Tropic of Cancer (novel) From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Tropic of Cancer First edition cover, Paris, 1934

Author(s) Henry Miller Cover artist Maurice Girodias[1] Country France Language English Genre(s) Autobiographical novel Publisher Obelisk Press Publication date 1934 Media type Print (Hardcover) Pages 318 ISBN n/a Followed by Black Spring Tropic of Cancer is a novel by Henry Miller which has been described as "notorious for its candid sexuality" and as responsible for the "free speech that we now take for granted in literature".[2]:22[3] It was first published in 1934 by the Obelisk Press in Paris, France, but this edition was banned in the United States.[4] Its publication in 1961 in the U.S. by Grove Press led to obscenity trials that tested American laws on pornography in the early 1960s. In 1964, the U.S. Supreme Court declared the book non-obscene. It is widely regarded as an important masterpiece of 20th century literature. Miller wrote the book between 1930 and 1934 during his "nomadic life" in Paris.[5]:105107 Miller gave the following explanation of why the book's title was Tropic of Cancer: "It was because to me cancer symbolizes the disease of civilization, the endpoint of the wrong path, the necessity to change course radically, to start completely over from scratch.*5+:38 Anas Nin helped to edit the book.[5]:109 In 1934, Jack Kahane's Obelisk Press published the book with financial backing from Nin, who had borrowed the money from Otto Rank.[5]:108[6]:116 [edit]Emerson quotation, preface, and introduction In the 1961 edition, opposite the novel's title page is a quotation from Ralph Waldo Emerson:[7] These novels will give way, by and by, to diaries or autobiographiescaptivating books, if only a man knew how to choose among what he calls his experiences that which is really his experience, and how to record truth truly.[8] The 1961 edition includes an introduction by Karl Shapiro written in 1960 and titled "The Greatest Living Author". The first three sentences are: I call Henry Miller the greatest living author because I think he is. I do not call him a poet because he has never written a poem; he even dislikes poetry, I think. But everything he has written is a poem in the best as well as in the broadest sense of the word.[8]:vxxx Following the introduction is a preface written by Nin in 1934, which begins as follows: Here is a book which, if such a thing were possible, might restore our appetite for the fundamental realities. The predominant note will seem one of bitterness, and bitterness there is, to the full. But there is also a wild extravagance, a mad gaiety, a verve, a gusto, at times almost a delirium.[8]:xxxixxxiii [edit]Summary Set in France (primarily Paris) during the late 1920s and early 1930s, Tropic of Cancer centers on Miller's life as a struggling writer. Late in the novel, Miller explains his artistic approach to writing the book itself, stating: Up to the present, my idea of collaborating with myself has been to get off the gold standard of literature. My idea briefly has been to present 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.[8]:243 Combining autobiography and fiction, some chapters follow a narrative of some kind and refer to Miller's actual friends, colleagues, and workplaces; others are written as stream-of-consciousness reflections that are occasionally epiphanic. The novel is written in the first person, as are many of Miller's other novels, and does not have a linear organization, but rather fluctuates frequently between the past and present. [edit]Themes The book largely functions as an immersive meditation on the human condition. As a struggling writer, Miller describes his experience living among a community of bohemians in Paris, where he intermittently suffers from hunger, homelessness, squalor, loneliness and despair over his recent separation from his wife. Describing his perception of Paris during this time, Miller wrote: One can live in ParisI discovered that!on just grief and anguish. A bitter nourishmentperhaps the best there is for certain people. At any rate, I had not yet come to the end of my rope. I was only flirting with disaster. ... I understood then why it is that Paris attracts the tortured, the hallucinated, the great maniacs of love. I understood why it is that here, at the very hub of the wheel, one can embrace the most fantastic, the most impossible theories, without finding them in the least strange; it is here that one reads again the books of his youth and the enigmas take on new meanings, one for every white hair. One walks the streets knowing that he is mad, possessed, because it is only too obvious that these cold, indifferent faces are the visages

