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Tropic of Cancer

3.7 of 5 stars 3.70 · rating details · 23,550 ratings · 1,347 reviews

Now hailed as an American classic, Tropic of Cancer, Henry Miller’s masterpiece, was banned as obscene in this country for twenty-seven years after its first publication in Paris in 1934. Only a historic court ruling that changed American censorship standards, ushering in a new era of freedom and frankness in modern literature, permitted the publication of this first volum...more

Paperback, 318 pages

Published January 6th 1994 by Grove Press (first published 1934)

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Apr 13, 2013 Ian Graye rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: miller-nin-jong, reviews-5-stars, reviews, read-2013

GoodReads Memorial Plot Summary (Pages 1 - 30) (Warning: Contains Spoilers) (Sponsor: Grove Press)

We are living (view spoiler)/(view spoiler)/(view spoiler).

We walk down streets where (view spoiler)(view spoiler)(view spoiler)(view spoiler) lived.

The cancer of (view spoiler)...more

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Jan 05, 2013 John rated it 3 of 5 stars Recommends it for: Hippies pretending to be yuppies

Shelves: reviewed

George Orwell wrote an essay about this book called, “Inside the Whale.” The title alludes to the Jonah story in the bible. In that story Jonah rejected his responsibility, ran, and was swallowed by a whale. He finally accepted his responsibility and returned to the world. In contrast, Orwell’s Miller doesn’t want to leave the whale. God’s punishment ironically is Miller’s safe and comfortable oasis. Miller can attempt to triumph over god in this way because he has chosen an ironic stance toward...more

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Aug 04, 2008 Jason Pettus rated it 5 of 5 stars

(Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com]. I am the original author of this essay, as well as the owner of CCLaP; it is not being reprinted here illegally. Sorry; the last paragraph today gets cut off a few sentences early!)

The CCLaP 100: In which I read for the first time a hundred so-called "classics," then write reports on whether or not they deserve the label
Book #20: Tropic of Cancer, by Henry Miller (1934)

The story in a nutshell:
Like many of the ot...more

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Liam Humantooth wrote: "What are you guys talking about? This is an awful review only considering it in relation to its ranking on some arbitrary list, and...more
Jan 05, 2012 12:06pm

Alex Nice review, homes. Found myself nodding all the way through it: "Yep, yep, all these things are true." And yet: I hate this thing. Part of this can b...more
Sep 28, 2012 09:22am

Oct 25, 2008 Jafar rated it 5 of 5 stars

So, I was glancing through some of the reviews here and noticed that someone has totally disparaged this book because its “hero” is immoral. It always bewilders me when people judge a book according to the moral judgment that they pass on its characters. Like when I was looking at the reviews of John Updike’s Run, Rabbit and saw a woman saying that she hated the book because Angstrom left his wife twice in the book. I was like, don’t take it personally, lady; he’s not your husband. A lot of peop...more

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Laura deLuna i wrote a blog a while ago about the people who go looking for a moral basis by which one should live ones life on in the fiction section of the books...more
Apr 06, 2013 07:54pm

Caryn Jafar: IMHO, Some authors can pull off writing a despicable protagonist and some can't. I tried reading it a long time ago, so forgive me if I get rem...more Jafar: IMHO, Some authors can pull off writing a despicable protagonist and some can't. I tried reading it a long time ago, so forgive me if I get remembrances wrong, but Tropic of Cancer didn't work for me at all. Yes, because I thought he was just a dirt-bag, but No!; not the character, the author! I had no idea when I read it that it was intentionally autobiographical. Well, I DID 'know', I just didn't have to be told. It just felt like it was, and that the author himself was delusional, making excuses, a loser, dirt-bag and probably lying to boot! He probably slept alone every night in Paris fantasizing about all the women eager to bed him writing this. It just felt like the book itself was one more 'feeeed-me' practice for him, one more ploy to sucker something out of us. The few bits of beautiful writing were not enough for me to keep going or to want to stay in that 'world' with such a scummy host. To be honest, the 'beauty' just wasn't beautiful enough. It was OK, but it didn't move me, so I think the overall reading experience was just:
"Yawn, STFU, Henry Miller. In Your Dreams dude, In Your DREAMS!"

I'm probably not explaining that very well, but it was the same dynamic/failure for me with Elizabeth Gilbert's "Eat, Pray, Love". The author's voice/personality dripped through on every page, and it was just a malodorous, twitty whine and again with the excuses! The revelations she imparted were simply not unique or wonderful enough to compensate. She's not a 'bad' writer, but the prose was not great either. Not good enough to want me to stay with her on the journey. Same with Miller, for me.

