book data
1677 ratings, 3.85 average rating, 101 reviews
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published
June 1987
by Random House Inc (T)
binding
Hardcover
setting
Unknown
isbn
039447628X
(isbn13: 9780394476285)
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other reviews (showing 1-20 of 2392)
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avg 3.85
recommends it for:
non fiction lovers
This is his (Miller's) second novel but instead of continuing his accounts of Europe and making any kind of saga extending from Tropic of Cancer, he puts it in reverse and gives a retrospective of life in New York city, both his formative years in Brooklyn and the years he worked a grueling job at a Telegraph company as a hiring clerk in Manhattan. Like Cancer it's full of sex and food(both two of his favorite subjects) but the overall dialogue with his characters is more compelling and seems (...more
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recommends it for:
the arrogant, the sexually naive
Should have been banned for its banality rather than its sexual content. I recently reread the first page and counted five cliches.* I'd've found more had I the strength to continue. Miller had pluck, sure, and ballsful of bravado. But talent? I might've wanted to drink with him in some Dijon bordello, listen to one or two of his stories outloud (his novels certainly read like they were dictated) but his written words are weak and watery. Of course, he couldn't see that, blinded as he was by his...more
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Has a copy to sell/swap
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Read in June, 2007
Henry Miller's narrative voice is more developed here than in 'Tropic Of Cancer,' this book's predecessor. Perhaps this is because he shows us himself at a younger age, more vulnerable and only beginning to discover the passions that would come to form the cornerstones of his philosophy of life. The tone shifts seemlessly from the simple and humorous to more abstract and ponderous, sometimes in the space of a single sentence.
The famous passages describing his sexual experiences are,...more
The famous passages describing his sexual experiences are,...more
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Read in April, 2006
recommends it for:
the heart-broken.
I think this is Miller's best work. Relieved of the atom bomb that was Cancer, Miller delivers a series of thunder claps to the world that uproot all certainty and confirm one's worst nightmares. Nightmare is a good word for what he put down-- an introspective nightmare, but born with the wisdom of a self-recovered soul. A man who has rescued himself with the life-boat of his imagination. Here is Miller in the main thrust of his life's work, which was, one could argue, to innoculate himself from...more
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Read in October, 2008
What do you say about a book that is almost exclusively mental masturbation? At times Miller can be excruciating but for the most part I like his boldness to turn anything floating around his head (both of them) into engaging literature. Contrary to what most reviewers have said about this one, I actually liked it best when his tangential whirlwinds focused on childhood memories and other daily minutiae rather than the bizarre sexual ones. Probably because I'm reading this in a vastly differe...more
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Read in July, 2005
Henry Miller is my favorite author of all time. It's hard to say what his best book is, because each thing he did was really different in terms of setting, attitudes, and stylistically. It's all good stuff, but I pick this as the fave, maybe just because of the personal time frame in which I consumed it. He just makes sense, even when he comes off as a chauvinist or an asshole. Most people make the mistake of remembering Miller for the sexual content in some of his novels. But this was merely on...more
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Read in September, 2007
recommends it for:
hopeless new yorkers.
Miller's writing style is unlike any other writer, and is unable to be duplicated. He can write about the simplest, most common, every day action and give it a new life never before seen through human eyes. Even something so deplorable as borrowing money from his friend seems like an act of grandeur when expressed by his pen. He compares himself to God, and you do not get angry at him for sacrilege, he cheats on his wife, numerous times, and you do not hate him for his exploits - he even at p...more
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Read in September, 1997
Laura, la ninfómana, baila la rumba, con el sexo exfoliado y retorcido como la cola de una vaca.
La danza del sábado por la noche, la danza de melones que se pudren el cubo de la basura, de moco verde fresco y ungüentos viscosos para las partes tiernas. La danza de las máquinas tragaperras y los monstruos que las inventan. La danza de los revólveres y los cabrones que los usan. La danza de la cachiporra y los capullos que golpean sesos hasta convertirlos en un pulpo de pólipo. La danz...more
La danza del sábado por la noche, la danza de melones que se pudren el cubo de la basura, de moco verde fresco y ungüentos viscosos para las partes tiernas. La danza de las máquinas tragaperras y los monstruos que las inventan. La danza de los revólveres y los cabrones que los usan. La danza de la cachiporra y los capullos que golpean sesos hasta convertirlos en un pulpo de pólipo. La danz...more
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Read in December, 2006
hilarious, dense, bad. lots of snakey, hyperbolic, but exciting metaphors.
bits about whats-her-face, june, make you realize how truly freaky the ny underworld in the 20's and 30's were. i get obsessed reading about her. funny to see miller, the typical misogynist white working class hero kind of charicature he is, expose his unravellings because of this girl poverty, work, overbearing family. trials are less romanticised than tropic of cancer. then the bits on the telegraph compan...more
bits about whats-her-face, june, make you realize how truly freaky the ny underworld in the 20's and 30's were. i get obsessed reading about her. funny to see miller, the typical misogynist white working class hero kind of charicature he is, expose his unravellings because of this girl poverty, work, overbearing family. trials are less romanticised than tropic of cancer. then the bits on the telegraph compan...more
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Read in October, 2007
Existencialista, nihilista y desencantado, al mismo tiempo que lúcido.
