Un clásico del que probablemente ya se ha dicho todo, aunque no todo lo que se ha dicho sea cierto. Quien se quede con la anécdota de las obscenidades o las abundantes descripciones sexuales se está perdiendo lo mejor de la novela: una brutal crónica del desencanto y el desamparo de una generación que ha perdido cualquier esperanza ante la decadencia del mundo, en el contexto del crack del 29 y la amenaza de una nueva guerra, que se augura inminente.

“El mundo está acabado: no queda ni un pedo seco. ¿Quién que tenga ojos desesperados y ávidos puede sentir el menor respeto hacia estos gobiernos, leyes, códigos, principios, ideales, ideas, totems y tabúes existentes… ?”

Un americano de edad indefinida, tal vez más cercano a los cuarenta que a los treinta (el propio Henry Miller tendría esa edad cuando escribió la novela, profundamente autobiográfica) malvive en el París de los primeros años treinta del siglo pasado tratando de entregarse a su pasión de escribir un libro, trabajando de lo que encuentra, comiendo lo que le fían y durmiendo donde le dejan, rodeado de una caterva de amigos y conocidos de todo pelaje, en el que abundan las prostitutas.

”Cuando me asomo a ese coño exhausto de una puta, siento el mundo entero debajo de mí, un mundo que se tambalea y se desmorona, un mundo usado y pulido como el cráneo de un leproso.”

.
No hay una verdadera trama en la novela, que carece de la estructura habitual en la narrativa moderna. Solo una sucesión de escenas que reflejan la vida cotidiana del escritor en un París que se nos presenta sórdido, lóbrego y siniestro, donde buscarse la vida para conseguir un plato que comer, una copa que beber y un coño que follar es el único objetivo del día.

”Simplemente con que pudiera uno estar seguro de que, al ir a la guerra, sólo perdería las piernas... si pudiese uno estar seguro de eso, por mí que estallara una guerra mañana. Me importarían tres cojones las medallas... podrían guardarse las medallas. Lo único que desearía sería una silla de ruedas y tres comidas al día. Entonces les daría algo para leer, a esos capullos.”

Todo ello descrito con un estilo que podríamos definir como realismo sucio, visceral y deprimente, pero a la vez lleno de lirismo.

“Miradlos tumbados una noche de lluvia, tiesos como colchones: hombres, mujeres, piojos, todos apiñados y protegidos por los periódicos contra los gargajos y las sabandijas que andan sin patas. Miradlos bajo los puentes o bajo los cobertizos de los mercados. Qué aspecto tan repugnante ofrecen en comparación con las limpias y brillantes verduras apiladas como joyas.
Hasta los caballos muertos y las vacas y los corderos colgados de los grasientos garfios presentan un aspecto más atractivo.”

Un estilo que influiría en gente como Bukowski; qué fácil resulta ver esa influencia por ejemplo en las novelas de la serie de Chinaski, como Cartero.

En definitiva, se trata de una novela sobre el desencanto, la frustración de una vida sin sentido, la desorientación y la falta de futuro.

Muy recomendable

Make no mistake about it, this is a challenging read through and through; and whether or not it is rewarding (or particularly enlightening) depends on the person who is reading it. Regardless, to me it is quite clear Henry Miller is not some sort of brainless lunatic; and he certainly isn't void of poetic intensity. What troubles me, and is perhaps the most obvious characteristic of the novel, is the unadulterated "stream of consciousness" style Miller employs throughout. Theirs nothing inherently wrong with this stylistic invention (a quite shocking and new idea in the 1930's). However, the way it's used in Tropic of Cancer leads to issues I find difficult to overlook.