Without a doubt there are some readers out there who only want nice or noble protagonists. There are some people out there who will not watch a TV show or movie if the actor has gotten a divorce. True, believe it or not!) But perhaps there are also people who are, (like me) inexpertly trying to convey a distaste for the character, the author and the book as a whole, they're just not explaining it well enough for you to understand.

Perhaps there is also a gender gap here. I dunno. Some women do like this book, and hey; ironically I did really like Bukowski's 'Women'!(less)
May 06, 2013 07:23am

Oct 12, 2007 Clear_enGlish rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Tropic of Cancer is held in high regard by Authors that I respect. In particular, George Orwell (whose essay, “Inside the Whale”) has high praise for Miller's bravery, directness and honesty.
Miller's foul language has lost the power to impress; modern readers will not feel the level of shock and awe experienced by previous generations. The book has so much critical adulation that I have spent a few weeks ruminating before expressing my own view.

I don't like it....

Oh, don't mistake me, I “get” it...more

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rommy The language was not meant to shock and awe. I found it to be very matter-of-fact, in the same way Holden Caulfield is very matter-of-fact in Catcher...more
Sep 02, 2008 08:01am

aykut ''Miller's foul language has lost the power to impress; modern readers will not feel the level of shock and awe experienced by previous generations.''...more
Feb 01, 2013 07:27pm

Apr 14, 2013 Stela rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: modernism, stream-of-consciousness, reviews

The Tropic of Cancer, Wikipedia says, "also referred to as the Northern tropic, is the circle of latitude on the Earth that marks the most northerly position at which the Sun may appear directly overhead at its zenith. This event occurs once per year, at the time of the June solstice, when the Northern Hemisphere is tilted toward the Sun to its maximum extent."
The sun at its zenith, that is, in its full splendour, “tropic” being the word of reference here.
On the other hand, Henry Miller emphasiz...more The Tropic of Cancer, Wikipedia says, "also referred to as the Northern tropic, is the circle of latitude on the Earth that marks the most northerly position at which the Sun may appear directly overhead at its zenith. This event occurs once per year, at the time of the June solstice, when the Northern Hemisphere is tilted toward the Sun to its maximum extent."
The sun at its zenith, that is, in its full splendour, “tropic” being the word of reference here.
On the other hand, Henry Miller emphasizes the second word when he explains the title of his novel as follows: "It was because to me cancer symbolizes the disease of civilization, the endpoint of the wrong path, the necessity to change course radically, to start completely over from scratch.”
The phrase becomes thus slightly oxymoronic and can be read as a metaphor of Paris. Indeed, the City is the main character of this extraordinary book: Paris, shining like the sun at its zenith when it promises the grandeur to the young artist who enters it, but revealing itself as an incurable disease while the same artist actually begins to live in it.
Published in 1934 in Paris (where else?), the novel triggered a huge scandal because of its language and nonconformist approach to some taboo themes for that time, especially related to sex. Prohibited in USA and UK for many years (three decades!) because of the same old confusion between ethics and aesthetics that seems to lead to many interpretations of art works even nowadays, considered immoral and obscene, it is fortunate it did not become a book only to read about instead of a book to enjoy reading. Especially when, as Samuel Beckett once said, it is one of the greatest modernist writings in the universal literature.
And in a truly modernist way the novel begins, by considering Literature dead and its writer a forgotten, otiose God ("Everything that was literature has fallen from me. There are no more books to be written, thank God."), to replace them with a spitting artist who scoffs at the old values without the ambition to create new ones ("This is not a book. This is libel, slander, defamation of character. This is not a book, in the ordinary sense of the word. No, this is a prolonged insult, a gob of spit in the face of Art, a kick in the pants to God, Man, Destiny, Time, Love, Beauty…"). A book without a narrative line, following the stream of consciousness of the narrator, who records his time in Paris with his bohemian friends, in order to capture - what? The condition of the Artist, always looking for something very "trivial", like food, shelter or sex? The contrast between living and creating? The mirage of the City? All of them and more, in order to stress the idea that life creeps into the creation, that there is nothing you have to remove from Art as non-artistic or prohibitive, not even the crap, the clap, the cunt, the syphilis, the whores and so on.
In a book destined to be "absolutely original, absolutely perfect," whose theme is the Artist and his Creation, there isn’t anything that cannot be told or have to be avoided. The Narrator himself is merely a man who struggles and makes many mistakes as a human being, who steals from a prostitute and deceives his friends, but he is also the Artist that observes the world and gives us a fair image of it.
It is not a coherent image in the beginning, but a puzzle whose pieces are thrown negligently towards the reader:
- Fulgurant visions of some characters, masterfully evoked in a few words, like Van Norden, suggestively characterized as "cunt-struck"; or Moldorf compared with a "vase without a rubber plant" (note this: not a plant, a rubber one!); or Fanny, who laughs like a fat worm (how the heck do worms laugh? – like Fanny, of course!); or Claude that "had a soul and a conscience; she had refinement, too, which is bad – in a whore"; or Kepi who "has absolutely no ambition except to get a fuck every night"; or count Waldemar von Schwisseneinzug who has dandruff eyes (imagine this, if you can!).
- Ironic notes about food or the lack of it - there is a whole page where almost every word is a synonym or reminder of food (lunch, belly, eat, meal, chicken, plate, vegetable, etc.) to end with the upside-down image of the City as a huge organism eaten by disease.
- Description, in a tone that later will be equalled only by Bukowski, of the menial jobs the narrator has to get in order to survive: as a proof-reader, when the narrator realizes, ironically, that "It requires more concentration to detect a missing comma than to epitomize Nietzsche's philosophy. You can be brilliant sometimes, when you're drunk, but brilliance is out of place in the proofreading department. Dates, fractions, semicolons – these are the things that count"; as a fake journalist - pseudonymous writing in newspapers; as an English teacher, when he tries to spice the students’ classes with the subject of the coupling of the elephants.
- Tragi-comic scenes: Carl tries to seduce a rich old woman but he cannot stomach to have sex with her; the proof-reader Peckover is gravely hurt in an accident but he can only think about the loss of his false teeth; the narrator steals the hundred francs he had paid a Norwegian whore for services rendered; and the icing on the cake (yours to guess the scene behind the quote if you didn’t read the book): "Imagine these bloody no-accounts going home from the concert with blood on their dickies!"
Above all this there is the intriguing love-hate relationship between the narrator and the City, since Paris is viewed like a huge organism that traps, enchants, promises and deceives: a stage, an obstetrical instrument used for artificial birth, a place where everyone lives and no one dies; a heart palpitating after being removed from a warm body; an illusion of being at home; a paradise in the spring, a place for varieties of sexual provender; something that "grows inside you like a cancer"; a mad slaughterhouse, the navel of the world, more eternal than Rome or Nineveh; a whore that " from a distance (…) seems ravishing, you can't wait until you have her in your arms. And five minutes later you feel empty, disgusted with yourself. " Because "one can live without friends, as one can live without love, or even without money, that supposed sine qua non. One can live in Paris – I discovered that! – on just grief and anguish."
Of course, in such a desecrated world the Artist’s epiphanies are Miller-style: "When I look down into this fucked-out cunt of a whore I feel the whole world beneath me, a world tottering and crumbling, a world used up and polished like a leper's skull."
(less)

