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Tropic of Cancer
Tropic of Cancer
Tropic of Cancer
Audiobook (abridged)2 hours

Tropic of Cancer

Written by Henry Miller

Narrated by Ian McShane

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

3.5/5

()

About this audiobook

TROPIC OF CANCER BY HENRY MILLER. Tropic of Cancer is regarded as a masterpiece with Time magazine rating it as one of the 100 most important novels of the 20th century. It is an unforgettable, confessional, warts and all novel of the author and his friends riotous adventures in Paris during the Depression. It changed censorship laws in the US where it was published decades after it was written and reading it today amplifies the debt that modern writers owe Miller. Ian McShane’s rich and sexy voice provides the layers and depth to a compelling listening experience.
LanguageEnglish
Release dateJan 1, 2014
ISBN9781780002545
Author

Henry Miller

Henry Valentine Miller was born in New York City in 1891 and raised in Brooklyn. He lived in Europe, particularly Paris, Berlin, the south of France, and Greece; in New York; and in Beverly Glen, Big Sur, and Pacific Palisades, California where he died in 1980. He is also the author, among many other works, of Tropic of Capricorn, the Rosy Crucifixion trilogy (Sexus, Plexus, Nexus), and The Air-Conditioned Nightmare.

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Reviews for Tropic of Cancer

Rating: 3.617725705685619 out of 5 stars
3.5/5

1,495 ratings58 reviews

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  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    It's just like Midnight in Paris: same setting, but replace Owen Wilson and Marion Cotillard with a creepy, balding drunk guy, who stares directly into the camera, creepily telling you all about his sex life, or else just grinding his teeth, for the duration of the movie. (Yes this hypothetical film gets 3 out of 5 stars. I'm as surprised as you are.)I dunno. It's a book about empty rooms. Empty people in empty rooms. For best results read when you're moving into a new apartment. (If you have a mortgage, don't bother. This book hates you and you'll hate it right back.)

    1 person found this helpful

  • Rating: 1 out of 5 stars
    1/5
    Verslag van zijn verblijf in Parijs, redelijk zwartgallig, licht-surrealistisch en vooral heel ontdaan. Interessant om zijn beelden van de zelfkant van de grootstad. Heel direct in zijn seksuele beschrijvingen op het obscene af, en daardoor uiteraard 'baanbrekend'. Maar het boeit niet!
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Miller's language and style are brilliant. I enjoyed his stories about his friends and peers a lot more than the rambling surrealist passages that pop up now and again. His character becomes less and less likable as the book goes on. That said, the point of this book is not for the reader to like the main character. Miller was basically an old school hipster complaining about hipster problems (before it was cool).
  • Rating: 1 out of 5 stars
    1/5
    The first time I read this, I was 16/17. I read it for all the reasons you'd imagine someone that age would read it. I didn't believe I was allowed to have an opinion at the time because I was wise enough to know I didn't know anything. Over the years, my brain has randomly conjured up scenes from this book--often enough to compel a reread. Orwell describes it best: "[A]nd even if parts of it disgust you, it will stick in your memory..." I was disgusted and I remembered it.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    And to think that I was annoyed year after year cause Miller's books weren't available on the Amazon Kindle store.So when I finally got Tropic of Cancer in a different format ... it was too late for me to enjoy it. Too late as I've already read Bukowski, Hemingway, Thompson so I know that there's, if not many for sure, a handful of authors capable of telling more with less, and do so while exploring the dark underbelly of the world. Nah, too late cause this is 2016 and western society is to far along to be left open-mouthed by tales of vanilla sex or abject poverty.So bored by his interminable descriptions that led nowhere I left this book half finished and I feel no remorse.
  • Rating: 1 out of 5 stars
    1/5
    Complete Shite. End of!!
  • Rating: 1 out of 5 stars
    1/5
    Verslag van zijn verblijf in Parijs, redelijk zwartgallig, licht-surrealistisch en vooral heel ontdaan. Interessant om zijn beelden van de zelfkant van de grootstad. Heel direct in zijn seksuele beschrijvingen op het obscene af, en daardoor uiteraard 'baanbrekend'. Maar het boeit niet!
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    Expatriates. Yaaawwwwwwwwwwwwwwn.
  • Rating: 1 out of 5 stars
    1/5
    My God! What a waste of time. The only thing I can say for Henry Miller is that, occasionally, he showed that he had quite a vocabulary.
  • Rating: 1 out of 5 stars
    1/5
    I'm holding off on putting a rating up here - for the sake of my BookClub, since we're not discussing this book for another few weeks. That said, I'm going to put the review up at Raging Biblioholism under some serious spoiler hiding stuff... and I'll star this thing soon as we've all read it.

