Lloyd Fassett answers “I tried reading this book in college, but...”

Carol Maskus asked this question about Tropic of Cancer (Tropic, #1):

I tried reading this book in college, but had to put it down when he kept referring to women as bitches and whores. For women who have read the book, did that dissuade you?

Lloyd Fassett His misogyny was so over the top, I think he was making a point that we're all crap and it's a crappy world. This isn't a book to read because you're …moreHis misogyny was so over the top, I think he was making a point that we're all crap and it's a crappy world. This isn't a book to read because you're following a plot and looking for a happy ending that reaffirms your values. This is one of the greatest books I've read, because it's not that plus it has a philosophy about life still being about a spark to create and a drive to experience things. But, I don't think you're supposed to think the way the main character does of women or call them names etc. Their very well be that kinds of people in the world, but this isn't that kind of book.

Here's the key passage that made me think about the misygony from a different angle:

"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 even 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."

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Tropic of Cancer

by Henry Miller

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