of one's keepers. Here all boundaries fade away and the world reveals itself for the mad slaughterhouse that it is. The treadmill stretches away to infinitude, the hatches are closed down tight, logic runs rampant, with bloody cleaver flashing.[8]:180182 There are many passages explicitly describing the narrator's sexual encounters. In 1978, literary scholar Donald Gutierrez argued that the sexual comedy in the book was "undeniably low *but with+ a stronger visceral appeal than high comedy".[9]:22 The characters are caricatures, and the male characters "stumbl[e] through the mazes of their conceptions of woman".[9]:24 Michael Hardin made the case for the theme of homophobia in the novel.[10] He proposed that the novel contained a "deeply repressed homoerotic desire that periodically surfaces".[10] Music and dance are other recurrent themes in the book.[11] Music is used "as a sign of the flagging vitality Miller everywhere rejects".[11] References to dancing include a comparison of loving Mona to a "dance of death", and a call for the reader to join in "a last expiring dance" even though "we are doomed".[11] [edit]Characters Other than the first-person narrator "Henry Miller",[8]:108 the major characters include: Boris: A friend who rents rooms at the Villa Borghese.[8]:2223 The character was modeled after Michael Fraenkel, a writer who "had sheltered Miller during his hobo days" in 1930.[5]:103,176 Carl: A writer friend who complains about optimistic people, about Paris, and about writing.[8]:4950 Miller helps Carl write love letters to "the rich cunt, Irene", and Carl relates his encounter with her to Miller.[8]:107117 Carl lives in squalor and has sex with a minor.[8]:288291 The inspiration for Carl was Miller's friend Alfred Perls, a writer.[5]:10 Collins: A sailor who befriends Fillmore and Miller.[8]:194208 As Collins had fallen in love with a boy in the past, his undressing a sick Miller to put him to bed has been interpreted as evidence of a homoerotic desire for Miller.[10] Fillmore: A "young man in the diplomatic service" who becomes friends with Miller.[8]:193 He invites Miller to stay with him; later the Russian "princess" Macha with "the clap" joins them.[8]:219238 Fillmore and Miller disrupt a mass while hung over.[8]:259263 Toward the end of the book, Fillmore impregnates and promises to marry a French woman named Ginette, but she is physically abusive and controlling, so Miller convinces Fillmore to leave Paris without her.[8]:292315 Fillmore's reallife counterpart was Richard Galen Osborn, a lawyer.[5]:46 Mona: A character corresponding to Miller's estranged second wife June Miller.[5]:9697 Miller remembers Mona, who is now in America, nostalgically.[8]:1721, 54, 152, 177181, 184185, 250251 Tania: A woman married to Sylvester.[8]:5657 The character was modeled after Bertha Schrank, who was married to Joseph Schrank.[12] It may also be noted that during the writing of the novel, Miller also had a passionate affair with Anais Nin; by changing the "T" to an "S", one can make out Anais from Tania by rearranging the letters. It may also be noted that in one of Nin's many passionate letters to Miller, she quotes his swoon found below. Tania has an affair with Miller, who fantasizes about her: 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. Your Sylvester! Yes, he knows how to build a fire, but I know how to inflame a cunt. I shoot hot bolts into you, Tania, I make your ovaries incandescent.[8]:56 Van Norden: A friend of Millers who is "probably the most sexually corrupt man" in the book, having a "total lack of empathy with women".[9]:2527 Van Norden refers to women using terms such as "my Georgia cunt", "fucking cunt", "rich cunt", "married cunts", "Danish cunt", and "foolish cunts".[8]:100107 Miller helps Van Norden move to a room in a hotel, where Van Norden brings women "day in and out".[8]:117146 The character was based on Wambly Bald, a gossip columnist.[13]

The answer is that The Tropic of Cancer was named because at the time of its naming, the sun was positioned in the Cancer constellation during the June solstice. Around the same time that Henry sought title advice from , Anais, hed submitted an early draft to a literary agent, William Anais, Bradley. The manuscript was called The Tropic Of Cancer. , . . Bradley makes reference to it as such in a handwritten memo dated August 8, 1932 (a facsimile of which is printed the 8 1932 (, hardcover My Life And Times [1970], p.152) [7]. While living *1970+, with Alfred Perles in Clichyin 1933, Miller sketched out a tree of 152) *7+. Clichyin 1933 philosophical ideas for an unfinished book called Palace of , Entrails. At the top of the tree is the equation CANCER = House . of Birth + Death (facsimile, My Life And Times, p. 75). " = + Death" (, , . 75). In Millers short story, "Via Dieppe-Newhaven" (1938), he recounts his efforts to explain the title and symbollic concept of , "Via Dieppe-Newhaven" (1938), Tropic of Cancer to a British immigartion agent: The Tropic of , symbollic Cancer, I said slowly and solemnly, is not a medical book*+ immigartion: The title, I answered, is a symbolic title. The Tropic of Cancer is " ", , , ' a name given in text-books to a temperate zone lying above the *...+ , , " Equator. Below the equator you have the Tropic of Capricorn, . ',

which is the south temperate zone. The book, of course, has nothing to do with the climatic conditions either, unless it be a sort of mental climate. Cancer is a name which has always intrigued me: youll find it in zodiacal lore too. Etymologically, it comes from chancre, meaning crab. In Chinese symbolism it is a sign of great importance. The crab is the only living creature which can walk backwards and forwards and sideways with equal facility. Of course my book doesnt treat all of this explicitly. Its a novel, or rather an autobiographical document [8]. This reasoning seems pretty consistent with subsequent explanations. To Anais Nin he wrote: Cancer also means for me the disease of civilization, the extreme point of realization along the wrong pathhence the necessity to change ones course and begin all over again *9+. This falls in line with his Cancer = House of Birth + Death equation (death and renewal). In an interview with Ben Grauer in 1956, Miller further explained that Tropic Of Cancer was a symbolic title I had chosen for a number of reasons, primarily because the cancer is the crab, and the crab has the power, or the ability to walk backwards, forwards, sideways, any direction do you see. I liked that symbol, you know? *+ Able to go any direction at will, do you see. There are only a few references to cancer in Tropic of Cancer. Its used metaphorically as a consuming social disease and is applied to the world (a cancer eating itself away, p.2), to himself and the character Tania (Shes got it now, the cancer and delirium.., p. 59), and Paris, which grows inside you like a cancer, and grows and grows until you are eaten away. Interestingly, in unpublished excerpts of Tropic Of Cancer, Miller makes associations between cancer and his wife June (as Mona): her nail polish has a sweet, cancerous stench and, more directly, You are evil in the way that microbes are evil, like cancer, leprosy, or the coming of puberty

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