I think I finally figured out the closest resemblance to Millers 'candid', 'exuberant', and 'honest' style of writing. Imagine if Erofeev's "Moscow to the End of the Line" and La Rochefoucauld's "Maxim's" had a baby. Tropic of Cancer would be the imperfect love child of these two writings. I say 'imperfect' because the semi-autobiographical narrator of Miller's story is much less jokey than Erofeev's drunken protaganist: even if both novels often touch upon a certain 'impoverished freedom' that comes from the highly personalized viewpoint of a muddled set of experiences. On the flip side, Tropic of Cancer is not a novel length reproduction of La Rochefoucauld's "Maxims" either. Both are concerned with (often) cynical and 'inherently truthful' observations of human conduct, but they go about them in different ways. The Maxims attempt to be as particular as linguistically possible, reworking the various sentences until they are perfectly economical and precisely engineered. With Miller it's quite the opposite. He doesn't care one fraction about editing the 'truths' he sees infested within humanity. Early on in the book he tells us his intentions himself: "I have made a silent compact with myself not to change a line of what I write. I am not interested in perfecting my thoughts, nor my actions" (pg.11). Instead, Miller's unrestricted observations are strewn steadily throughout the writing, often in between the autobiographical spurts in cryptic and complex forms (although never with linguistic restraint).

This all goes back to the 'stream of consciousness' style of writing I touched on earlier. It's clear Miller believes that leaving out any "real" expressions of his experiences out of his writing is cheating the reader from the true understanding of certain personal/universal meditations (for lack of a better word). This is why we get the impression his writing is somehow more natural and unaltered: a direct reflection of his thoughts and ideas. Words like 'cunt' flow loosely, scenario's and themes shifts at breakneck pace, wild and primitive feelings (expressed through words) take us by surprise when we read Tropic of Cancer; the overall effect created is something of absolute "realness". We start thinking that what Miller is talking about has to be genuine. We think it must be touched by something that has escaped the usual bounds of commonplace reality, something coming from the soul, simply because of how abrasive and forward it is. His editors think he is renewing our interest in "the fundamental realities" by being such a 'free' writer; Miller himself thinks he is working towards " a resurrection of the emotions, to depict the conduct of a human being in the stratosphere of ideas, that is, in the grip of delirium" (pg.243). Is he achieving his purpose?

Of course not - because it's impossible. The writing is just as 'real' and 'pure' a rendering of thoughts and emotions as a dialogue from any fictional character ever created. Miller wishes to tap into his soul and render it as essential fact, a pure vibration, right on the page you and me read: but this is simply not doable, no matter how direct or unmolested his writing seems to be. Time after time he gushes out these nearly belligerent phrases ('abstractions' is more precise) and expects us to believe the potency of meaning behind them as being simply evident, often solely due to the the entirely 'unfiltered' nature of their composition. This is a method that's outrageously optimistic at best, while in practice it is riddled with essential pitfalls.

I feel as if Miller suffers the same syndrome as certain proponents of modernism. Deep down he wishes to express 'pure signal' in his works rather than aiming to display an 'imperfect visual' as best as he can, something that can come as close to giving us an understanding of meaning, his meaning, without actually brushing against truth (an unimaginable feat). One gets the impression that Miller would be thrilled if it was possible to simply squeeze his bald head against an empty notebook hard enough, so hard, that his feelings could simply pour of his mind for us all to see (and understand in a perfect capacity). Of course this is not an achievable system so he must try to reflect his ideas in another way. He chooses to do this through his style of writing. Don't be fooled though, it is just that: a style of writing. A modern method. A literary school. A mystical outburst. A concentration of free association rendered through words. No matter what you want to call it, it is essential to understand that what is being presented isn't Miller's 'truth' simply as it is. He hasn't found a way to magically bypass literary restraints and give us the hard facts of invisible and universal certainty. He's simply straining his thoughts through a looser method of writing/language that can help accentuate a more natural overtone to his ideas. It's stupid to go on pretending he has reinvented the wheel simply by being frank. In my opinion he uses his mode of writing too often as a crutch where he simply could of concentrated on delivering more meaningful phrases, regardless if they seem too synthetically worked over. Now i'm not saying Miller's writing is always a cheap disguise for philosophical reflections, but often the style of language will make the expressions hard to extrapolate and otherwise pretentiously offbeat.