  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    I've got to admit that I like this a lot better than I did when I first read it over 20 years ago, but I'm still no fan of the no-plot novel. Very similar to the feeling I got from Kerouac's On the Road in that these people are so self-absorbed. In the long run, who can really give a crap about them? But I do have a better appreciation for Miller's use of language.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Extraordinarily interesting in places, it is extremely patchy with a sentence, or even several paragraphs, of excellent writing followed by pages of wasted paper and ink. The verbosity is maddening. Miller needed a good editor.

    His moment of existential satori, which is described at page 97 et seq., in this edition, is followed by an intellectual leap of faith that is not rational; I think Miller would argue the absence of rational thinking on this issue was his point.

    My other criticism would be that Miller tries to paint himself as a down-and-outer when he was a spoiled American, slumming in Paris with the Pound, Woolf and Hemingway crowd, who occasionally didn't get his American Express payment on time and had to borrow from American friends. He was never truly on the bum. In no way did he ever approach real destitution like Hamsun, Fante, Celine or Bukowski experienced. That difference in experience is significant and substantial because it makes him a poverty dilettante for whom being poor is an interesting experience that he can claim to embrace with joy and celebration. He did not experience the horror of contemplating death by starvation. It's easy to see why a later generation of upper middle class youth, who temporarily rejected their parent's wealth, identified with him.

    A worthy read because of its reputation but not nearly as good as he frequently credited because his experience is less than genuine and the writing is so verbose.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Henry Miller said of his classic, "This is not a book, in the ordinary sense of the word." He was correct. Whatever this type between two covers may be, it isn't a book. Miller hurls away every traditional expectation of Western fiction with both hands. Tropic of Cancer has nothing to recommend it but utterly brilliant writing and compelling narration. It is a turgid, nonstop onslaught of sociopathic confessionalism and overwrought surrealism, shot through with unabashed misogyny (women are described at least 2000 times by simply nationality and the C-word), racism, and anti-Semitism. There are sex scenes aplenty, but they are woven in so seamlessly that they don't seem dirty: obscenity would require some sort of setup; some distinction between the naughty and the nice. There is no nice. There is no love--no higher feeling whatsoever, in fact--no plot, and not even the merest suggestion of an original idea. At times, the writing veers off into two or three pages of the hugely ridiculous.

    Miller's narrator, an expatriate writer whose name (make of this what you will) is Henry Miller, races through 1930s Paris a proud and self-confessed inhuman parasite, without the slightest clue that only his good looks, charm, and high I.Q. net him all the food, shelter, and sex he needs for a Walt Whitmanesque existence. Selfishness reigns supreme, and it is assumed that the narrator (who is at least 15 years too old for this kind of behavior) is owed, by divine right, the satisfaction of every desire by a chaotic universe populated by other selfish beings. It is impossible that any of Henry's so-called, interchangeable "friends" could be sicker than he is, and yet they are. Glimmers of black humor boil up out of the cauldron once in a while out of the Parisian gutters, but for the most part, Tropic of Cancer is serious antibusiness.

    The closest thing Miller provides to a heroine is an insane Russian princess, Macha, who manages to be more disgusting, more conniving, and a more outrageous liar than all the men put together, and thereby earn, if not respect, then awe, the right to be called by her first name, and relative longevity (they don't get rid of her for at least two weeks) in the narrative. In the course of his nonjourney through this nonbook, the narrator learns nothing; he knows it all already; he is trying to convince the reader of nothing. Of course, nearly 80 years later we know that Miller's road doesn't lead to freedom but to reality TV, and that casting aside taboos and looking at the sordid underbelly of everything isn't ultimately liberating, but boring.

    Every time I opened the novel, it gave me the sensation of being run over by a crazy bus with really muddy tires, or smacked in the face with a huge wave of lurid hedonism; and then I shook a chapter or three of Tropic of Cancer off like a heebie-jeebie and went about my business, and then (WHY?) picked it up again.

    In a word, weird. Anais Nin thought it was the new King James Bible, but then she was sleeping with the author, and she was Anais Nin. If his mother hadn't beaten him and had given him a little affection, Miller would have been America's greatest writer. Four stars plus and not recommended for anyone, ever.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Wow! What a controversial book. I can see why it was banned and why so many opinions are polarized in the ratings. First of all, I have to warn anyone who is thinking about reading this that there is a lot of crude language and blatant description of sex. That didn't bother me. What I did have trouble with was the misogynistic attitude of the main character, who often simply refers to women using the C word and treats them as objects rather than human beings.That said, the author is writing about a misogynistic individual living in Paris during the depression and he does it with rawness and some beautifully written passages. Anyone reading this book needs to bear in mind that our culture is very different now. I think that reading this with a group who has a knowledgeable leader or using a reading guide is your best bet if you really want to get something out of it. There's a lot of meat to this book - if you can get underneath the layer of crudeness. It's a stream of consciousness piece about life and what it truly means to be happy, and the author shows us that it doesn't necessarily involve being wealthy.Who should read this: Fans of authors such as Bukowski and Hemingway.Who should not read this: Anyone who is squeamish or easily offended.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    One of those bizarre cases of a book with brilliant style and language that for whatever reason never grabs me. It's slow and meandering, which I generally do not mind, but I've tried to read this a few times and haven't gotten more than 60 pages. I mean, I love Hunger and Ask the Dust, and those don't have any more direction than this, but Miller seemed all to pleased with his philosophical musings to actually write a good book.

