Henry Miller

Tropic of cancer

Miller’s groundbreaking first novel, banned in Britain for almost thirty years.

Tropic of Cancer (Harper Perennial Modern Classics)

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It seems wherever I go there is drama. People are like lice - they get under your skin and bury themselves there. You scratch and scratch until the blood comes, but you can't get permanently deloused. Everywhere I go people are making a mess of their lives. Everyone has his private tragedy. It's in the blood now - misfortune, ennui, grief, suicide. The atmosphere is saturated with disaster, frustration, futility. Scratch and scratch until there's no skin left. However, the effect upon me is exhilarating. Instead of being discouraged, or depressed, I enjoy it. I am crying fo more and more disasters, for bigger calamities, for grander failures. I want the whole world to be out of whack, I want everyone to scratch himself to death.

Cunt didn’t bother me but casual usage of the word diddle??????

Clay Carey

Laura Mauler

I don't like stream of consciousness books.

Jeremy Boyd

Got to page 262 of my Modern Library copy only to discover that page 263 was really page 233, and they had just reprinted 30 of the same pages up to about 293, and yet I have a feeling I didn't miss all too much...

Ada 

This book was not meant to be read - it was meant to be lived or acted out as a superfluous poem on a theater stage. Resembles an interpretive dance of surrealism that is absolutely hypnotizing. At times, it felt slightly repetitive: but nonetheless was a wonderful literary piece.

Shocking, banned and the subject of obscenity trials, Henry Miller's first novel Tropic of Cancer is one of the most scandalous and influential books of the twentieth century Tropic of Cancer redefined the novel. Set in Paris in the 1930s, it features a starving American writer who lives a bohemian life among prostitutes, pimps, and artists. Banned in the US and the UK for more than thirty years because it was considered pornographic, Tropic of Cancer continued to be distributed in France and smuggled into other countries. When it was first published in the US in 1961, it led to more than 60 obscenity trials until a historic ruling by the Supreme Court defined it as a work of literature. Long hailed as a truly liberating book, daring and uncompromising, Tropic of Cancer is a cornerstone of modern literature that asks us to reconsider everything we know about art, freedom, and morality. 'At last an unprintable book that is fit to read' Ezra Pound 'A momentous event in the history of modern writing' Samuel Beckett 'The book that forever changed the way American literature would be written' Erica Jong Henry Miller (1891-1980) is one of the most important American writers of the 20th century. His best-known novels include Tropic of Cancer (1934), Tropic of Capricorn (1939), and the Rosy Crucifixion trilogy (Sexus, 1949, Plexus, 1953, and Nexus, 1959), all published in France and banned in the US and the UK until 1964. He is widely recognised as an irreverent, risk-taking writer who redefined the novel and made the link between the European avant-garde and the American Beat generation.

Tropic of Cancer

Marielle de Geest

2.5 stars - problematic parts aside this was a fairly boring book with occasional strokes of genius. Guess you had to be there.

Simona

Andrea McGuffey

Adam Scharf

Pat G.

Jim Hagan

Clara Olausson

savannah eden

George

Aidan

Alejandra 

Maurice FitzGerald

'I have no money, no resources, no hopes. I am the happiest man alive' Henry Miller's blazing first novel follows a young American writer as he makes his way through 1930s bohemian Paris, encountering penniless artists, pimps, 'prostitutes like wilted flowers', princesses, drunks, hustlers and sexual adventurers. Banned as pornographic and the subject of several obscenity trials, Tropic of Cancerdefied the conventions of its day and of language itself- a verbally dazzling, carnivalesque hymn to freedom and being alive that remade the modern novel. 'A revolution in consciousness equal to The Sun Also Rises.'Norman Mailer ''He knows all about me,' you feel; 'he wrote this specially for me'.' George Orwell

Tropic of cancer

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