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Oct 09, 2012 Trenton Judson rated it 5 of 5 stars

This may be one of the best books in the American cannon, and also, unfortunately, one of the most underrated. I read a lot of the reviews on the book before writing this and I found not very many that were thought out. I recall one reviewer giving up on the book because the "frenetic style was tiresome." Usually when someone has feelings like that, it is because they don't understand the literature and so their mind wanders. Another review noted that Miller's supposed "shock tactics" were outda...more

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Apr 30, 2007 E. rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: Sophmores in college who recently finished "on the road" and want to really get wild

When I read this for the first time I thought the world was opening up and eating people.

I wanted to get drunk and go on a hooker spree, to move to Paris and generally debauch for the rest of my 20's....

Then I realized I kind of wanted to do all this anyways but with Miller's aid I could and even better I could disguise the whole thing as "literary."

I struggled through Capricorn, through The Books in My Life, through a number of Miller's personal letters and musings. I even made a pilgrimage t...more

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Apr 21, 2010 Jana rated it 1 of 5 stars

The only reason this book is a classic is because men were editors and this book gave them boners. And then male readers had boners and women were shocked with Miller's vocabulary. So, it wasn’t that difficult to become a classic. Especially in those days, when a word cunt was such a taboo. But, again who am I joking, I have a few Irish/English male friends who blush when somebody says cunt around them. And they love Miller, so I think that's the individual matter of upbringing and bon ton, beca...more

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Jun 20, 2008 Kate rated it 1 of 5 stars

I got through the first 150 pages before I decided that life is too short to waste time reading books you hate. Maybe I'm not smart enough or deep enough to appreciate a book like Tropic of Cancer, but for me each page was a tedious struggle. The author of the book's introduction boldy asserts that Henry Miller is "the greatest living author" (obviously, the edition I read was published prior to Miller's death in 1980), but I found Miller's frenetic, meandering style tiresome.

Don't get me wrong...more

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May 25, 2010 Paquita Maria Sanchez marked it as to-read

I am going to create a new goodreads bookshelf titled "sausage party." It will exist solely for Henry Miller.

