Tropic of Cancer (1934)

I tried reading this Henry Miller novel in my 20s. It seemed to be considered his best, or at least most notorious, but I soon abandoned it as ridiculously rambling and pointless. I was mystified. I picked it up again more recently and finished it this time—still found it rambling, but now somehow it had become an advantage. Or at least a serviceable platform for the language, which is so vital and exuberant. If it's "about" anything, it's about Miller's survival in Paris in the early 1930s, including his sources of shelter, food, income, and sex and how he acquires and loses them. It's thoroughly bohemian, practically a novel-length definition of bohemianism. Karl Shapiro's early-'60s introduction (shortly after the book finally became free of censorship problems in the US and elsewhere and thus "legal") asserts upfront that Miller is not a poet. "I do not call him a poet because he has never written a poem; he even dislikes poetry, I think," Shapiro writes. Well, maybe, because Shapiro then goes on to make the key connection of Miller with Walt Whitman. Which, indeed, Miller himself makes in this so-called novel, loudly extolling the great American poet's virtues. Miller's language appears rambling, but his word choice can be remarkably precise, and he has a vocabulary. His sentences can be long but his sense of rhythm rarely fails. The whole thing rushes pell-mell ... to nowhere ... and yet it's easy to hitch along for this ride, even for someone like me who resents a little the labor of the nonnarrative literary arts (including most especially poetry). Miller's world is one of much boozing and whoring in Tropic of Cancer, deeply and bluntly sexist in many places, but the bracing honesty redeems it—really. Or something does. I want to say it's the language winning me over, which is often sublime, but more than that I think it's the sense of a soul just behind the words, a real soul. This soul is stuck here like mine is (or there, in Paris), making the best of things. Raging against the futilities and stupidities of civilization at large, yet crucially able to let go of rage for the sake of having a good time—restorative to all souls. Giving up rage, resentments, depression is one of the most profoundly positive and even subversive actions we can take in a way, when we can. Tropic of Cancer is a kind of undirected how-to manual, filled with implicit case studies. As someone who may (or may not) allow himself to let go and have a good time often enough, I appreciate the practical advice here. Miller feels like someone I might be able to keep going back to.

In case the library is closed due to pandemic.