An iconoclastic writer of autobiographical fiction, travel narratives, and personal essays, Henry Miller drew on several strands of European Modernism, including Surrealism, Dada, and Expressionism. The autodidactic Miller culled modern psychological theories for their thoughts on sexuality, dreams, and self-actualisation. He also absorbed the ideas of many philosophers, writers, artists, and musicians who helped to shape his modernist understandings of temporality, urban alienation, and eschatology, among other concepts. While strictly characterising Miller as a modernist author seems highly problematic, the impact of modernist elements on his writing and thinking is indisputable.