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Most avid readers have that never-ending list of classics in the back of their head that fits the description, "I know I need to read that someday just to say I've read it."Henry Miller's Tropic of Cancer was one such book for me. I guess the only way to wrap this up to say that it would have been a favor to all had Tropic of Cancer remained banned. This would have been one of those cases had I not be confined to a five hour flight between Atlanta and San Fransisco.
It was immediately banned due to its graphic content, and it spawned a trial it the US that would influence the future of banned books in America. There is no continuity of characters. It is a memoir of part of the time he spent in Paris in the 1930's.
I read all but 23 pages on the plane.Millers exploits described in Tropic of Cancer - and I use the word described loosely here because he writes in stream-of-consciousness - are self-indulgent, vulgar to excess, chauvinistic beyond compare and totally narcissistic.There is no plot. Words associated with it were "revolutionary," "illicit," "remarkable" and "masterpiece."You know what. So were the emperor's new clothes.For my frequent readers, you know that I've recently adopted the habit of not finishing books that aren't worth my time.
There is nothing that ties this work together from start to finish, save the theme of sexual encounters with prostitutes (be they in profession or action).In fact, the last 20 pages of the book - which I read only because I was so close to finishing - actually have a bit of a story line and one half-developed character, which left me wondering where in the world this bit came from.I'm trying to think of what else there is to say about it, and quite frankly, I'm speechless. Tropic of Cancer
"Tropic of Cancer" is more than a novel, in the ordinary sense, like some of these other review say. And only literature is the closest art-form to consciousness that we have.Richard Beckham II, author of "Frog in the Pot" and "The Tale of Mu" both available on Amazon.com. One might say that Henry Miller did to writing what Jackson Pollack did to painting.
True, there's not really a plot in the traditional sense, but plots are overemphasized these days anyway. And should we care. As an author, it has changed the way I see novels can be written, or structured (or not structured).
He broke it wide open; the way people talk and think are not perfect, they're not always in the proper tense, or eloquently worded. That's all we seem to care about, like sitcoms and dramas on TV. Nothing, it seems, is allowed to stew in its own juices, is allowed to be a work of art--like this book.
I always believed that the aim of literature was to capture reality, our consciousness, otherwise we have something a little more fluffed up than a screenplay. Frog in the Pot The Tale of Mu
Elsewhere we are treated to detailed description of Miller's penis and the sound of consecutive turds hitting toilet water. This book is an intriguing checkerboard of opaque ivory squares and checkered obscenity. p25 Makes me want to eat seafood this morning. Probably.Did Orwell have a bias towards writing versus painting.
Maybe Orwell saw Miller as an escape from ideological rambling and the leftist politics common in the Thirties. Orwell described Dali as a disturbed individual whose paintings required serious analysis and bemoaned the fact that trendy society seemed to pander to the lunacy of Dali. Maybe a Paris cafe with the smell of fresh espresso.The opaque. I read this book and I see the ghost of Miller and the ghost of Jack Kerouac in a cafe with the sunlit sixties glowing behind them in a morning embrace. I betray my passion for Orwell who gave Miller good reviews and considered him a trendsetter.
Was the Comstock Act correctly applied when this book was banned by the government. Probably.Why did Orwell like Miller so much. Racism.a Hindu family in a picture is described as resembling "educated chimpanzees." A weird checkerboard indeed. Suddenly it seems as if the the dawn were coming: it is like water purling over ice and the ice is blue with a rising mist, glaciers stuck in emerald green, chamois and antelope, golden grouper, sea calves mooching along and the amber jack leaping over the Arctic river. The book is unbelievably sexist which surprises me since feminists never seem to want to ban it.
I am of course betraying my Christian faithview. It seems strange to read a book simply to test the accuracy of a review but that is what I did. They knew each other briefly. Miller was apolitical; Orwell a socialist.
Maybe Orwell was more of a poseur than he realized. What is puzzling is the venom Orwell spewed on the demented paintings of Dali in his essay BENEFIT OF CLERGY. Did Orwell secretly hate Dali's Fascist sympathies and take it out on his paintings.
Miller has the same Zen-like prose that Ray Bradbury described as so essiential to writing. What was the real diffrence between Dali's painting titled PORTRAIT OF A SKULL PERFORMING SODOMY ON A GRAND PIANO and Miller describing people as sexual organs. We are told many things about "rich c.ts".horrible.
This book is poetic prose sublime checkered with porno poop pulp. Could the same be honestly said of the writings of Miller. Weird reason for writing a review.
I really should not review this book. The sample is entirely a portion of Anais Nin's preface to the book. I have not read it. I downloaded the sample to my Kindle2, only to discover that none of the actual book is in the sample. I have no idea what Miller's writing is like from this sample. I refuse to buy a book when the sample contains none of the book.
From the opening page and the immortal line: "I have no money, no resources, no hopes, I am the happiest man alive," Miller brings you into his world of Paris during the Depression. What a place to read a book and what a book to read in that place. His world is not based on status or material possessions, but rather live for the moment.
Make no bones about it, Tropic is a difficult read. He is always on the alter of great American Writers and this book is what he will be forever remembered for. Miller's sole purpose is to chase women, figure out where his next meal is going to come from and to write about it.
Before there was Kerouac, Burroughs, and Ginsberg, there was Miller. He rambles some philosophical ideals and then suddenly returns to walking the streets of Paris with an Indian looking for a whorehouse. His ideas about life are long-winded and convoluted, but to get to the pearls you must open the oyster.
I read Tropic while camping in Yosemite National Park and both are forever linked to the other in my mine's eye. Wonderful book for every library.
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