Customer Reviews

Tropic of Cancer

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I know of no other writer who makes words truly live like Henry Miller does. "Cancer" is his best (although the neglected "Colossus of Maroussi" runs a close second), full of enthusiasm, rampant lust-driven adventures, a man living though it rain crocodiles, a visionary portrait of a person determined to live in this cracked and dying earth that will drag you down and suffocate you if you let it. Living has nothing to do with money. It has nothing to do with prestige, nothing to do with a career, with laws or codes or good sense. It has everything to do with sex, with art and inspiration, with creativity and the fire at our heels, the hunger that gnaws us from the inside out. My friends and I had a joke: "What happened in the bidet?" "Read the book!" Unfortunately I think they only knew because I told them. I carried this book around, and his others, for months, enraptured, exhuasted, tormented, joyous, breathless, during a very bleak period of my life. He kept my imagination alive. The first time I tried to read it, just after the 1990 film "Henry & June" I didn't get it. About a year or so later I tried again, and ate it up. It was like I had a tropic of cancer-sized hole in my head and I'd finally found the missing piece. No other book, except maybe "Naked Lunch," has made me realize that literature IS life, that my heart could be enlarged by one, that reading and writing weren't just hobbies or exercises--they were raw and painful necessities, as vital as breath, as flesh, as rousing and invigorating as sex at 3am that lasts til dawn. I love all kinds of writers, but I have to admit, I'm kind of a snob. To me, the real writer is one like Henry Miller, like Rimbaud, like Poe, the ones who live at the fringes of madness, who in poverty and tatters show us that it's life, and life only.

...my spiritual liberation started with Henry Miller and _Tropic of Cancer_.

I always credit him with "saving my life" and don't think this an exaggeration. As a troubled, near suicidal 15 year old, I saw _Tropic of Cancer_ on the bookshelf of my next door neighbor's - whose dog I was walking while they were away - and dove in hoping to find what reports of the obscenity trial in the New York Times would lead me to find - I was 15 and anxious for "obscenity".

No doubt, I found obscenity, but mostly I found courage! gobs of it - and joy - the courage to be who I was and just go for it - everything and everyone else be damned!

For the next decade or so, not two weeks would go buy when I wasn't reading Miller: the Topics, Black Spring, Sexus/Nexus/Plexus, The Colossus of Maroussi, Big Sur, and on and on, re-reading - but although they all recharged the joy (not to mention my vocabulary, he read the dictionary as a youth and remembered everything), nothing matched the impact of _Tropic of Cancer_.

Yes - Miller's pretentious, narcissistic and misogynistic, but he's also filled with a contagious spirit. His later works - particularly _Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch_ are more focused on true spirituality. By his late 50's he finally got the sexual obsession and misogyny under control, the earlier works are too focused on lust.

Great stuff for a 15 year old boy though! - wonderful and graphic sex scenes are interspersed with lyricism, erudition and the great joy of being alive ...no matter what...

I wouldn't hesitate to recommend this to any 15 year old or 50 year old...

The back cover of Henry Miller's novel "Tropic of Cancer" notes that the book was first published in Paris in 1934, but banned as obscene in the United States for 27 years until a historic court ruling was made. Thus, "Tropic of Cancer" is significant as a historical artifact in addition to being a literary work of art. The book tells the story of an American writer named Henry Miller who lives in Paris. Henry definitely lives in the seedy underbelly of the city; the book follows him to the bars, cafes, and whorehouses and details his encounters with a number of colorful characters.

"Tropic of Cancer" opens on a grungy note as the narrator discusses the lice infestation of his friend's armpits. Early on the narrator promises that this will not be a polite book: "This is libel, slander, defamation of character [...] a prolonged insult, a gob of spit in the face of Art." Miller largely succeeds to deliver on this promise. The book is full of profanity, and there are frank discussions of sex, sexually transmitted diseases, and other such topics.

The book has a crude charm and energy throughout, even though at times the prose seems wildly self-indulgent. Miller depicts Paris as a magical place, a pilgrimage site for artists and wanderers. The narrator often reflects on writing and literature in general, and on his own artistic goals and theories in particular. There is also reflection on America and American identity. Miller's prose sometimes attains a Whitmanesque revelatory quality.

To me the main question about this book is thus: Is it merely an important historic artifact, or does it still sing as a work of living literature? My own reply to this question: the book does still sing, delivering (to quote the book itself) "bloated pages of ecstasy slimed with excrement." If you like it, also check out the writing of Charles Bukowski.

Henry Miller's "Tropic of Cancer" is the most un-American book ever written in novel form, of a piece with "On The Road" and "Catcher In The Rye" as stories built for disaffected youth of all ages.

It is easy (although still unacceptable) understanding this book's banning from American shores nearly 30 years from its release. It semi-autobiographically describes Miller's vagabond life in 1930s Paris, blasting off from mundane conversations and cold sexual encounters into flying, flowing strands of poetic imagery and useful, if not always agreeable, wisdom glorifying the individual over any semblence of community.

