What is writer’s internal world? What is writer’s external world?

One is ejected into the world like a dirty little mummy; the roads are slippery with blood and no one knows why it should be so. Each one is traveling his own way and, though the earth be rotting with good things, there is no time to pluck the fruits; the procession scrambles toward the exit sign, and such a panic is there, such a sweat to escape, that the weak and the helpless are trampled into the mud and their cries are unheard.

Henry Miller’s both worlds – inner and outer – are bleak and almost uninhabitable.
The narration seems to be a cacophony of words portraying the chaos of events then slowly out of this chaos the grim music is being born – a surreal symphony of living low.
Tropic of Cancer is poetry – the downbeat poesy of blind alleys.

Still prowling around. Mid afternoon. Guts rattling. Beginning to rain now. Notre-Dame rises tomblike from the water. The gargoyles lean far out over the lace façade. They hang there like an idée fixe in the mind of a monomaniac. An old man with yellow whiskers approaches me. Has some Jaworski nonsense in his hand. Comes up to me with his head thrown back and the rain splashing in his face turns the golden sands to mud. Bookstore with some of Raoul Dufy's drawings in the window. Drawings of charwomen with rosebushes between their legs. A treatise on the philosophy of Joan Miró. The philosophy, mind you!

Paris is a cradle of arts. Paris is an academy of creative thought. And Henry Miller is there like a selfish fetus in the monstrous Gothic womb passing through a necessary gestation.
He who walks his own path, arrives at his own place…

Henry Miller nu s-a incadrat in imaginatia mea nici intr-un tip de carte citita, curent literar sau specimen ciudat de artisti. Cartea a fost interzisa mult timp, sub pretextul obscenitatii, dar cred eu mai degraba pentru ca dezgoleste adevaruri despre evolutia (involutia?) omenirii, greu de suportat pe vremea ceea. Nu stiu acuma, cind omul se considera in culmea progresului homo sapiensului:).
Printe cuvinte obscene, prostituate, sex constant si scris innmuiat in multa bautura, Henry Miller, care insasi este personajul cartii buclucase, ne invita la un exercitiu de revolta. Revolta impotriva "umanului", pe care el o crede drept o "stare mizerabila, limitata de simturi, restrictionata de legi MORALE SI CODURI, definite prin platitudini si “isme”. Mai ales spre sfirsit, cind betia gindirii asupra conditiei umane il face sa isi smulga parul din cap pentru a intelege ceva, el parca ne trezeste pentru a privi lumea asta istovita de moarte si lustruita ca un craniu lepros, vorba naratorului.

O sa las un citat din cartulie, care mie inca imi tiuie in urechi: “Alaturi de seminta umanilor, curge o alta rasa de individizi, aceea a inumanilor, rasa artistilor, care, imboditi de impulsuri nerecunoscute, iau masa amorfa a omenirii, si prin febra si fermentul ce i le influenteaza, schimba acest aluat apos in piine si piinea in vin si vinul in cintec".

Iata cartea asta e un cintec. Rock. Dureros, dar frumos.

This is my second time reading Tropic of Cancer. The first occasion was over twenty years ago, and I was incredibly enthralled by Miller's style — its excessiveness and incredible inner freedom. As I began rereading it, I feared disappointment, but that didn't happen; I read the book with immense pleasure, though this time I focused on different aspects of the text. By the way, the text itself is magnificent.

Miller's writing style is a unique blend of autobiography and candid, raw prose in a stream-of-consciousness technique. The combination of philosophical musings, humor, and an impressionistic portrait of Paris makes the book both fascinating and splendid. It's Miller's attempt to reveal the true story of his inner world — the world of a writer. In his hunger, I see Knut Hamsun, and in his vision of surrounding beauty, Walt Whitman. And I am firmly convinced it is a great book, a true song, poetry that charges you with life.

It's important to note that this is a trilogy. If you've only read the first book, you won't fully appreciate the work, which, like the Dao, ascends from the mundane to the sublime. The trilogy offers a comprehensive view of the philosophical evolution of the work, so to fully understand its essence, it's necessary to read all three books.

If you haven't read this novel, I dare recommend the edition with George Orwell's foreword essay Inside the Whale.