Anyway, let's talk about the meat of the text itself. What is this book about? Is it a semi-autobiographical novel? Well, sure. But that doesn't really matter. If we wanna be sort of lazily blunt about it we can say this is just musing; a form of prolonged musing, like a guy thinking to himself about the past in written form. It's obviously more than just that however. Their are themes and directions taken just like in any book, no matter how frustratingly chaotic they can seem. It's hard to talk about Tropic of Cancer like it has any well defined plot points and significant markers (hell it barely has chapters). It's plot-less in the same type of way life is. We know this because the book basically is just describing life. Life, the state of humanity, the world relating to both the universal and personal. Their are a few reoccurring characters we sort of get used to but never really truly care about, they're all just their to aid with Miller's big exposition: "I somehow ask myself how it happens that I attract nothing but crackbrained indivituals, neuraasthenics, neurotics, psychopaths - and Jews especially". (pg.170).

Theirs a lot of talk about Paris, where the nearly homeless Miller is looming carelessly about. Truthfully I find it quite sobering (no pun intended) that the narrator is mostly un-sedated throughout. A lot of the times in these sort of first person memoirs theirs a lot of drunk talk clouding up the memories, but thankfully Tropic of Cancer is confusing enough without Miller having to be an alcoholic. Either way, Miller has no need for the influence of drugs in creating some truly stellar passages; when I said he isn't lacking poetic intensity I wasn't lying. Take a look at this paragraph concerning Henri Mattise:

"...I caught for the first time the profound meaning of those interior stills which manifest their presence through the exorcism of sight and touch. Standing on the threshold of that world which Matisse has created I re-experienced the power of that revelation which had permitted Proust to so deform the picture of life that only those who, like himself, are sensible to the alchemy of sound and sense, are capable of transforming the negative realities of life into the substantial and significant outlines of art...Two waxen hands lying listlessly on the bedspread and along the pale veins the fluted murmur of a shell repeating the legend of its births." (pg.163)

or this segment:

"In that moment I lost completely the illusion of time and space: the world unfurled its drama simultaneously along a meridian which had no axis. In this sort of hair-trigger eternity I felt that everything was justified, supremely justified; I felt the wars inside me that had left behind this pulp and wrack; I felt the crimes that were seething here to emerge tomorrow in blatant screamers; I felt the misery that was grinding itself out with pestle and mortar, the long dull misery that dribbles away in dirty handkerchiefs. On the meridian of time their is no injustice: there is only the poetry of motion creating the illusion of truth and drama... for some reason or other man looks for the miracle, and to accomplish it he will wade through blood. He will debauch himself with ideas, he will reduce himself to a shadow if only for one second of his life he can close his eyes to the hideousness of reality. Everything is endured - disgrace, humiliation, poverty, war, crime, ennui - in the belief that overnight something will occur, a miracle, that will render life tolerable" (pg.96).

These feverishly possessed moments sprinkled throughout the text are the true reasons one will be interested in reading this book, so the plot and linear development is mostly a secondary concern. Don't be fooled though, these bursts of enlightened intensity are usually few and far between. Furthermore, the ones with any true meaning (even from just a poetic viewpoint) are even rarer in my opinion. If you read the first 15 pages of the book or simply the paragraphs above and didn't enjoy it, theirs probably nothing in this book for you. It's not gonna get easier to read and your experience will not be fun in the slightest. Too often I felt like I was suffering through the text just trying to register countless mental/emotional tidbits and useless phrases before it finally got somewhat engaging. The overall experience was unique but ultimately frustrating; I couldn't shake the feeling of being somehow unsatisfied with this text. I might dip into his other works but for now I think I need a timeout from the Henry Miller Experience.

