Tropic of Cancer (1934)

DISGUSTING!!!
They might list this book as one of the best books of 20th century, but don't believe it :) When I started reading this book, I was deceived by high remarks about it. Foal language of the book quickly bores the mind. In brief, take my advice, don't read this book, unless you want to regret :) ( )

I came to Henry Miller’s Tropic of Cancer many decades after its 1934 release in France, and its subsequent banning in this country. After its ground-breaking obscenity trial, it was finally published here in 1961. So, add sixty years, and you get to when I finally got around to reading it. My late wife, Vicky, loved his writing. Now, because I have waited so long to read it, I will never be able to talk to her about why she liked him so much. He who hesitates is truly lost in this case. If I had to guess why she found the book so interesting, it wasn’t because of the vocabulary of cunt, pussy, twat, prick, and others—though Vicky liked the sometimes shocking and unusual—my guess is that she liked the freeform style, the very loosely-told story of people doing whatever they wanted to do, as well as the candid descriptions of sex. Another part of the book that had to attract her was the attitude of people thinking the hell with people’s opinions and society’s norms. This rebellion had everything to do with Miller’s life in Paris, as much of the book is a reporting on and a reflection of that time in his life.

When I drop back and look at the book from my viewpoint as a well-read old duffer in 2021, it doesn’t seem as rebellious and shocking, as I’ve seen and read that kind of a story so many times already. It’s harder to experience a groundbreaking piece of art as still fresh after it’s been repeated and played off of so many times. This reminds me of a time that Vicky and I watched Citizen Kane all the way through for the first time, and when the credits played at the end, we looked at each other and said, “So?” All the shots and effects that were truly groundbreaking when the film was released in 1941, we’d both seen countless times in countless movies. Later, someone was talking about what all the “first time ever” shots were in that film, and you had to be impressed, but perception is sometimes all about perspective.

Yet, it was interesting finding the life of Henry Miller in Tropic of Cancer. “What need I for money? I am a writing machine.” Reflecting on his life and art. “It is not difficult to be alone if you are poor and a failure. An artist is always alone—if he is an artist. No, what the artist needs is loneliness.”

There was a hard side that kept coming out in the novel. “The world is a cancer eating itself.” “People are like lice—they get under your skin and bury themselves there.” He also wrote about the whores that were answering a constant need for the book’s characters. “Who wants a delicate whore?” The following section probably caught the attention of the censors. “She used candles, Roman candles, and door knobs. Not a prick in the land big enough for her … not one. Men went inside her and curled up. She wanted extension pricks, self-exploding rockets, hot boiling oil made of wax and creosote. She would cut off your prick and keep it inside her forever, if you gave her permission. One cunt out of a million.”

I am left respecting Tropic for how Miller broke new ground, but I wasn’t sold on it as a book. Cunt, pussy, and prick got old and I was left with how people were being treated. Hard drinking, carousing, and whoring are exciting at first, yet tiring after a while, and poor as a spectator sport. The style was interesting in how it was so vague and loose, but whores, bedbugs, and always searching for sex and a bed for the night, wasn’t a story for my head at this time. But I will leave you with this fine line and summary of the book’s lifestyle. “All I ask of life, is a bunch of books, a bunch of dreams, and a bunch of cunt.” ( )

I only read this book because of Miller's association with Anais Nin and having heard the controversy about it pretty much my entire life. I gave it a 4 star simply for how honest I felt it was about all the artistic (and wannabe artistic) ex-pats in Paris of the time and their interactions with the underground literati and darker corners and experimentation of living outside the "box." Also the 4 star because the classics in all genres should be read. Nin was a far better writer in my opinion and didn't drone on. Miller was a man of his time so I tried to read with an open mind. He tries to write like he's free of bourgeois society but he's conscious of it and thumbing his nose at in one way or another constantly so I scent a great deal of narcissism in his writing and very little sensuality for the love of actual sensuality and eroticism. It's like a lab experiment and he's imagining himself as Victor Frankenstein. ( )

I don't get it, this book is so-so at best. Like "On the Road" this book is about a down and out guy who mooches his way through life. Ground breaking because he wrote this in the 30's ok. I can see why it was banned then, yet the story itself is not that great. Other than that it is unimpressive garbage. I didn't like the way Miller use French without interpreting it for us. So if you read it do it on a device that allows you to highlight and translate those sentences for you. ( )

Publicado por primera vez en París en 1934, debido a la censura no vió la luz en Estados Unidos hasta 1961, después de más de sesenta juicios.

Considerada por la parte de la crítica como la mejor de sus obras, en su primera novela se sitúa Miller en la estela de Walt Whitman y Thoreau para crea un monólogo en el que el autor hace un inolvidable repaso de sus estancia en París en los primeros años de la década de 1930, centrada tanto en sus experiencias sexuales como en sus juicios sobre el comportamiento humano.

Saludada en su momento como una atrocidad moral por los sectores conservadores -y como una obra maestra por escritores tan distintos como T.S. Eliot, George Orwell o Lawrence Durrell-, en la actualidad es considerada una de las novelas mas rupturistas, influyentes y perfectas de la literatura en lengua inglesa.

También publicado en tapa dura en nuestra colección Edhasa Literaria en la que están siendo publicadas una gran parte de sus obras como: Trópico de Capricornio, Primavera negra, Sexus, Nexus, Plexus, ...