Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of Tropic of Cancer
Book Review: Burroughs's Interzone is Miller's Paris.
Summary: 4 Stars
"Tropic of Cancer" is a book that needs to be read quickly, not to make an end of the task, but to get the full exuberant effect of the narration. Its pacing is restless and energetic, which is all the more amazing considering that it has no plot. I don't know how much of it is fiction, but it is obviously autobiographical and reads like a memoir, detailing its author's experiences living as an American expatriate in Paris in the 1920's. Henry Miller is a bum (it must be admitted) living among the idle intellectuals in the seedier neighborhoods of Paris (might he have bumped into Hemingway?). He's not always unemployed; he takes temporary jobs like a proofreader at a newspaper and an English instructor at a Lycee in Dijon, and he always has a place to live, albeit filthy. Most of the time he's cavorting with friends, making new ephemeral acquaintances, visiting brothels, and engaging in the kind of promiscuity of which such a life avails itself, despite the fact that he has a wife back in America. He doesn't shy away from any of the disgusting details of living and loving -- in the novel's opening scene, he is shaving his roommate's armpit hair for lice, and believe me, it only gets worse -- but Miller thrives in the squalor and wouldn't have it any other way. Compared to his native New York, which he considers impersonal, cold, and hollow, Paris is warm and intimate, brimming with life and beauty.
"Tropic of Cancer" is very similar to two popular books that followed it by a quarter of a century: Jack Kerouac's "On the Road" in content (run-on anecdotes about outrageous activities with his friends, pulsating with waves of existentialist rambling, the main difference being that Miller is a much better writer than Kerouac), and William S. Burroughs's "Naked Lunch" in style (stream-of-consciousness narration using striking imagery in random juxtaposition). Miller possessed the spirit, if not the seed, of the Beat Generation -- his existence can be summarized in his self-description as "spiritually dead, physically alive, morally free."
This is also perhaps the book's greatest fault -- its influence outstrips its literary quality. It may not be a great novel, but it at least it's worthy of its reputation, which is more than can be said for a lot of popular books.
Book Review: Classic? Yes. One of the best? Well...
Summary: 3 Stars
I would rather give this a 6 1/2, but I can't. Anyway, I have to admit that I wasn't too impressed with his musings on artists and their place in the world. Instead I was more impressed when he showed what an artist could do. His descriptions were brilliant, true, but his arguments just made me roll my eyes.Book Review: Clever anti-bourgeois stream of consciousness
Summary: 4 Stars
Miller romps around Paris, consorts with prostitutes, makes strange Russian friends, explores the outer limits of alcohol metabolism, and lives to tell the tale. Think of this as an earlier and boozier On The Road, with strong overtones of Dostoyevsky (whom Miller mentions by name) and Nietzsche. Miller also has aspirations of being a Walt Whitman, although Miller's style is markedly less subtle.The message here is definitely anti-rationalist, anti-religious, anti-bourgeois. Miller proclaims an adherence to the "Anti-Idea," which is roughly correspondent to Nietzsche's Dionysian Antichrist or Superman. While Miller's novel is a good read, lashing out against rationalism and commercialism and other social mores is not exactly new -- the culture of living for the moment and not believing in higher mores has a long history in literature, philosophy, and life.
As a novel, Tropic of Cancer doesn't carry much coherent plotting nor description. Of course, coherence is not Miller's style. Yet Miller's incoherence lacks the shocking depravity of someone like Burroughs, or the hyper-learnedness of Joyce. Miller's incoherent rants are mostly about getting drunk, picking up prostitutes, complaining about work, etc -- at least to our 21st century ears, this isn't all that original. Roaming around Paris in a drunken, licentious stupor is a story many could tell.
Is this an enjoyable read? Yes. Does it resonate long-established themes of revolt against button-down rationality and commercial conformism? Yes. Is it something pathbreaking and completely original? I'm not so sure about that.
Book Review: Cranky and Horny
Summary: 5 Stars
I've been on a wierd reading adventure that started when I discovered on my wife's shelves all seven volumes of the autobiography of Anais Nin. I read those and then the four volumes of the unexpurgated version. The prose was stunning and the read was wonderful.
So, since she was, for many years, Henry Miller's lover, and for more years his friend I thought I should read him.
Nin talks about Miller as a "genius", but I think the word applies more to her than to him. What we have here is an impressionistic, almost (but not quite) surreal description of his early years in Paris. This book became famous because it was banned in the US and much of the freedom we now enjoy to say what we actually think the way we actually think it is owed to the court battle over this book. But, that said, it ain't that great. In it's time it was a landmark. Now it's kind of an artifact. I still recommend reading it. You don't have to plough through it. It's fun. But it won't rock your world. The world you live in exists because it rocked the previous one.
Book Review: Cuts to the heart,rips it out,destroys it, then regenerates
Summary: 5 Stars
Henry Miller has got to be one of the least understood writers of all time. People read him for the sex, the modernism, the bohemianism but what they fail to see is that Tropic of Cancer is about life-pure and simple. Henry Miller isn't an 'On the Road' summer break bohemian. In Tropic of Cancer you get the feeling that the miserable existance he's living is just his personal swipe at a system that would be content to put him into the factories just like everyone else. Henry Miller has no escape hatch. He never did. He's playing the game of life and playing it for keeps, and if life yields and society collapses so much the better. Much better in fact. This book is about the most profound workingclass novel I've ever read. If only the people in Miller's milleaux could just get their hands on the prize for just one second, just one second, all the misery in the world would be gone. If you read the book you'll know what I mean. Miller's intention is to 'Stick a grenade up the [...] of civlized society and take out the pin' to blow the whole place sky high so that it can never, ever be built back up again. I think that on a conceptual level he succeeds. If you want the truth about life read this book. If you just want to see some dirty words and some bourgieous bohemian life get a porn magazine and some Kerouac, but don't come knocking on this door pal.