In other news, happy birthday to myself and Julius Caesar.

Tropic of Cancer is probably best known for being about sex, a book that was banned for over thirty years. An autobiographical novel of a struggling writer living in Paris in a community of bohemians. A fictionalised account of Miller’s life living underground, with prostitutes, painters and other writers.

This is an odd novel, not necessarily good but a literary landmark. Without Henry Miller we may never have books like Lolita, Naked Lunch, A Sport and a Pastime and even Tampa. On the plus side, we may never have Fifty Shades of Grey. This novel pushed the boundaries of literature in the 1930’s and found itself being banned, which developed a cult following that helped influence the future of literature. I tend to think, much like Lady’s Chatterley’s Lover, if it wasn’t for the banning of the book, this novel wouldn’t be a classic; it would have just faded away into obscurity.

There are some advantages to reading this book, there are the autobiographical elements but then Miller focuses on his friends and colleagues. Almost off topic, like he is commentating on what is happening in their lives. Then it gets a little more complex because there is a stream of consciousness reflecting on the occasional epiphany. The whole narrative gets really confusing with its non-linear approach, the tangents and reflections. It makes the whole book hard to read and in the end not really enjoyable.

I can’t help but compare this novel to The Dud Avocado, the sexual adventures in Paris is similar but Tropic of Cancer wasn’t as interesting and a female lead makes for a less sex obsessed narrative and tends to focus on life abroad as well. I can’t help thinking just how narcissistic Henry Miller must have been with all those autobiographical novels of his life; do people still do that? Or is this just a thing of the past, pushing the boundaries.

I have to give Henry Miller one thing; he doesn’t hold back, he will expose the good, the bad and the disturbing parts of his life. If I ever wrote a book like this (which I have no interest in doing anyway) I would be more inclined to hold back, to paint myself in a more favourable light; Miller doesn’t do that at all. There isn’t much I can say about this book, it’s about sex and that is about it. The stream of consciousness part was interesting but I still find that difficult to read. I would probably tell people to skip this and read The Dud Avocado or something similar but for the book snobs (like myself) if you do read this book I hope you get something out of it apart from the historical significance of a book like Tropic of Cancer.

This review originally appeared on my blog; http://literary-exploration.com/2013/...

One of this book's themes is sex. So, if you are squeamish about sex on books, or about sex itself, then don't read this review. More importantly, DON'T read this book. My review is definitely lame compared to its sexual content.

But not reading the book is like being in the USA without tasting bagel in one of their international airports. Whenever I come to the US, I always grab a bagel and a cup of coffee while waiting for my flight. I think that bread (rarely sold here in the Philippines) defines what being in the US is for me.

American Henry Miller (1891-1980), a struggling writer, went to Paris alone and almost penniless. There he tried to write. A friend coached him: just write what you feel. So he did. When Tropic of Cancer came out in 1936, he was 37 years old. When it was published in the US in 1961, it was banned for frank and graphic depiction of sex and it led to a series of obscenity trials that tested the American laws on pornography. Now, it is heralded as one of the most important 20th century novels: Modern Library's Best 100 and TIME 100 Best Novels.

He just wrote how he felt and oh boy, he was the guy! Being in the lovable Paris with a bevy of women (never mind what kind) to have sex with, despite being hungry most of the time, he must have the time of his life. Sex left and right, Paris must be heaven on earth. Wiki says that he became Anais Nin's lover who paid for his apartment and Lawrence Durell's friend who brought him to Greece. What a guy!

Reading Cancer, you can see why. Miller was a genius. He writes with total abandon. He wrote what he felt and thought and I say, what a brain! Fluid, playful narrative and he knew a lot of things to say. You cannot predict what he would think next as he said something strange like: all the pores of my skin open and something is eating my gizzards or totally obscene like O Tania, where now is that warm cunt of yours, those fat, heavy garters, those soft, bulging thighs? There is a bone in my prick six inches long. I will ream out every wrinkle in your cunt, Tania, big with seed. I will send you home to your Sylvester with an ache in your belly and your womb turned inside out.. Tanya here is the wife of his (Miller, as he uses first person narrative) landlord Slyvester.