Miller writes of dead-end jobs at a newspaper and boarding school (his entry about his proofreading job should be required reading for would-be newspapermen), fleeting, fleecing relationships with friends and acquaintances (Miller's betrayal at book's end, not only of his friend but of his disdain to material wealth, is revelatory) and the rooms, city, and country he lived in (his descriptions of dark Paris streets and bordellos, their residents and patrons read sensual and grotesque, but hold humanity better than their scribe. His descriptions of New York skyscrapers are intriguing and surreal). His frank conversations among bedmates, liberal use of offensive words for women and minorities would easily fit on an Enimem rap album in 2000; imagine what audiences emerging from the Victorian era must have thought. Miller's sexual descriptions are even today too raw, mean-spirited and selfish to stand even as pornography.

But amid Miller's poetic, not narrative, wordflow (a vivid, hilarious description of a bar fight notwithstanding), "Tropic of Cancer" seems most to rankle vision and values Americans hold as close as their beloved eagle and flag symbols. (No accident that Miller gets evicted from job and living quarters on America's religious holiday, July 4). 40 years before punk's Sex Pistols mocked their countrymen by singing "No future for you!", Miller joyously lived without having or wanting one. His world in "Tropic of Cancer" is without savings, family, hope, history, reverence, or respect. All this in years of the American and world's Great Depression; Miller's famous opening lines "I have no money, no resources, no hopes. I am the happiest man alive" would cut America's "Greatest Generation," which overcame that Depression, to the quick - had they read them then.

"Tropic of Cancer"'s final, abrupt scenes are inevitable; Miller's friend's wish to leave his girlfriend for home "to hear people speak English again" countered all Miller acted on and wrote about. The end is as wholesome a climax as this most hedonistic story could have achieved, in a book fellow iconoclast Ezra Pound accurately described as "a dirty book worth reading." In other words...Miller's Paris is a nice, if dirty, place to visit in print. Just don't do this at home, kids.

There are few books that I would say anything about in
a public forum such as this, but you might have guessed
that Tropic of Cancer is one of them. When I am in such a
state as I am now, being that it is after midnight and I am
on the internet browsing, Tropic of Cancer seems more revelent
than ever. You open a door, leave behind the daylight, ride
into another man's mind, and it is an extrodianary mind
at that. The only thing I can remember after first reading
the two Tropic books (the first, Cancer, is considered his
classic)is that I had to go on living with a feeling that
a great man, a patriot of himself, had crossed my path,
shook my hand with a smile, insulted me and patted me on the
back, telling me that this was what it was all about.
Just being.
I don't know what the title means, but sometimes after
a book has been read and set aside for several months,
or even years, the title becomes its own meaning. One
that will never leave you.

-
Synopsis: Tropic of Cancer unabashedly depicts Millers' escapades as a down-and-out writer in Paris during the early 1930s, "bumming around" Montparnesse with a colorful, earthy, and rebellious group of expatriates and artists.

Review: Miller is nourished by decay. He observes how the higher activities - love, sex, creation, fidelity, art - have lost their divinity, dignity, poetry. Sex seems to him dry and painful; work is absurd; death is meaningless, and literature is dead. The only sort of goodness we are now capable of is to blow ourselves to bits. But somehow Miller, despite his rage and pollution, seems innocent. His book seems a lament. His potency is founded in showing the cruelty and filth, but these would have no affect on him or us unless we also feel its opposites - kindness and purity. Whenever he records the ugliness of his surroundings, he has discharged them and their effects from his soul, as in a sort of exorcism. And this is why he appears an innocent soul. Because innocent souls have an unreasoned but keen taste for suffering, and nothing seduces them so easily as does the view of a martyr. In this instance, nature is the martyr; all of her processes polluted and corrupted by humans.
Miller's language is incisive, clear, potent, fresh...and new, a new sort of language, a language of the underworld translated into English. His fast-paced, absurdly wild and filthy existence is beautifully documented; there is something in the surrounding which reminds one of the film Casablanca, perhaps the charm of desperation.
He is prone to philosophies, and some readers will prefer the adventure to the contemplation. Also, his treatment of women is acutely unorthodox but should be further examined before being criticized.

Quotation: `I have no money, no resources, no hopes. I am the happiest man alive. A year ago, six months ago, I thought that I was an artist. I no longer think about it, I am...' (from the first page)
-

Henry Miller's "Tropic of Cancer" is easily one of the best books written by any American author in this century. Written with a refreshing honesty and a realistic outlook, "Tropic of Cancer" is a fine example of the autobiographical-novel form (so autobiographical that Miller says its not really a book at all and that he is referred to as Henry Miller in the book).

It is sad to realize that this book was banned from 1934, when it was published, to 1961, when it finally got published in America (although the legal battles did not end unitl 1963). For nearly thirty years Americans were denied this fabulous book, and it makes me wonder why this was allowed to happen. But perhaps all the hoopla got more people interested in the book and therefore helped the exposure of it.

What more is there to say? "Tropic of Cancer" is an outstanding work and I personally will be reading more of Miller's books very soon.

