A ramshackle open-air art gallery with freaky sculptures and paintings greets you outside the Henry Miller Memorial Library (henrymiller.org; 11am-5pm daily). Henry Miller lived in Big Sur for 17 years, some 5 miles south of this now nonprofit alternative art space and community center in the home of his late best friend Emil White. Eclectic sculptures line a tree-shaded path leading to a bookshop and an outdoor stage hosting concerts, readings, screenings and other cultural fodder.
Don't be fooled by "memorial" in the name. This is a living, breathing artistic outpost that welcomes flaneurs and book-browsers to its redwood-shaded grounds. Founded by novelist Henry Miller's dear friend, the painter Emil White, it was a gallery before its conversion into a nonprofit-run arts center turned bookshop.
Shelves in the bookstore are laden with authors who found inspiration in Big Sur. But this thoughtfully curated den has enough contemporary nonfiction and avant-garde poetry to detain any lover of the written word.