So, how come bagel represents America for me? Not the hole, don't be silly. Cancer is luscious, meaty, filling and stings to your palate. It is not a novel for everyone and definitely not to those who hate sex in books, or sex itself. You have to go beyond the sex parts and pay more attention to the storytelling (reminds me of Nabokov's Lolita) and the struggles of the writers in Paris, the city where artists of the world (that started with Dante, Rabelais, Von Gogh, etc) congregate. Or appreciate how friendship can help one in surviving financial difficulty (not necessarily to become one's lover).

Next time you come to the US, why not bring this book and read this in the airport while having a bagel? You will see what I mean.

A foray into comprehensible stream of consciousness, there is nothingness in this novel. Books not needing plots to be poignant can be all the more poignant.

Nothing formulaic about this work. Miller is sometimes banal, but he is endearing because he is not overly poetic; he is no Thoreau.

This is more an imaginative autobiography than it is a story in any traditional sense. Worth the read but not Earth shattering.

Reminds one a bit of Joyce without the splendid lyricism. I don't think Miller had the natural ability of the great writers of his time, but this only makes him slightly less valuable to American Literature at large. The envelope he pushed really needed pushing.

I am living at the Villa Borghese. There is not a crumb of dirt anywhere, nor a chair misplaced. We are all alone here and we are dead.

(Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com]. I am the original author of this essay, as well as the owner of CCLaP; it is not being reprinted here illegally. Sorry; the last paragraph today gets cut off a few sentences early!)

The CCLaP 100: In which I read for the first time a hundred so-called "classics," then write reports on whether or not they deserve the label
Book #20: Tropic of Cancer, by Henry Miller (1934)

The story in a nutshell:
Like many of the other novels to first become commercial hits under the moniker of "Modernism" (see, for example, past CCLaP-100 title Mrs Dalloway from the same period), Henry Miller's infamously raunchy Tropic of Cancer from 1934 doesn't bother to concern itself much with traditional plot or a traditional three-act structure, but is rather an attempt to capture the details of a particular moment in history in as intense a way as possible, using not only humorous anecdotal tales but also the brand-new literary technique known as "stream of consciousness." And man, what a period of history to capture -- based on Miller's own experiences from half a decade before, the novel is set in Paris in the years after World War One, a time when most young people had turned permanently cynical and nihilistic, horrified as they rightly were over what exact carnage humans had proven themselves capable of, now that humans had added mechanized industry (trains, machine guns, biological weapons) to the business of war. Add to this that the US itself had still not established its own global-class artistic community (which wouldn't happen until New York's Greenwich Village after World War Two), and you're left with the situation Miller describes with such black humor here -- of entire Parisian neighborhoods become boisterous, drunken melting pots, packed to the gills with bohemians from around the world who no longer give a crap about anything, who embrace such things as casual sex and exotic drugs in a way no other generation had embraced them before, as they party their way to the apocalypse they were all sure was right around the corner. Multiply by 300 pages, and you basically have Miller's book.