22 likes · like · see review

Jan 28, 2013 Alex added it

Shelves: reading-through-history, smut

Here a cunt, there a cunt, everywhere a cunt cunt

""Art consists in going the full length. If you start with the drums you have to end with dynamite."

But if you begin with masturbation, you don't necessarily end with sex.

Here's a guy who exemplifies the stream-of-consciousness mode of writing; he joins in the most-modern movement and he refuses to let anything be too dirty for him to explain - one time I heard someone ask of Star Wars, "But when does anyone go to the bathroom?" Here is a novel...more

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Sep 08, 2007 Lis rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: banned-books, 2007-reads

i wrote this review before finishing the book, but i think i'll keep it:
i hated the start, and slowly learned to like it more and more. looking at other reviews that seems to be the opposite of what others said. perhaps i am enjoying what others called the "slow" parts most. at first i found him just trying to be artsy and shocking. it's hard to explain how it became an easier read. While some authors are easy to read because of a conversational style, i found miller's writing to be very in tune...more

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Aug 21, 2007 Jonathan rated it 5 of 5 stars

This may be the greatest book ever written. This opening passage proves it:

"I have no money, no resources, no hopes. I am the happiest man alive. A year ago, six months ago, I thought I was an artist. I no longer think about it. I am. Everything that was literature has fallen from me. There are no more books to be written, thank God.
This then? This is not a book. This is libel, slander, defamation of character. This is not a book, in the ordinary sense of the word. No, this is a prolonged in...more

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Apr 06, 2009 Ben rated it 3 of 5 stars

A marvelous pretention of a travel memoir from an American in Paris. More a song than a book: a love ballad to a city. In parts it reads like the surreal confessions of a sex addict. In other parts it is nothing less than a mock-serious philosophical treatis.

Tropic of Cancer is almost always as fun to read as it must have been to write. I say almost because at the outset, I kept wondering how much of his self-preening I'd let Miller get away with before I lost all interest; he can at times be h...more

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Feb 08, 2013 William rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: 20-ce, fiction, us

In short, I think Tropic of Cancer is a masterwork. Do read it! However let me yield the floor to George Orwell who's done far more thinking about the novel than I -- from his essay "Inside the Whale."

http://www.ourcivilisation.com/smartb...

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Jan 12, 2010 Tyler rated it 3 of 5 stars Recommends it for: Naughty Boys

Recommended to Tyler by: Goodreads Reviews

The mashup of the poetic and the vulgar sets this book apart in a way that sometimes annoys and more often hits the spot. Miller gets modernist stream-of-consciousness to work cleverly through the trash-talk. Though I can’t tell you how hard it was to find a quote clean enough to use, it’s better to show what just can’t be described. Notice here how naturally thought flows:

“After that,” – here Van Norden has to smile himself – “after that, mind you, he tells me how she sat in the chair with her...more The mashup of the poetic and the vulgar sets this book apart in a way that sometimes annoys and more often hits the spot. Miller gets modernist stream-of-consciousness to work cleverly through the trash-talk. Though I can’t tell you how hard it was to find a quote clean enough to use, it’s better to show what just can’t be described. Notice here how naturally thought flows:

“After that,” – here Van Norden has to smile himself – “after that, mind you, he tells me how she sat in the chair with her legs up ... not a stitch on ... and he’s sitting on the floor, telling her how beautiful she looks ... did he tell you that she looked like a Matisse ... Wait a minute ... I’d like to remember exactly what he said. He had some cute phrase there about an odalisque ... what the hell’s an odalisque anyway? He said it in French, that’s why it’s hard to remember the fucking thing. It sounded just like the sort of thing he might say. And she probably thought it was original with him ... I suppose she thinks he’s a poet or something ... “

Now two complaints detract from the narration. One is the c-word in place of the b-word for women. It’s not that the b-word is exactly commendable, but that the c-word pops up again and again all over the place, like bombs going off, until you’re puking it by the end. The second complaint is the difficulty of following the action in the first third of the book. Miller confuses me with who was doing what with whom, and it only slowly clears up as the story unfolds.

Despite legendary license and debauched dramas, the book has its virtues, among them the insight into those people’s minds, and the account of that generation's standards. We see how syphilis dominated people’s thoughts. One character, dousing his privates with a folk treatment for the syph, reaches over, grabs his dirty underwear, cleans himself, then tosses his shorts to the floor, all while his roommate blandly carries on. And for deodorant these stooges splash on a little cologne – something frightfully inadequate today, but probably better than the Victorians, who thought a perfumed handkerchief was the cat’s meow.