Henry is in love with words, his own words. Like a squinty eyed gunslinger who is impressive until you realize that he's an just an extra in a Clint Eastwood movie with a gun full of blanks, Miller is full of his own bluster and bravado that after a short while seems little more than a pose. Tropic of Cancer is a tedious exercise in misanthropy in which women are all c**ts and a mans' worth is judged by the size of his johnson and his bank account, ie how much the main character can sponge. The novel is a fictionalized autobiography about an American expat writer living in Paris. It's rambling, occasionally brilliant, swaggering, mysogonistic, anti semitic and ultimately dull, dull, dull. Not much happens. The novel is more concerned with character observation and commentary on humanity, female genitalia and the bohemian expat lifestyle which on the face of it, might sound interesting. But the main character is a loveless (except for himself), misanthropic, self absorbed sexist jerk who about whom I couldn't give a damn. He's a typical modernist anti-hero who flaunts social convensions and norms and "suffers" for his art. Of course he hangs out with a bohemian crowd, screws a lot of prostitutes all the while making fun of the "friends" from whom he mooches meals, and his wife who sends him money from America. The great number of incredibly unerotic (unappealing and mechanical) sex scenes just made me numb. Miller makes sex into something that's more like trophy hunting than anything actually enjoyable. Perhaps at the time this dissipated lifestyle may have been the heighth of hip, now it seems a pathetic and irresponsible macho pose. Ultimately the main character is a slumming parasite, an annoying dillitente: his lifestyle is almost pointless. The prose is sometimes brilliant, but Tropic of Cancer is the type of book that is more fun to talk about than actually read, the kind of book that would increase your coolness factor with certain literary types. That Norman Mailer gives this book ridiculously high praise should give you an idea of the tired macho posturings to be found therein. It gets old quick.

This is one of those books that stun and shock the system. It is an active, living document. Its prose is bold and loud. It roars at us from the start. We start to crawl, walk, then trot, then gallop through its luminous twisting caverns. Miller's inner glow lights the way. Without the light, we would follow his reverberating, joyous laughter that booms off the walls. We follow straight on to the promised land. We find that what is promised is life. We reach the last page. We have just fed on homecooked solids. We are exhausted and full. We are better for it.

Some have said that this is the greatest novel written by an American. It is. It could be the greatest novel ever written. There is not an extraneous word nor a mangled sentence in it. Miller shows us what it's like to be on the streets, on the run, on the go, poor, and happy. He laughs always, drinks always, with cheer, lustful for more life, more experience. The charachters are real people and we recognize them. Spasmodic thoughts wrapped in florid wordship call out revelations long after the perusal. Afterall, this is a code, a code of the soul. It is written in the animal tongue so we hear it. Reading this book is an experience that adds to us. It makes us taller, stronger.

Denuded of the normal logistical standards of modern literature it speaks to us in a pedestrian, straightforward manner. We imbibe it as one does a tonic. It is without side effects. The prose quickens and breathes life into the dead. It is medicinal.

I speak of "The Tropic of Cancer" as an accurate mirroring of a fully naked life. There must be sex, love, lust, hate, anger, nonsense, bacchanal and injustice in a truthful account of life. There must be honesty. We only need to look, Henry Miller shows us what a full life looks like. A reflection of life as a whole. This book is complete. And yes, this is the greatest novel written by an American. Perhaps, the best novel ever written.

"Tropic of Cancer" is a book that needs to be read quickly, not to make an end of the task, but to get the full exuberant effect of the narration. Its pacing is restless and energetic, which is all the more amazing considering that it has no plot. I don't know how much of it is fiction, but it is obviously autobiographical and reads like a memoir, detailing its author's experiences living as an American expatriate in Paris in the 1920's.

Henry Miller is a bum (it must be admitted) living among the idle intellectuals in the seedier neighborhoods of Paris (might he have bumped into Hemingway?). He's not always unemployed; he takes temporary jobs like a proofreader at a newspaper and an English instructor at a Lycee in Dijon, and he always has a place to live, albeit filthy. Most of the time he's cavorting with friends, making new ephemeral acquaintances, visiting brothels, and engaging in the kind of promiscuity of which such a life avails itself, despite the fact that he has a wife back in America. He doesn't shy away from any of the disgusting details of living and loving -- in the novel's opening scene, he is shaving his roommate's armpit hair for lice, and believe me, it only gets worse -- but Miller thrives in the squalor and wouldn't have it any other way. Compared to his native New York, which he considers impersonal, cold, and hollow, Paris is warm and intimate, brimming with life and beauty.

"Tropic of Cancer" is very similar to two popular books that followed it by a quarter of a century: Jack Kerouac's "On the Road" in content (run-on anecdotes about outrageous activities with his friends, pulsating with waves of existentialist rambling, the main difference being that Miller is a much better writer than Kerouac), and William S. Burroughs's "Naked Lunch" in style (stream-of-consciousness narration using striking imagery in random juxtaposition). Miller possessed the spirit, if not the seed, of the Beat Generation -- his existence can be summarized in his self-description as "spiritually dead, physically alive, morally free."

This is also perhaps the book's greatest fault -- its influence outstrips its literary quality. It may not be a great novel, but it at least it's worthy of its reputation, which is more than can be said for a lot of popular books.