The argument for it being a classic:
There are two basic arguments over why Tropic of Cancer should be considered a classic, starting with the book itself: It is, after all, a shining example of early Modernism, the exact kind of radical departure from the flowery Victorian style that so many young artists were embracing back then, here done in a mature and self-assured way that builds on the literary experiments of the previous twenty years, but that finally makes it palatable for the first time to the general reading audience (and by "palatable" I mean "not incomprehensible," thank you very MUCH James Freaking Joyce). As such, its fans say, the novel should be rightly celebrated for the literary masterpiece it is; one of those rare books that gets stream-of-consciousness exactly right, one of those rare books that perfectly shows the combination of arrogance and self-hatred that mixes in the warm dysfunctional heart of any true bohemian. Ah, but see, in this case there's an entirely different second reason why this should be considered a classic; because for those who don't know, thirty years after its initial publication in Europe, this was one of the landmark artistic projects of the 1960s to help finally lift the yoke of government censorship in America, one of the first projects used by the courts to help define was exactly is and isn't "obscene," adding immense fuel to the countercultural fire that was going on in this country at the same time. If it wasn't for Tropic of Cancer, fans say, we would still have the all-or-nothing paradigm of the Hays Code in the arts, instead of the "put out what you want and we'll give it a rating" paradigm of our present day; no matter what you think of the book itself, they argue, this alone is a reason to consider it a classic.

The argument against:
Like many of the titles in the CCLaP 100 series (see The Catcher in the Rye, for example), the main argument against Tropic of Cancer seems to be the "What Hath God Wrought" one; that is, the book itself may not be that bad, but it legitimized something that should've never been legitimized, in this case whiny confessional stream-of-consciousness rants from broke artists in their twenties living in big cities, complaining for 300 pages about how unfair life is and how all the prostitutes keep falling in love with them. Yep, it was Tropic of Cancer that started all that, critics claim; and anytime you come across yet another sad little blog about how the heart of the city beats in the weary soul of some overeducated, entitled slacker, that's one more time we should visit the grave of Miller and pee all over it, in retribution for him creating a situation where such blogs are encouraged in the first place. Again, it's not so much that people complain about the book being awful on its own (although some will definitely argue that stream-of-consciousness has always been a house of cards, difficult to make work well within a literary project); it's more that the book simply isn't great, and should've never gotten the accolades and attention it did, with Miller being damn lucky that he had as exciting a sex life as he did at the exact moment in history that he did, along with the shamelessness to write it all down.

My verdict:
So as will very rarely be the case here at the CCLaP 100, let me admit that this is one of the few books of the series I've actually read before; in fact, much more than that, it was one of the books I practically worshipped in my early twenties as a snotty, overeducated, oversexed artist myself, a book that had a bigger impact on both my artistic career and just how I lived my life in general back then than probably any other single project you could mention. So needless to say I was a bit biased going into this week's essay; I not only consider Tropic of Cancer a classic, but easily among the top-10 of all the books in this series, one of those books that any restless young person of any generation should immediately gravitate towards starting around their 18th or 19th birthday. And that's because Miller is so good here, so damn good, at perfectly capturing that restlessness that comes with any generation of young, dissatisfied creatives -- that sense that they want to do something important, that they should be doing something important, just that none of them know how to do that important thing, so instead let that passion seep out through their sex lives, their clothing choices, the bands they listen to, etc. Tropic of Cancer is all about yearning, all about grasping life to the fullest you possibly can, not for the sake of simply doing so but rather because this is the only way you'll ever find what you're truly seeking. Or as MIller himself puts it: "I can't get it out of my mind what a discrepancy there is between ideas and living."

But that all said, let me just plainly warn you -- whoo man, is this a filthy book, with it unbelievably enough still just as able to shock and offend as when it first came out. And again, I see this as an asset and strength of Miller as an author; because ultimately it's not really the language itself that has gotten people so upset about this book over the decades (you'll hear worse in most Hollywood hard-R sex comedies), but rather that Miller embraces a prurient attitude throughout, one that plainly addresses the cold realities about sex which are not usually discussed in polite company. Just take, for example, the chapter where he compares for the reader the various young artsy prostitutes who live in his neighborhood; of how the best ones are the ones who have come to grips with the fact that they're whores and not wives or girlfriends, and therefore lustily embrace the exact disgusting acts that wives and girlfriends won't, the main reason men visit prostitutes in the first place. Yeah, not for delicate sensibilities, this one is; despite it being almost 75 years old now, you should still exercise caution before jumping into it feet-first.