Si è detto molto, troppo di questo romanzo di Miller.
C'è chi leggendolo si è scandalizzato, chi come me lo ha adorato, amato.
Ho adorato lo stile di Miller, il modo in cui racconta il suo vissuto, la sua storia, le avventure con i suoi amici, il suo flusso di coscienza sugli scrittori che ama e che detesta.
Siamo a Parigi e il fatto stesso che sia ambientato in questa città, che amo alla follia, aggiunge più di un punto a suo favore. Dimenticate per un attimo la Parigi che avete imparato a conoscere e amare, la Parigi delle "Blinding lights" come cantano gli U2. La Parigi descritta da Miller è una Parigi sull'orlo dello sfacelo, della disperazione, contorniata da prostitute e barboni agli angoli delle strade con personaggi al limite che tentano di sopravvivere e di arrivare a fine giornata.
Un romanzo arido, duro, forte, una piccola perla che vi invito a leggere.

Worth reading, and worth thinking about. Even if - and perhaps especially if - you are put off by large portions of it. Samuel Beckett called it a "momentous event in the history of modern writing" - I'm inclined to agree as it stands, except, if it truly is, then Dostoevsky's Notes from Underground has to be a grander moment. Tropic of Cancer reads, to me, like an American Underground Man in Paris. The references to 'cunts' and sex and diseases and excrement are a different form given to the fundamental baseness of life as the Underground Man experiences it. It is shocking because it is - for most of us - not a part of our everyday life, and yet we know it; it feels very familiar - like life itself, in one of its forms, perhaps at the core of it all. No matter how beautiful we pretend it is or might be. Tropic of Cancer is not a book I will ever love, in the way that I might love a novel by Dostoevsky, Steinbeck, Hamsun or Fitzgerald. It is too ugly - too self-consciously ugly - for that. But it is not supposed to be a novel to love in that way. As Miller writes, "the task which the artist implicitly sets for himself is to overthrow existing values, to make of the chaos about him an order which is his own, to sow strife and ferment so that by the emotional release those who are dead may be restored to life..." Miller's order - and his vivid, palpable, underlying chaos - in Tropic of Cancer is emphatically his own. Did it restore me to life? I don't think I was dead in the first place; but it did make me feel alive. I'll give him that.

I have found God, but he is insufficient.
Tropic of Cancer ~~~  Henry Miller



I first attempted to read  Henry Miller’s,  Tropic of Cancer when I was 13. I read somewhere that it was a dirty book; I knew I had to get my hands on it to find this out for myself. I made it through the first chapter, and I was done. I didn’t understand it at all. Instead, I read  Erica Jong’s,  Fear of Flying, which I did understand and which I did think was dirty. The upside of this is that  Erica Jong to this day remains one of my favorite writers. Check out Jong’s  Fanny: Being the True History of the Adventures of Fanny Hackabout-Jones and you’ll understand why I love her writing.

Many years later I picked up a copy of  Tropic of Cancer fully intending to finally read this. Of course, it ended up in TBR Hell. Skip ahead a few more years, ~~ summer 2023 ~~ my friend Ted mentions he is reading  Henry Miller on his trip to Greece. This spurred me on. I knew it was time to finally enter  Henry Miller’s world … and what a world it is.



Telling the tale of a young, American writer and the sordid life he leads in bohemian Paris in the 1930s, we witness Henry's encounters with prostitutes, pimps and penniless artists.

Boldly written to be crude, charming and energic throughout, Miller melds fact and fiction to deliver a book whose prose is often madly self-indulgent ~~ in the best possible way ~~ offering a sordid view of Paris as the backdrop. Miller depicts Paris as a magical place, a shrine for artists and wanderers. A profound read, n   Tropic of Cancern is an exploration of what it truly means to be happy ~~ Miller discovers the answer is never as simple as it seems.



So, is n   Tropic of Cancern a dirty book as I would have described it in my youth? No. To define n   Tropic of Cancern as a dirty book or pornography is to miss the point. Miller wants to be disapproved of; it is written to offend. Women are stripped of all their humanity. They are instead deceitful demons who lure men to their doom. Men don’t come off much better ~~ except for Miller ~~ he is the Bacchus of this world ~~ a prophet and poet ~~ who has nothing but contempt for humanity. Miller writes n  the world is a cancer eating itself away.n Here, people are no more than animals; they live to eat~~fuck~~sleep.

Beyond all this what is most shocking about n   Tropic of Cancern is not its portrayal of sex, but its sexism.