So now we know what the broads back in the thirties could look forward to. In fairness to the males, the idea of a man washing his own cloths or worrying about a little stink was something only a sissy would take seriously. For both sexes, birth control was against the law but probably not needed. Indeed, let us pause and give silent thanks for sulfa drugs and Old Spice.

The style is original, too, for the way Miller segues this slimy wallow in the male psyche from blunt vulgarity into language so sublime it resembles poetry in prose. Here I can give no example; these passages are too long and cannot be shortened without sacrificing the effect. But the downdraft and upsurge of the writing distinguish this book, and one cannot help but be struck by Miller’s distinctive narration.

Tropic of Cancer has its ups and downs. Forewarned is forearmed: Readers who know what to expect will enjoy this excursion into Paris’s more exotic precincts. (less)

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Aug 11, 2007 Annette rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

One of my favorite passages:

"At night when I look at Boris' goatee lying on the pillow I get hysterical. O Tania, where now is that warm cunt of yours, those fat, heavy garters, those soft, bulging thighs? There is a bone in my prick six inches long. I will ream out every wrinkle in your cunt, Tania, big with seed. I will send you home to your Sylvester with an ache in your belly and your womb turned inside out. Your Sylvester! Yes, he knows how to build a fire, but I know how to inflame a cunt....more

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Jul 23, 2007 sage rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: glbt-interest, reviewed, fiction

Read this nearly fifteen years ago, but barely remembered it. The surrealist style doesn't do much for me, but it's a nice portrait of the drinking and whoring ex-patriate crowd in Paris during the early 1930s (after the big names of ten years earlier had moved on). Also, it's a nice sketch of the sort of people who eagerly signed up to fight Franco a few years after this was published.

I'm giving this only 3 stars because there's no actual plot. It could be a memoir; it's definitely not a tradit...more

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Apr 01, 2007 brian Lehnen rated it 4 of 5 stars

Honestly speaking, this felt like one of most difficult books I have ever read. Having started and stopped this book several times, I force fed myself Tropic of Cancer yet again, determined to get past page forty. So I read on, at times mired in the brilliance of Millers imagery and provocative prose (for the 1930s) yet frequently finding myself equally lost amidst his fragmented thoughts and misogynistic opinions.

An appreciation for creative explosive free thought is a must when reading this n...more Honestly speaking, this felt like one of most difficult books I have ever read. Having started and stopped this book several times, I force fed myself Tropic of Cancer yet again, determined to get past page forty. So I read on, at times mired in the brilliance of Millers imagery and provocative prose (for the 1930s) yet frequently finding myself equally lost amidst his fragmented thoughts and misogynistic opinions.

An appreciation for creative explosive free thought is a must when reading this novel. Admittedly, I have grown accustomed to reading novels with linear story lines, character development, and more importantly... a point. All obviously vacant from this novel, but perhaps herein lies the beauty of Millers writing. The sooner you stop looking for a point the sooner you begin to enjoy the book. Approach the reading with curbed ideals and allow yourself to get mixed up in characters debauchery. It is an interesting and fuck-all perspective, which at times can be very relieving and exciting.

Unfortunately, I did not find the entire book that uniformly enthralling. The raucous beginning really grabs hold of you as you start to experience Millers style of writing. Fast, kinetic, beautiful, filthy, and random... which can last far too long in some sections. But around the midway point the novel begins to settle down and start coming together. The ride slows down just enough for you to look around, catch your breath, and regroup. Relationships start to develop (slightly) and you get to join in on several small chaotic journeys with Miller.

I found the second half of this novel to be a perfect blend of tattered brilliance and solid writing. Although slow on occasion, I have the utmost admiration for Miller as a wordsmith. Oddly enough, having enjoyed the second half so much I was annoyed with myself for glazing over parts of the beginning. I could definitely see myself rereading this down the road and perhaps heightening my appreciation.

I would recommend this to anyone who appreciates free thought writing and is looking for a little heavier read. Coinciding a lighter book may help to break up the monotony and enhance the appreciation of Millers unique offbeat style.
(less)

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Sep 18, 2007 Katie Abbott Harris rated it 3 of 5 stars

I thought this fictionalized memoir was highly overrated, and mostly tedious. It is a tale of ex-pat Henry Miller's time in Paris - the people he meets, the money he spends, the places he stays, the books he reads, and the sex, sex, and more sex in which he participates. The prose is an erratic and meandering stream of consciousness, and I have to sheepishly admit that if it weren't for the gratuitous erotic sections and profanity, I would have stopped reading out of boredom. In saying all of th...more

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Sep 22, 2007 Shannon rated it 2 of 5 stars

This one was hard to rate. It is a worthy read for so many reasons: the tales of Paris in the window of time woven into the lives of intellectual bohemians spun so marvelously in both crass and captivating language. However, sensitive souls beware. It was a contributing factor (one of many) to a crisis of faith in my early twenties. The honest depravity of the male characters and the author himself confirmed all my worst suspicions of males being utterly inhuman and by far a lesser sex.

