MILLER, Henry.

Inquire · Offered by Peter Harrington

Unpublished essay, "Looking Down from the Empire State". A satirical unpublished essay from the perspective of an enthusiastic future tour guide for the Empire State building, with several hand corrections by Miller.The Empire State Building was finished in spring 1931. Miller was sceptical of the project and viewed it as a grotesque, sterile imitation of European cathedrals. This essay contains similar elements to his brutal attack on American culture, The Air-Conditioned Nightmare (1945). Miller imagines the Empire State Building finally teetering at a monstrous 563 floors, "all in pure ivory", which has seen "8,765,492,583 visitors to the mooring mast, all of them equipped with parachutes and false teeth". His tour guide is a wide-eyed convert to the building's magnificence, proudly describing its staff of janitors ("who comprise a force slightly larger than the standing armies of Europe, are equipped with hole-proof socks and bullet-proof jock straps"), traffic cops ("who wear white silk corduroys"), and specially trained canaries, who perch in platinum and gold cages on the exterior of the building and have been specially trained to warble at onlookers "to restore the sense of time which is apt to be lost when the human organism is subjected to the unreality of impossible altitudes".There is an extraordinary gift shop "where you may find every bauble and trinket known to civilized man", including figurines made entirely from Wrigley's chewing gum and postcards showing al

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