In the end, what most impressed me about Tropic of Cancer? The writing. Miller's writing is breathtakingly beautiful ~~ Miller accomplishes his goal to elevate narrative and write it as he’s not only living in the moment, but writing in the moment as well.

This book is embarrassingly bad. If not for the controversy surrounding its censorship, it would probably have faded to obscurity long ago. Miller shows a complete lack of insight into any subject. Just when you think he might finally be beginning to write about something interesting, he changes the subject, never to return. The narrator seems perplexed at his continual dissatisfaction, somehow without realizing that he never does anything that brings immediate joy, never does anything to create lasting accomplishment or contentment, and hangs out with a bunch of jerks all the time. If you need a book to tell you not to live your life like that, you have my sympathy, but you shouldn't have anyone's readership.

I knew it was a provocative, even "dirty" book, full of sex, booze and irresponsible, bum-like adults (sounds like Bukowski? think again), but this... this is...even if i was given this book for free, i would not want it or better - if i could, i would un-read it, un-waste my time and un-bore myself.
It's basically the diary of Miller,(whenever he actualy got around to do any writing of his own)for a fragment of his time spent in France, where he was hungry, lazy, pretencious, lusty bastard, and that's about 90% of the book.
The other things he writes about are:

- syphylis
- the clap
- other diseases
- cunts (get used to reading the word every two seconds)
- his shitty friends' problems
- wondering whom to leech of now
- lack of money
- brothels
- cafes

and finally, we have, altogether, about ten pages of his incoherent thoughts on life, somewhat blurred with lunatic dreams and visions, that just pop on the page after some fuck-story, and end up blending into (not skillfully) something along the lines of the previous.
Nope, if you haven't guessed by now, i won't be reading him anymore.
And not because he was a two-faced, simple, primitive fucker, leeching and contaminating everything around him, with no morals and conciousness, but because he geniuenly believed he was something more that the others, better, more talented, and deserves his fame, while actually he just had courage to write about cunts and fucking them.
Cuz people were all over that shit back in the years.

In short, I think Tropic of Cancer is a masterwork. Do read it! However let me yield the floor to George Orwell who's done far more thinking about the novel than I -- from his essay "Inside the Whale."

http://www.ourcivilisation.com/smartb...

The Villa Seurat is a kind of oasis in a very ugly district with the edge of Montparnasse. It is the painter Jean Lurçat who decided there to install workshops for artists. He asked his brother to build them. At the 7bis, Chana Orloff, the sculptress preferred the great Auguste Peret to him. Her grandchildren authorize sometimes the visit of this house-workshop.. It is enough moving. There we found the artistic effervescence of Paris at the Thirties . For exemple, Orloff knew Modigliani which drew a portrait to her. It is her which introduced the young Jeanne Hibuterne to him.
To the 18, there was Soutine in the first stage and Henry Miller with the second. There, he wrote “Tropic of cancer”.It seems to me that he already knew Anaïs Nin. I had not read again this book since the high school. At this time, it was a true transgression. I was in a catholic high school. My visit Villa Seurat gave me the desire to reading it again. I feared that it badly aged.. After all, the profusion of sex to which we are exposed could make obsolete this book. In fact, it is not the case. Removed from his sulfurous aspect, it remains the account of an American in Paris, true literature by a great writer. It is halfway between novel and gonzo journalism. This book appears of an astonishing modernity…

I searched in vain for the meaning of the title. The tropic of cancer, geographically, means something. For this text, I do not see. Seeking the explanation in the text is another ordeal. The language is raw, anatomical, whore. Of course, it's on topic, but I'm not too fond of vulgar language.

I mean, it's Henry Miller. Apart from sex and death and the bum life, he's not much of a great writer; at these, though, he performs brilliantly. It becomes very clear to me that Miller changed his style a lot through his books. "Black Spring" is just a long, drawn-out metaphor, but "Tropic of Cancer" is more centered on the choices one makes in life and how these shape them, on being a coward, on refusing happiness, or of being a hedonist, or just in general about the things and people society is not very fond of, even if it accepts them. I, of course, liked it, as I do most of Miller's writing. He has an appeal to me that no other male author has; he seems to be my kind of guy, minus the obvious drawback of him no actually being a responsible adult. I'm starting "Tropic of Capricorn" right after this, for good measure.