car stereo review Tropic of Cancer ebook
Henry Miller is not popular with the academic community. I think this is because there is nothing for academics to do with his books. Henry says what Henry means, there really is no need to interpret his meaning. So don't be scared off just because your instructors never mention this book. It's meant to be enjoyed outside the confines of institutions such as college anyway. Henry's point of view is the man in the street. Sometimes(most of the time) he is dealing with very basic issues like food(mostly where the next meals coming from) and sex which he likes to have often. Henry is a man perhaps limited to a few appetites but that is why he is fun to hang out with. He enthuses you with his own enthusiasms. He can be funny, depressing, and surprisingly poetic in his visions which may have been brought on by hunger or drink or just desperation to have a vision. I think the same audience that likes Kerouac will like Miller. Kerouac is also dismissed by the academy and the higher circles of learning but who cares. Both tell pretty straightforward tales about themselves trying to live the way they want. They should be read for no other reason than for the pure enjoyment they give. The movie Henry Miller(Henry and June) I think is a great character but not the Henry I know. The Henry that is narrating Tropic of Cancer is desperate and spilling over with words that are sometimes heartbreakingly honest. The movie Henry is more like a loveable clown which Henry did become later in life. Other books by Henry Miller are also very enjoyable. My favorites: The Colossus of Maroussi(about a visit to Greece), The Air-Conditioned Nightmare(travels in U.S.) and Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymos Bosch(about his life in that N. California idyllic spot). Read and enjoy. Screw the academy.
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BalasHapus
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BalasHapusSynopsis: Tropic of Cancer unabashedly depicts Millers' escapades as a down-and-out writer in Paris during the early 1930s, "bumming around" Montparnesse with a colorful, earthy, and rebellious group of expatriates and artists.Review: Miller is nourished by decay. He observes how the higher activities - love, sex, creation, fidelity, art - have lost their divinity, dignity, poetry. Sex seems to him dry and painful; work is absurd; death is meaningless, and literature is dead. The only sort of goodness we are now capable of is to blow ourselves to bits. But somehow Miller, despite his rage and pollution, seems innocent. His book seems a lament. His potency is founded in showing the cruelty and filth, but these would have no affect on him or us unless we also feel its opposites - kindness and purity. Whenever he records the ugliness of his surroundings, he has discharged them and their effects from his soul, as in a sort of exorcism. And this is why he appears an innocent soul. Because innocent souls have an unreasoned but keen taste for suffering, and nothing seduces them so easily as does the view of a martyr. In this instance, nature is the martyr; all of her processes polluted and corrupted by humans.
Miller's language is incisive, clear, potent, fresh...and new, a new sort of language, a language of the underworld translated into English. His fast-paced, absurdly wild and filthy existence is beautifully documented; there is something in the surrounding which reminds one of the film Casablanca, perhaps the charm of desperation.
He is prone to philosophies, and some readers will prefer the adventure to the contemplation. Also, his treatment of women is acutely unorthodox but should be further examined before being criticized.Quotation: `I have no money, no resources, no hopes. I am the happiest man alive. A year ago, six months ago, I thought that I was an artist. I no longer think about it, I am...' (from the first page)
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17 of 17 people found the following review helpful
BalasHapusone of the best of this century, July 3, 1996
BalasHapus...my spiritual liberation started with Henry Miller and _Tropic of Cancer_.
BalasHapusI always credit him with "saving my life" and don't think this an exaggeration. As a troubled, near suicidal 15 year old, I saw _Tropic of Cancer_ on the bookshelf of my next door neighbor's - whose dog I was walking while they were away - and dove in hoping to find what reports of the obscenity trial in the New York Times would lead me to find - I was 15 and anxious for "obscenity".
No doubt, I found obscenity, but mostly I found courage! gobs of it - and joy - the courage to be who I was and just go for it - everything and everyone else be damned!
For the next decade or so, not two weeks would go buy when I wasn't reading Miller: the Topics, Black Spring, Sexus/Nexus/Plexus, The Colossus of Maroussi, Big Sur, and on and on, re-reading - but although they all recharged the joy (not to mention my vocabulary, he read the dictionary as a youth and remembered everything), nothing matched the impact of _Tropic of Cancer_.
