Tropic of Cancer
Books | Fiction / Literary
3.5
(208)
Henry Miller
Henry Miller’s famously banned book is “a matter-of-fact celebration of chucking one’s dreary life and following your heart to Paris” (Richard Price). 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 volume of Miller’s famed mixture of memoir and fiction, which chronicles with unapologetic gusto the bawdy adventures of a young expatriate writer, his friends, and the characters they meet in Paris in the 1930s. Tropic of Cancer is now considered, as Norman Mailer said, “one of the ten or twenty great novels of our century.”
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Author
Henry Miller
Pages
356
Publisher
Open Road + Grove/Atlantic
Published Date
2007-12-01
ISBN
155584698X 9781555846985
Ratings
Google: 3.5
Community ReviewsSee all
"Couldn’t go through with it. Tropic of Cancer was a slobber of incohesive text that I just couldn’t stick to."
Sinorcanut
"Review cross-posted from <a href="https://books.max-nova.com/tropic-of-cancer">https://books.max-nova.com/tropic-of-cancer</a><br/><br/>"Tropic of Cancer" ruined my whole week. Ever read "Catcher in the Rye" in high school? That's like bitter lemonade. This is straight up battery acid. Raw, smart, bitter, and true. Originally published in 1934 in Paris, Henry Miller's masterpiece was banned in the US because of its incredible profanity and vulgarity. Its notoriety earned it a spot on my "dissolute young men" book club's reading list and Miller did not disappoint. The main character, a pseudo-autobiographical "Henry Miller" is a terrible guy. He objectifies women, exploits his friends, spends every penny he has, drinks to excess, and can't hold a job. He's an American in Paris trying hard to be Hemingway. And yet, in spite of his serious flaws, his unflinching dissection of himself and modern civilization elevates him far above the merely obscene. Miller levels his brilliant intellect squarely at the Western Canon and the senselessness of the Great War. The bitterness of Miller's irreconcilable debt to the masters before him surges throughout the pages of this revolting but brilliant novel:<blockquote>There’s something obscene in this love of the past which ends in breadlines and dugouts. Something obscene about this spiritual racket which permits an idiot to sprinkle holy water over Big Berthas and dreadnoughts and high explosives. Every man with a bellyful of the classics is an enemy to the human race.</blockquote>I listened to the audiobook version which was excellent. Miller is as fresh and provocative today as he was in 1934. But be warned, this book will hurt you."
Max Nova