And then finally, re-reading it this week for the first time since college two decades ago, I've realized something else about this book; that it's not just the fun little stories of crazy sex and urban living that Miller gets right, but also the more somber reflections of perpetual poverty, of the almost existential dread that can develop when waking up in the morning and not knowing how you're going to eat that day. This is the flip-side of the crazy bohemian life, something plainly there in Tropic of Cancer but that most people don't see when first reading it, or when reading it at a young age; that to live a life rejecting middle-class conformity and embracing chaos is not just endless evenings of absinthe and oral sex, that there's a very real price to pay for rejecting all these things as well, the price of health and kids and normal relationships and any kind of slow building one could potentially do in their chosen career. Let's not ever forget that the things Miller talks about in Tropic of Cancer happened half a decade before his literary career ever really took off, years where basically none of them got anything accomplished at all except to definitively list all the kinds of books they didn't want to write; let's also never forget that Miller's life got dramatically more boring after his literary career took off, busy as he suddenly was with...you know, writing all those books. The artistic life can be...

Undoubtedly influential, at times hilarious, and overall an effective mood piece. Looking at it historically, the book is unique, and the fact that it doesn't stand out from contemporary novels in terms of language and sexual content is a testament to its influence. However, it's not what I would consider an engaging or thought-provoking read.

This read more like speculative prose than a novel...for me anyway. But yes, there is a story here. Is it entertaining? I guess to answer that I will have to lean on the old cliche 'it's in the eye of the beholder'. After all, even if I wander down to St Petersburg today and mingle with the bums and starving artists I may become bored, disappointed, but I will surely catch that occasional glimmer, that jewel. Although it will probably just be the shine of some pimps gold tooth. And even as I lean in closer to catch a glimpse of its splendor I might find myself waving my hand and backing away to avoid the stench.
So, I've had my share of this scenery. I can see why some hated this book and why some loved it. And understanding both sides I think I will take the push-pin of my opinion and stick it dead center!

„E mai bine să faci greșeli decît să nu faci nimic: It’s better to make mistakes than not do anything” (p.274).

Poți citi romanul lui Miller de la orice pagină înainte (numai de la ultima nu se poate), eu am început cu pagina 96, am mers vijelios pînă la 105, am sărit înapoi la pagina 33, am urcat pînă la 48 și am sărit din nou la pagina 176, unde e o petrecere în toi cu muzici, dansuri, șampanie, Pernod. Și tot așa. Cînd am acoperit toate paginile, mi-am făcut o impresie...

Există cărți, așadar, care pot fi străbătute și în acest chip. Asta înseamnă că nu au cele trei momente canonice: începutul, cuprinsul și încheierea, ci sînt construite, asemenea romanului lui Italo Calvino, numai din începuturi, fără punct culminant și fără prăbușiri spectaculoase. Personajele lui Miller au o viață egală, monotonă, repetitivă, toate așteaptă ceva (o epifanie, succesul, o căsătorie cu o prințesă putred de bogată, proaspăt venită din Rusia sau Polonia), dar pînă la urmă nu se întîmplă nimic semnificativ (nimeni nu moare înjunghiat), existența e o eternă revenire a identicului, ca la Nietzsche. Ca o boemă...

Sigur, ceva tot se petrece în carte. Protagonistul, de pildă, scrie cînd are chef și inspirație, se plimbă pe străzile din Paris, flămînzește, visează, își aduce aminte (pp.37-46). Cînd au bani, destul de rar, personajele se pun pe băut și pe mîncat (fiindcă foamea le urmărește necruțătoare), merg prin baruri, cafenele, taverne, prin stabilimente (unde discută cu patroana doar chestiuni duhovnicești), sau ajung în pensiuni ieftine pentru o partidă de sex sordid cu o prostituată - Germaine, Claude, Ginette etc. - sau cu o doamnă din înalta aristocrație americană, al cărei soț e paralizat și nu-i mai folosește la nimic. Principiul acestei lumi de indivizi mediocri, de exilați la marginea societății, de excluși, de paraziți pare a fi următorul: „Parisul este ca o curvă” (p.188).