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Nov 23, 2009 Mon rated it 4 of 5 stars Recommends it for: People with drinking problem

'This is not a book. This is libel, slander, defamation of character. This is not a book, in the ordinary sense of the word. No, this is a prolonged insult, a gob of spit in the face of Art, a kick in the pants to God, Man, Destiny, Time, Love, Beauty ... what you will.'

Well, that is probably the only thing he got right.

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Jan 22, 2013 Suzanne rated it 3 of 5 stars

This book has been hanging out in my Kindle for at least a year, with a lot of other classics I have been ignoring or abandoned due to boredom. So I thought I’d start this year with a fresh attempt at one, and I chose TOC, mostly because it was one of the shorter ones, and I’ve always been drawn to 1930s Paris: Hemingway, Dali, Fitzgerald… Booze, art, debauchery... I’m not above a good dirty book every now and then. This could be fun, right? Hmm.

I have never read a book written in "surrealistic...more This book has been hanging out in my Kindle for at least a year, with a lot of other classics I have been ignoring or abandoned due to boredom. So I thought I’d start this year with a fresh attempt at one, and I chose TOC, mostly because it was one of the shorter ones, and I’ve always been drawn to 1930s Paris: Hemingway, Dali, Fitzgerald… Booze, art, debauchery... I’m not above a good dirty book every now and then. This could be fun, right? Hmm.

I have never read a book written in "surrealistic free-association" style. Miller’s words, when he is not dropping gratuitous obscenities, are mesmerizing in some passages. You can be hypnotized by the art of his words and can even visualize them as oil on canvas at times. For example:

“It’s as though I had no clothes on and every pore of my body was a window and all the windows open and the light flooding my gizzards. I can feel the light curving under the vault of my ribs and my ribs hang there over a hollow nave trembling with reverberations.” Wow. Who writes like *that* nowadays??

So here’s the big BUT: I knew what I was getting into when I started this book. Controversial in its time; a “dirty, scandalous, profane” book. Blah blah. Ok, fine. BUT I just couldn't sympathize with Miller’s character, or any other character in the book, really. I don't think many women could. The degradation of women in this book was a huge turnoff; Miller repeatedly refers to women using the “c” word (though sometimes Miller gives a woman a name, followed by adjectives that modify the type of “c” she is. Blech. My kindle counted 101 instances of the word.) At times you get a peek at his tenderness when he writes about his estranged wife, and his absolute genius during his ruminations on life in general, Paris, or Matisse (my favorite passage). And I can forgive Miller, the author, … for a moment. Because, the man could write, bottom line. I have to respect that. But what I can't respect are the story and characters, and the ending solidified that impression for me. That is all. Carry on. I'm ready for the crickets.(less)

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Mar 28, 2013 Kaiser Dias rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

O ano é 1930. Os Estados Unidos e a Europa estão falidos. Miséria, fome e doenças (tuberculose, sífilis, gonorréia, piolhos) se abateram sobre a outrora orgulhosa burguesia do hemisfério norte. Artistas estadunidenses se auto-exilaram na Europa, fugindo da recessão americana. Na Alemanha, o partido nazista já é o segundo maior do país e a chegada de Hitler ao poder já parece inevitável. Os franceses prevêem a guerra para o futuro próximo.
Neste panorama, sobre o pano de fundo uma Paris ainda româ...more

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May 01, 2013 Daniel Pecheur rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: american-literature

