A subplot of a Seinfeld episode, this book is so much blather it is of no use other than sitcom fodder. ( )

A foul-mouthed exploration of 1930s literary hipsterism in Paris. Miller rails against everything and nothing in particular in a cowardly-rebel-without-a-cause spree through whorehouses and hotels in Montparnasse. Miller describes it best himself. "A man... must stand up on the high place with gibberish in his mouth and rip out his entrails. And anything less shuddering, less terrifying, less mad. less intoxicated, less contaminating, is not art." Well, the gibberish part is dead on. Tropic of Cancer is 300 pages of an aesthetic-snob mad with existential forlornness howling at the moon. It's like reading The Scream. Dostoyevsky said it the most cleverly, Sartre said it the most clearly, and Miller said it the loudest and most coarsely. The only thing interesting about this plotless book is the depth and breadth of Miller's egoism. ( )

Another book on living in Paris.
Miller's life there was rather tough, the most money coming from the wife in US, and that meant lots of trouble for him - definitely not a man of a single woman (he had about 5 wives, numbered 1..5 in his books).

The Tropics are probably the best works about the time Miller spent in Paris, very well written, even though using rather obscene language.
What I clearly recall:
- the way women are ALWAYS objects to be used by Miller (and yes.... he's been using them A LOT!)
- the 'collection of failures', the museum Miller built during his entire life, few bookshelves where he gathered small things to remind him of every single failure he's been through (and there were MANY of those!)

Very realistic, 100% authentic - hard to tell where's the fiction in Miller's books (all autobiographical). A tough guy. Sometimes difficult to pick the subject of a book between the long list of obsessions described and the colorful language...

What impressed me most and got me really curious was his lifetime friendship with Lawrence Durell (who I personally couldn't read), and the intensive correspondence they kept the entire life. It's now all published... and parts of it, some of the letters, are very descriptive and full of details on the books they both wrote. Makes it a lot easier to get what Miller intended to say through his novels. ( )

click for review ( )

[This book] unabashedly depicts [the author’s] escapades as a down-and-out writer in Paris during the early 1930s, “bumming around” Montparnasse with a colorful, earthly, and rebellious group of expatriates and artists.…Published in France in 1934, [the book] was banned from the United States until 1961, when its printing led to the overturning of America’s obscenity laws. Now it is regarded as an American classic.