It should not come as a surprise even to the casual reader of Henry Miller that he idolised the nineteenth-century Russian writer Fyodor Dostoevsky and was tremendously influenced by him in his own work. More than any other presence of influence in the work of Miller, Dostoevsky serves as a foil for the paradox of simultaneous living and creative expression in writing. Miller not only both admired Dostoevsky's writing, and subsequently revered the man who wrote it, but Miller also takes this very dual nature of idolising to the core of the creation of his own literature. In his direct musings over Dostoevsky, Miller constantly attempts to extricate the person from the persona and to combine them again in a convoluted image of philosopher-poet-compatriot. Yet Miller declares that his knowledge of Dostoevsky may not have necessarily come to him from reading his books.