Yes - Miller's pretentious, narcissistic and misogynistic, but he's also filled with a contagious spirit. His later works - particularly _Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch_ are more focused on true spirituality. By his late 50's he finally got the sexual obsession and misogyny under control, the earlier works are too focused on lust.
Great stuff for a 15 year old boy though! - wonderful and graphic sex scenes are interspersed with lyricism, erudition and the great joy of being alive ...no matter what...
I wouldn't hesitate to recommend this to any 15 year old or 50 year old...
This is one of those books that stun and shock the system. It is an active, living document. Its prose is bold and loud. It roars at us from the start. We start to crawl, walk, then trot, then gallop through its luminous twisting caverns. Miller's inner glow lights the way. Without the light, we would follow his reverberating, joyous laughter that booms off the walls. We follow straight on to the promised land. We find that what is promised is life. We reach the last page. We have just fed on homecooked solids. We are exhausted and full. We are better for it.Some have said that this is the greatest novel written by an American. It is. It could be the greatest novel ever written. There is not an extraneous word nor a mangled sentence in it. Miller shows us what it's like to be on the streets, on the run, on the go, poor, and happy. He laughs always, drinks always, with cheer, lustful for more life, more experience. The charachters are real people and we recognize them. Spasmodic thoughts wrapped in florid wordship call out revelations long after the perusal. Afterall, this is a code, a code of the soul. It is written in the animal tongue so we hear it. Reading this book is an experience that adds to us. It makes us taller, stronger.Denuded of the normal logistical standards of modern literature it speaks to us in a pedestrian, straightforward manner. We imbibe it as one does a tonic. It is without side effects. The prose quickens and breathes life into the dead. It is medicinal.I speak of "The Tropic of Cancer" as an accurate mirroring of a fully naked life. There must be sex, love, lust, hate, anger, nonsense, bacchanal and injustice in a truthful account of life. There must be honesty. We only need to look, Henry Miller shows us what a full life looks like. A reflection of life as a whole. This book is complete. And yes, this is the greatest novel written by an American. Perhaps, the best novel ever written.
BalasHapus
BalasHapusThere are few books that I would say anything about in
BalasHapusa public forum such as this, but you might have guessed
that Tropic of Cancer is one of them. When I am in such a
state as I am now, being that it is after midnight and I am
on the internet browsing, Tropic of Cancer seems more revelent
than ever. You open a door, leave behind the daylight, ride
into another man's mind, and it is an extrodianary mind
at that. The only thing I can remember after first reading
the two Tropic books (the first, Cancer, is considered his
classic)is that I had to go on living with a feeling that
a great man, a patriot of himself, had crossed my path,
shook my hand with a smile, insulted me and patted me on the
back, telling me that this was what it was all about.
Just being.
I don't know what the title means, but sometimes after
a book has been read and set aside for several months,
or even years, the title becomes its own meaning. One
that will never leave you.
5.0 out of 5 stars
BalasHapusBy A Customer
BalasHapusHenry Miller is not popular with the academic community. I think this is because there is nothing for academics to do with his books. Henry says what Henry means, there really is no need to interpret his meaning. So don't be scared off just because your instructors never mention this book. It's meant to be enjoyed outside the confines of institutions such as college anyway. Henry's point of view is the man in the street. Sometimes(most of the time) he is dealing with very basic issues like food(mostly where the next meals coming from) and sex which he likes to have often. Henry is a man perhaps limited to a few appetites but that is why he is fun to hang out with. He enthuses you with his own enthusiasms. He can be funny, depressing, and surprisingly poetic in his visions which may have been brought on by hunger or drink or just desperation to have a vision. I think the same audience that likes Kerouac will like Miller. Kerouac is also dismissed by the academy and the higher circles of learning but who cares. Both tell pretty straightforward tales about themselves trying to live the way they want. They should be read for no other reason than for the pure enjoyment they give. The movie Henry Miller(Henry and June) I think is a great character but not the Henry I know. The Henry that is narrating Tropic of Cancer is desperate and spilling over with words that are sometimes heartbreakingly honest. The movie Henry is more like a loveable clown which Henry did become later in life. Other books by Henry Miller are also very enjoyable. My favorites: The Colossus of Maroussi(about a visit to Greece), The Air-Conditioned Nightmare(travels in U.S.) and Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymos Bosch(about his life in that N. California idyllic spot). Read and enjoy. Screw the academy.
BalasHapus
BalasHapus