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To purchase issue two: http://www.henrymiller.org/purchase.html Website: http://www.henrymiller.org/ping_pong.html___________________ ________________________________________The Henry Miller Library champions the literary and artistic legacy of Henry Miller. This cannot mean only the writings of Miller himself. Miller existed at the peripheries of American literature, but his sources, and his influence, extend far beyond this country, to the international literary avant-garde.Ping•Pong literary journal sees itself as a current and vital part of that same impulse. It represents a living connection to the centers and margins of contemporary literary culture, both in the US and beyond. As such, not everything published in Ping•Pong will be pretty.Miller himself was not a pretty writer. But he was vital. That is why even when Miller was hardly read in the US, Kenneth Rexroth describes himself meeting “…miners in the Pyrenees, camel drivers in Tmelcen, gondoliers in Venice” who all asked, “Do you know M’sieu Millaire?”The work published in Ping•Pong seeks that same vitality. It seeks it in art, with the works of such luminaries as Portland, Oregon’s Susan Harlan. It seeks it in all forms of writing: fiction, poetry, non-fiction, plays, even in new forms, such as David Larsen’s “neo-benshi”, a poem/play intended to be read to a scene from the movie Troy.Thus American writers who exist, as Miller did for so much of his career, just under the radar of the mainstream literary world, are represented in Ping•Pong; writers like Graham Foust, Daniel Nester, Shanna Compton, Charlie Anders, Laura Mullen, Chad Sweeney, Trinie Dalton, and K. Silem Mohammad.Miller was and is as much an international literary figure as he was/is an American one; therefore, Ping•Pong reaches beyond our shores in order to bring unknown, or lesser known, writers from around the world into more prominence in English. For this issue we have compiled writings by Mark Young of New Zealand, Nakahara Chuya of Japan, Maria Davico of Brazil, and Edith Sodergran of Sweden.Ping•Pong understands itself as furthering Miller’s legacy by tapping into the contemporary literary and artistic milieu. The writers and artists represented in Ping•Pong are heirs to Miller’s legacy, and were Miller alive and writing today, these would be his peers and contemporaries. It has been argued, that were Miller writing in 2007, he would be no more a part of the mainstream US literary world than he was in the 30’s, 40’s, 50’s or 60’s. He was not a writer for the market. He would not appear on Oprah. He would be denounced as vulgar, as obscene, as barbaric as he was then.The work in Ping•Pong is similarly not written for the market, but for the ages. It is challenging, it asks much of its reader. It’s not easy. It is, though, a vital continuation, and contribution, to Henry Miller’s literary legacy.