Tropic of Cancer (novel)
By on
January 24th, 2008
Tropic of Cancer is a novel by Henry Miller, first published in 1934 by Obelisk Press in Paris and still in print (Grove Press 1987 paperback: ISBN 0-8021-3178-6). Its publication in 1961 in the United States by Grove Press led to an obscenity trial that was one of several that tested American laws on pornography in the 1960s. While famous for its frank and often graphic depiction of sex, the book is also widely regarded as an important masterpiece of 20th century literature.
“Tropic of Cancer” opens on a grungy note as the narrator discusses the lice* infestation of his friend’s armpits. Early on the narrator promises that this will not be a polite book: “This is libel, slander, defamation of character [...] a prolonged insult, a gob of spit in the face of Art.” Miller largely succeeds to deliver on this promise. The book is full of profanity, and there are frank discussions of sex, sexually transmitted diseases, and other such topics.
The book has a crude charm and energy throughout, even though at times the prose seems wildly self-indulgent. Miller depicts Paris as a magical place, a pilgrimage site for artists and wanderers. The narrator often reflects on writing and literature in general, and on his own artistic goals and theories in particular. There is also reflection on America and American identity. Miller’s prose sometimes attains a Whitmanesque revelatory quality.
Critical reception
George Orwell called this novel “the most important book of the mid-1930’s,” and Miller “the only imaginative prose-writer of the slightest value who has appeared among the English-speaking races for some years past.” Samuel Beckett hailed it as “a momentous event in the history of modern writing”. Norman Mailer, in his book on Miller, Genius and Lust, called it “one of the ten or twenty greatest novels of the century”. The Modern Library named it the 50th greatest book of the 20th century.
Cultural references
The novel was featured in a 1991 episode of Seinfeld, The Library.
Tom Lehrer, after singing the song “New Math”, says that he wants to write a math textbook because he “knows it will sell a million copies” by calling it “Tropic of Calculus”.
The novel is read and discussed in After Hours, a film by Martin Scorsese. In the 1991 version of “Cape Fear”, also directed by Scorsese, the characters of Max Cady and Danielle Bowden discuss the book briefly.
Several prominent lyrics from Wilco’s Yankee Hotel Foxtrot album are taken from the novel. (examples required)
A quote from the novel (”Boris has just given me a summary of his views. He is a weather prophet. The weather will continue bad, he says. There will be more calamities, more death, more despair. Not the slightest indication of a change anywhere… We must get in step, a lock step, toward the prison of death. There is no escape. The weather will not change.”) precedes Thomas Pynchon’s short story, “Entropy.”
In the novel, “God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater” by Kurt Vonnegut, the book is mentioned several times.
In the novel, “Factotum” by Charles Bukowski, the character Henry Chinaski reads it on a long bus ride.
Madonna mentions the novel in her book Sex.
* The singular form of lice is “louse”
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