Product Description

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #8711 in Books
• Published on: 1994-01-06
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 318 pages

Amazon.com
No punches are pulled in Henry Miller's most famous work. Still pretty rough going for even our jaded sensibilities, but Tropic of Cancer is an unforgettable novel of self-confession. Maybe the most honest book ever written, this autobiographical fiction about Miller's life as an expatriate American in Paris was deemed obscene and banned from publication in this country for years. When you read this, you see immediately how much modern writers owe Miller.

The Merriam-Webster Encyclopedia of Literature
Autobiographical novel by Henry Miller, published in France in 1934 and, because of censorship, not published in the United States until 1961. Written in the tradition of Walt Whitman and Henry David Thoreau, it is a monologue about Miller's picaresque life as an impoverished expatriate in France in the early 1930s. The book benefited from favorable early critical response and gained popular notoriety later as a result of obscenity trials. Containing little plot on narrative, Tropic of Cancer is made up of anecdotes, philosophizing, and rambling celebrations of life. Despite his poverty, Miller extols his manner of living, unfettered as it is by moral and social conventions. He lives largely off the resources of his friends. In exuberant and sometimes preposterous passages of unusual sexual frankness, he chronicles numerous encounters with women, including his mysterious wife Mona, as he pursues a fascination with female sexuality. Tropic of Cancer was the first of an autobiographical trilogy, followed by Black Spring (1936) and Tropic of Capricorn (1939).

Customer Reviews

Fountain of youth
I'm hoping Oprah will make this her next Book Club selection - if she thinks Dr. Eckhart Tolle's A New Earth is revivifying amid the sterility of modern life, she hasn't seen anything yet. Tropic of Cancer is nothing less than a bilgistic piece of ecstatic optimism. It comes as an electric shock when read in the context of the last century's deadening, pessimistic literature or in the context of our (generally) syrupy, self-conscious contemporary literature - or just in the context of day to day life as it has come to be practiced. And while most of the book seems satisfied with getting some mischievous laughs at the expense of Modern Civilization, the last 100 pages or so sustain a level of intensity that can stand beside anything written in English.

Puerile, vulgar, and tawdry.
Puerile, vulgar, and tawdry.

Apt description of Henry Miller, American expatriate and author of "Tropic of Cancer," a semi-autobiographical novel of his time in Paris, pathetic in its hedonism, rich in its misanthropy, and ultimately anarchic. Miller makes no attempts to portray his novel as a redeeming salvo; he revels in his own literary filth amid his self-described truth and ugliness. And for this, the novel was banned in the United States after it was published in the 1930s. Banned, for its obscenity.

Banned, for its vulgarity. Banned, for its depravity.

But is "Tropic of Cancer" an exercise in literary putrefaction? Is Henry Miller a purveyor of repulsiveness?

Upon my first reading at the age of eighteen, "Tropic of Cancer" spoke to me of the truth inherent in human nature, all of the maliciousness, greed, hate, and grotesqueness that humans face every day and attempt to rectify in the name of the common good. And the novel did not hide these facets of human nature. Rather, Miller brought them to the forefront and wallowed in them, I felt, to reveal these truths to a public that refused to acknowledge their existence. Even when its existence was present every day. The novel read like an unspoken truth, and I clung to every word seeking that truth for myself.

But I did not need to search for it.

Miller made this truth accessible for all.

And had I found it? What would I have done with that knowledge? Would I lose my humanity like Miller had done?

"Tropic of Cancer" is as close to depravity's surface as I will ever get.

Or allow myself to.

A Necessary Evil...
I'm not going to debate the literary merits of Henry Miller's book, hailed by some as one of the greatest books of the twentieth century. I'll make a few points.

1. Tropic of Cancer is a semi-autographical book about a man in Paris in the early 1930s, an American ex-pat writer, living on the edge of subsistence, detailing his adventures among the French, sexual exploits, nights of drunken revery, etc...

2. Miller creates vivid, seedy imagery. Certain passages will leave you wanting to take a shower. A compliment to the power of his writing? I don't know-Rob Zombie movies can have the same effect.

3. For the most part, the characters are unheroic, amoral, living directionless, shallow lives. (Somewhat semi-autobiographical, being Miller fled France before the second world war, hiding out in California for the rest of his life.)

3. The writing can be self-indulgent: " The town was a shambles, corpses mangled by butchers and stripped by plunderers, lay thick in the streets; wolves sneaked in from the suburbs to eat them; the black plague and other deaths crept in to keep them company, and the English came marching on."
This type of writing goes on for pages and pages at a time.

4. At about page 120, the book becomes less indulgent and more coherent. (The change was so drastic i thought I was reading a different book.) Most probably throw the book down at about page 80, but you need to trudge on to the end to honestly say you've read the book.

5. I think most who rave about Miller haven't really read Miller: they'll display his books, or read certain passages while consuming alcohol, or learn some of his pithy one-liners, but to read one of his novels cover to cover obviously requires mental rigor. (I'd like to see even one of these litery critics write "Displayed sparks of literary genius, but could have used an editor!"

6. Miller is a necessary evil. Every student of literature should probably be familiar with his writing. I respect him for having the cajones to write like this over 60 years ago. Will people still be reading Miller 100 years from now? The verdict is still out.