the rain ever wash it...Dear reader, you must see Myrtle Avenue before you die, if only to realize how far into the future Dante saw.
-Henry Miller, "Tropic of Capricorn," 1938

As the Henry Miller Memorial Library is notable for its high-profile concerts (including performances by Arcade Fire, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Fleet Foxes, Thurston Moore, Animal Collective, Gillian Welch and many others), Toren described the Big Sur Brooklyn Bridge as “a grab bag of the kind of stuff we do at the library.”
Highlights of the event include an evening of short film with the Big Sur International Short Film Screening Series and the Brooklyn Short Film Festival, and the Upright Citizens Brigade presenting “The Tropic of Laughter” at the Knitting Factory.