"There is a sort of subdued pandemonium in the air, a note of repressed violence, as if the awaited explosion required the advent of some utterly minute detail, something microscopic but thoroughly
unpremeditated, completely unexpected. In that sort of half-reverie which permits one to participate in an event and yet remain quite aloof, the little detail which was lacking began obscurely but
insistently to coagulate, to assume a freakish, crystalline form, like the frost which gathers on the windo...more "There is a sort of subdued pandemonium in the air, a note of repressed violence, as if the awaited explosion required the advent of some utterly minute detail, something microscopic but thoroughly
unpremeditated, completely unexpected. In that sort of half-reverie which permits one to participate in an event and yet remain quite aloof, the little detail which was lacking began obscurely but
insistently to coagulate, to assume a freakish, crystalline form, like the frost which gathers on the windowpane. And like those frost patterns which seem so bizarre, so utterly free and fantastic
in design, but which are nevertheless determined by the most rigid laws, so this sensation which commenced to take form inside me seemed also to be giving obedience to ineluctable laws. My whole
being was responding to the dictates of an ambience which it had never before experienced; that which I could call myself seemed to be contracting, condensing, shrinking from the stale, customary
boundaries of the flesh whose perimeter knew only the modulations of the nerve ends.
And the more substantial, the more solid the core of me became, the more delicate and extravagant appeared the close, palpable reality out of which I was being squeezed. In the measure that I became more and more metallic, in the same measure the scene before my eyes became inflated. The state of tension was so finely drawn now that the introduction of a single foreign particle, even a microscopic particle, as I say, would have shattered everything. For the fraction of a second perhaps I experienced that utter clarity which the epileptic, it is said, is given to know. In that moment I lost completely the illusion of time and space: the world unfurled its drama simultaneously along a meridian which had no axis. In this sort of hair-trigger eternity I felt that everything
was justified, supremely justified; I felt the wars inside me that had left behind this pulp and wrack; I felt the crimes that were seething here to emerge tomorrow in blatant screamers; I felt the
misery that was grinding itself out with pestle and mortar, the long dull misery that dribbles away in dirty handkerchiefs. On the meridian of time there is no injustice: there is only the poetry of motion creating the illusion of truth and drama. If at any moment anywhere one comes face to face with the absolute, that great sympathy which makes men like Gautama and Jesus seem divine freezes away; the monstrous thing is not that men have created roses out of this dung heap, but that, for some reason or other, they should want roses. For some reason or other man looks for the miracle, and to accomplish it he will wade through blood. He will debauch himself with ideas, he will reduce himself to a shadow if for only one second of his life he can close his eyes to the hideousness of reality. Everything is endured – disgrace, humiliation, poverty, war, crime, ennui – in the belief that overnight something will occur, a miracle, which will render life tolerable. And all the while a meter is running inside and there is no hand that can reach in there and shut it off. All the while someone is eating the bread of life and drinking the wine, some dirty fat cockroach of a priest who hides away in the cellar guzzling it, while up above in the light of the street a phantom host touches the lips and the blood is pale as water. And out of the endless torment and misery no miracle comes forth, no microscopic vestige of relief. Only ideas,pale, attenuated ideas which have to be fattened by slaughter; ideas which come forth like bile, like the guts of a pig when the carcass is ripped open."

Lechery, debauchery, liquor-laced sexual misadventure, poverty, Paris and the life of modern society all set the backdrop for Henry Miller's masterpiece, which overflows with an unrelenting gusto and seething fervor in its delectable extravagance of prose. There are too many passages to choose from in illustrating the effervescent energy of Miller's style. It's a book more about the general condition of the artist's world and insatiable pleasure-seeking, than the events which occur within it. It describes the wearied state of a penniless American writer in Paris who has long ago sated himself in every wanton pursuit within reach and abandoned any hope of attaining true happiness or meaning-- and yet he continues with an undiminished voracity to plunge himself wholly into the morass of self-degeneration, seeking any kind of ecstasy that might still be out there, even if it may be fleeting. I admit I didn't admire the hedonistic, nihilistic philosophy the author embraces in Tropic of Cancer-- yet I adored every moment of him describing it nevertheless, because his uncompromising cynicism speaks so powerfully through his beautiful outpourings of words. Similar to the way I felt reading Lolita, a bit repulsed by the overall emptiness of the story's worldview and turned off by all the characters and their slovenly behavior the more I read of it-- yeah completely mesmerized by the passion and lyricism oozing throughout the passages. Yes this book has had a controversial history and it is most certainly unabashed in its lewd, bawdy, and vulgar descriptions-- and yet it's a wonderful read nevertheless.It's not a book one reads for the story, a story without any hopeful inspirations or redeeming qualities, but it is a book that can constantly seduce and hypnotize for certain moments with the flowing passages that gush out with all the inner vitality of an artist's soul, bleeding with an intense desire for life and life itself unconditionally, bare-faced, raw, in excessive indulgence, wallowing unapologetically in every cesspool of filth in a continuous, guiltless immersion into the fevered feast of pleasure-seeking, which is all that is left for this jaded malcontent starving for ecstasy in a world drained of passion and purpose.(less)

1 like · like · see review

Apr 26, 2012 Angus rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: all-time-100-novels, modern-library-100, radcliffes-rival-100, reviewed-and-blogged

Original post at Book Rhapsody.

***

Malignant

I bought my copy of this from a sidewalk vendor who was asked by someone, probably a distant aunt, to sell a stack of books. There’s something cool and bohemian in buying such stuff, so yes, even if it was exorbitantly priced despite the major crease at the back, I bought it.