Con un estilo propio y desordenado al escribir, no es un relato contínuo ni podría considerarse convencionalmente una "novela". Es una especie de novela-ensayo que confronta al lector con el mundo que el hombre ha creado a través de la historia, describe la vorágine de la producción sin sentido y nuestra condición de esclavos de un sistema, en un Nueva York de los años 30.
De una prolífica imagin...more
Con un estilo propio y desordenado al escribir, no es un relato contínuo ni podría considerarse convencionalmente una "novela". Es una especie de novela-ensayo que confronta al lector con el mundo que el hombre ha creado a través de la historia, describe la vorágine de la producción sin sentido y nuestra condición de esclavos de un sistema, en un Nueva York de los años 30.
De una prolífica imagin...more
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Read in January, 2006
recommends it for:
any one
This is what happens when you finally "start" reading Henry Miller: you lose friends, you lose lovers, you lose yourself, you lose the time of day, next week, tomorrow, the day after, maybe half a year of your life. You start to think in "Milleresque" sentences, wake up at the ungodly hour of seven and sit and write about the little old men who walk by your door running away from Death. You begin to build a library of sad tomes and unrepentant pomes, you write poetry with dec...more
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Read in February, 2007
recommends it for:
anybody who fancies themselves bohemian
I prefer Tropic of Cancer over this mainly because Cancer is Paris and Capricorn, NY...Miller knows how to cultivate tales of listlessness and depravity like noone else. If you find yourself completely fed up with the gritty hard hitting streets of NY, take solace in this tale and realize that many artists/writers/thinkers etc before you have struggled with their internal desire to be something more than rich and successful..some of us just want the freedom to be thoughtful and creative.. and if...more
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Read in July, 2008
I had to get this out of my system, so I did. I liked "Cancer" better. Typical HM- Passionate, libidinous, occasionally disgusting. But, as the two stars say "okay."
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Read in January, 2007
I loved Miller's voice. His dialog is wonderful; he has a real ear for it, and then he would just swing towards the cosmos in the long descriptive passages. His descriptions of sex, completely earthy one moment and then the most amazingly improbably extended metaphors the next. My experience of reading was that I could not put it down without getting at least to the end of a paragraph, and the paragraphs could go on for pages, without getting lost when I came back to it. Having read wikipedi...more
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recommends it for:
Anyone riding high on T of Cancer
I told myself I liked this book all the way through but now that it's over and the years have passed I can admit it was a slog.
I was still loving the idea of T of Cancer. The totally original voice and to some extent the over the top crudeness of it all. I wanted to read everything Miller and I made a pretty good effort.
It was somewhere toward the end of Capricorn that I realized I wasn't really enjoying the actual reading. I don't think I stopped for another 6 month...more
I was still loving the idea of T of Cancer. The totally original voice and to some extent the over the top crudeness of it all. I wanted to read everything Miller and I made a pretty good effort.
It was somewhere toward the end of Capricorn that I realized I wasn't really enjoying the actual reading. I don't think I stopped for another 6 month...more
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Here's Miller wanting to repeat the brilliance of Tropic Of Cancer; here's Miller failing just that artistic dishonest move. While Tropic Of Cancer charges you up, your faculties all screaming alongside explosive creative energies now surely ringing in you, telling you of life and of fiction and the madness of beauty, Tropic of Capricorn is the sound of a neighbour shouting through a megaphone. You feel detached, somewhat weary, half-wishing he'd give it up (the megaphone shouting that is ...more
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Read in January, 2009
I didn't expect stream-of-consciousness. I did expect the randiness!
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Read in February, 2008
recommended to Dysphoria by:
The great American literary tradition recommends it for: Ill-mannered young men
So the man's a tool and he writes with his. Really, there's not much to recommend the narrator--I suppose he's personable enough in a misogynistic, anti-Semitic, sociopathic sort of way. But my does he have a marvelous style. At his best, the man does exhilarating things with words and there are glimpses of real tenderness throughout. By "throughout" I mean the half of the book I actually got through, at which point my curiosity was satisfied. Next!
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Read in May, 2008
The stories in this book are more concrete and connected than in Cancer, and the entire book has a different feel especially the half in which he is reminiscing about growing up in New York. However, I thoroughly enjoyed this book as I did Cancer and recommend it for anyone so long as you're not easily offended. I plan to re-read both because there's so much I'm sure I missed in my first reading and I really like his writing.
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Has a copy to sell/swap
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Read in May, 2008
recommends it for:
swingers
This book was difficult to finish, I kept debating to quit after half way, but his manner of writing wouldn't let me go. Miller has an established style without foreplay and gets straight to the point. His true, raw nature is something i respect. However, the work dragged on and ended badly. I didn't like the shifts from simple serious to wondering abstractions, and it seemed all over the place without direction.
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