Limbajul cărții nu mai este perceput de mult ca obscen (în vremea tipăririi era). Din perspectiva noastră, Henry Miller e un pudic. Astăzi nimeni nu mai bagă în seamă îndrăznelile scriitorilor, treaba lor, ceea ce contează, în fond și la urma urmei, e valoarea și numai valoarea cărții.

Ca să închei, romanul lui Miller e neîndoielnic valoros, chiar dacă nu e pe gustul meu.

P. S. Am notat trei citate care m-au pus pe gînduri. Pe primul nu l-am înțeles:

„El îi cade în poală și stă acolo tremurînd ca o durere de dinți: He falls on her lap and lies there quivering like a toothache” (p.36).

„Fanny rîde și rîde ca un vierme gras: Fanny is laughing, laughing like a fat worm” (p.37).

„Sena curge atît de lin încît abia dacă-i simți prezența. E întotdeauna acolo, liniștită și discretă, ca o mare arteră curgînd prin trupul omului: So quietly flows the Seine that one hardly notices its presence. It is always there, quiet and unobtrusive, like a great artery running through the human body” (p.285).

The only thing that saved this book from a 1 star rating is the occasional stellar paragraph such as this:

"For some reason or other man looks for the miracle, and to accomplish it he will wade through blood. He will debauch himself with ideas, he will reduce himself to a shadow if for only one second of his life he can close his eyes to the hideousness of reality. Everything is endured - disgrace, humiliation, poverty, war, crime, ennui - in the belief that overnight something will occur, a miracle, which will render life tolerable. And all the while a meter is running inside and there is no hand that can reach in there and shut it off."

It's paragraphs like that one, interspersed between pages and pages of verbal masturbation, that made it possible for me to even finish this book. What remains are self-indulgent, vulgar to excess, misongynistic ramblings.

There is no plot. There is no continuity of characters. There is nothing that ties this work together from start to finish, save the theme of hunger, whether it be for sex or food. This was one of those books on my list of "I really should read this book," and I'm glad I read it, but I won't recommend it to you. Or you. Or you.

This was my first experience with Miller and I am glad so happy I read a wonderful novel. The book is an autobiographical novel that tells about Miller's sojourn in Paris and the anecdotes happened to him and his friends. The style is so funny that I was laughing out loud in the middle of the night like a mad man:). This novel is not for everyone .If you feel offended by the obscene language and Play Boy foul mouth of Miller, you should not read it. I mean seriously you get gutter class description of cities and people. The author exhausted the English language by uses of all the words that are related to sexual female organ. He even liked the red setting sun to a bloody"broken rectum." Most of Miller's friends are lousy people who are horrible to women. The language is so demeaning for women to the extent that women are reduced to mere "cunts." Feminist s will not be happy at all review ng this novel. Miller also used the technique of streams of consciousness to elaborate more on the inhumanity of the human race and how decadent humans are. The earth is a wasteland full of menstrual quagmires, excrement, sperms, and pus. He launched a harsh attack on religion and religious people who created a mess in the world by manipulating people with their dogmas and unintelligible creeds .He was so ashamed of being human. The novel is not plot driven art all. Incidents take place haphazardly. Miller introduced his characters and their stories randomly. What masters really at the end is his philosophy and the funny incidents rather than the plot in the traditional sense of meaning. His views on life, death, humanity, and the fallibility of human race gave the novel a philosophical dimension. It was obvious that he was influenced by Darwin's theory of evolution. He also hailed Dostoyevsky as the most profound author who managed to fathom the inner depths of human Psyche. I really cherished my time with this book. It duly deserves my 5 stars. I highly recommend it. Now I can Add Miller to the pantheon of great American authors just like Melville and Thoreau.