I immediately attended to it. Hmm. Challenging. Not only did it assail me with a lot of French words and phrases, but there’s also the jumpy storytelling. If reading this book were...more

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Jul 06, 2010 Suzie rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I don't know what was more embarassing - reading this book in public and wondering if anyone knew how vile it was, or seeing how many passages my mother had underlined in college. Naughty! (In her defense, she said she had no choice . . . )

This was one of those titles I'd heard a handful of authors drop, and thought I needed to know why. I'm still not sure I completely understand the fascination (though I'll grant he HAS beefed up my quotes section), but at least I can say I've read Henry Miller...more

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Feb 19, 2011 K.D. Oliveros rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Recommended to K.D. by: 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die (2006-2010)

Shelves: 1001-core, sex, picaresque

One of this book's themes is sex. So, if you are squeamish about sex on books, or about sex itself, then don't read this review. More importantly, DON'T read this book. My review is definitely lame compared to its sexual content.

But not reading the book is like being in the USA without tasting bagel in one of their international airports. Whenever I come to the US, I always grab a bagel and a cup of coffee while waiting for my flight. I think that bread (rarely sold here in the Philippines) defi...more One of this book's themes is sex. So, if you are squeamish about sex on books, or about sex itself, then don't read this review. More importantly, DON'T read this book. My review is definitely lame compared to its sexual content.

But not reading the book is like being in the USA without tasting bagel in one of their international airports. Whenever I come to the US, I always grab a bagel and a cup of coffee while waiting for my flight. I think that bread (rarely sold here in the Philippines) defines what being in the US is for me.

American Henry Miller (1891-1980), a struggling writer, went to Paris alone and almost penniless. There he tried to write. A friend coached him: just write what you feel. So he did. When Tropic of Cancer came out in 1936, he was 37 years old. When it was published in the US in 1961, it was banned for frank and graphic depiction of sex and it led to a series of obscenity trials that tested the American laws on pornography. Now, it is heralded as one of the most important 20th century novels: Modern Library's Best 100 and TIME 100 Best Novels.

He just wrote how he felt and oh boy, he was the guy! Being in the lovable Paris with a bevy of women (never mind what kind) to have sex with, despite being hungry most of the time, he must have the time of his life. Sex left and right, Paris must be heaven on earth. Wiki says that he became Anais Nin's lover who paid for his apartment and Lawrence Durell's friend who brought him to Greece. What a guy!

Reading Cancer, you can see why. Miller was a genius. He writes with total abandon. He wrote what he felt and thought and I say, what a brain! Fluid, playful narrative and he knew a lot of things to say. You cannot predict what he would think next as he said something strange like: all the pores of my skin open and something is eating my gizzards or totally obscene like O Tania, where now is that warm cunt of yours, those fat, heavy garters, those soft, bulging thighs? There is a bone in my prick six inches long. I will ream out every wrinkle in your cunt, Tania, big with seed. I will send you home to your Sylvester with an ache in your belly and your womb turned inside out.. Tanya here is the wife of his (Miller, as he uses first person narrative) landlord Slyvester.

So, how come bagel represents America for me? Not the hole, don't be silly. Cancer is luscious, meaty, filling and stings to your palate. It is not a novel for everyone and definitely not to those who hate sex in books, or sex itself. You have to go beyond the sex parts and pay more attention to the storytelling (reminds me of Nabokov's Lolita) and the struggles of the writers in Paris, the city where artists of the world (that started with Dante, Rabelais, Von Gogh, etc) congregate. Or appreciate how friendship can help one in surviving financial difficulty (not necessarily to become one's lover).

Next time you come to the US, why not bring this book and read this in the airport while having a bagel? You will see what I mean.(less)

21 likes · like · see review

Sep 28, 2008 Lavinia rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2007, fiction, journals-biographies-memoirs

I liked the novel, though I struggled with it a bit. I can easily understand why it was banned for so many years. What I really liked about Miller is the unique way he smells and feels the Paris of 1930’s. There are some really delightful passages and I have the feeling that only a foreigner could have observed and felt that particular atmosphere. And the fact that the novel is autobiographical makes it even more credible.

***
deci da, mi-a placut tropicul cancerului, desi m-am chinuit putin cu el...more

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About Henry Miller

Henry Miller sought to reestablish the freedom to live without the conventional restraints of civilization. His books are potpourris of sexual description, quasi-philosophical speculation, reflection on literature and society, surrealistic imaginings, and autobiographical incident.

After living in Paris in the 1930s, he returned to the United States and settled in Big Sur, Calif. Miller's first tw...more

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Quotes from Tropic of Cancer

“I need to be alone. I need to ponder my shame and my despair in seclusion; I need the sunshine and the paving stones of the streets without companions, without conversation, face to face with myself, with only the music of my heart for company.” — 355 people liked it

“Everybody says sex is obscene. The only true obscenity is war.” — 272 people liked it

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