    It's unfortunate for me, anyway, because the 60 pages I read contained hundreds of amazing lines or quips, but they never seemed to gel into a compelling whole.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Miller blew my mind when I was in college. I wonder what I would think now.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Read this nearly fifteen years ago, but barely remembered it. The surrealist style doesn't do much for me, but it's a nice portrait of the drinking and whoring ex-patriate crowd in Paris during the early 1930s (after the big names of ten years earlier had moved on). Also, it's a nice sketch of the sort of people who eagerly signed up to fight Franco a few years after this was published.

    I'm giving this only 3 stars because there's no actual plot. It could be a memoir; it's definitely not a traditionally organized novel. That was a point in its favor during the surrealist and early Modernist movement, but it's essentially Kerouac 25 years early.

    The GLBT note is mainly due to a supporting character (from Idaho) proclaiming his desperate, undying love for a young (apparently teenage) boy back home. The other men don't think it's possible for a man to fall in love with another man, but their friend ignores their scorn. There are quite a lot of homoerotic situations and men being naked around each other (and sharing whores together), but these scenes lack the rich detail that the rest of the book has and I wonder if Miller was self-censoring or if it was a publisher's decision.

    This novel was published in 1934 in Paris and banned from sale or import to the US. Its first US publication in 1961 caused a groundbreaking Supreme Court obscenity trial.

  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Prose writing at its best; a repulsive character who is, perhaps, the id of every male.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    I'd read Of Henry Miller in various letters, diaries, and memoirs, but hadn't gotten around to reading his work--after this, I'm honestly not sure whether or not I'll be searching out his other work or not. While some of the prose was wonderful, even poetic, and enjoyable reading as I went along, there was no narrative drive to keep me reading. The characters were presented and treated almost as if I already knew of them and cared for them, but I never learned enough to make me care...or even necessarily become really curious. The narrative's preoccupation with sex and sexuality was entertaining at times, in the same vent, but never seemed to have a real place or purpose other than, again, being a preoccupation of a character I knew little enough else about.In general, I probably would recommend this to readers who enjoy Kerouac's On The Road (another work that, while I can appreciate it for moments, I don't enjoy or return to of my own will) or to readers who want to know more about the books that broke ground in their incorporation of sexuality. Otherwise, it wasn't a Bad read...it just wasn't one which left a mark or really drew me in any way either.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    It's a good thing I'd read some Henry Miller and already knew what a horny toad he was before attacking this novel, so the general crudeness, irreverence and cynicism didn't exactly come as a shock. I do not know whether I could have appreciated this book had I read it at another time. It is bleak. It oozes sweat and blood and s**t. It forces us to face things we had rather put aside, ignore, pass by without looking back. That [Tropic of Cancer] was banned and was the cause for an obscenity trial when it was originally published in the United States in 1961 is hardly surprising. Aside from all that, I was amused with Miller's description of his first years in Paris as a struggling writer so poor, he never knew how he'd come by his next meal, yet somehow always had a little bit of change to have a go with whatever prostitute was at hand. Is it an autobiography? Not exactly. It it fiction? Sometimes. It is a stream of consciousness set free of any possible inhibition. It sometimes veers toward the big philosophical questions of man and the world we live in. Of more interest to me were the stories and anecdotes that 'he', or the writer who narrates the story, has experienced with various people he has come across. A few friends. Various employers. Countless prostitutes. Several generous hosts. There is nothing comforting to be found here. Women, which are often mentioned, are systematically referred to as c*nts. Our writer seems to have nothing but contempt for his friends and benefactors. But there is truth. Unvarnished, unadulterated, often very ugly, but absolute and complete candour of the kind that, even by today's standards shakes us out of any kind of complacency. One of my favourite parts of the book comes at the very beginning, when he gives us a general idea about what kind of experience we, the readers, are in for:"It is now the fall of my second year in Paris. I was sent here for a reason I have not yet been able to fathom. I have no money, no resources, no hopes. I am the happiest man alive. A year ago, six months ago, I thought that I was an artist. I no longer think about it. I am. Everything that was literature has fallen from me. There are no more books to be written, thank God. This then, this is not a book. This is libel, slander, defamation of character. This is not a book in the ordinary sense of the word. No, this is a prolonged insult. A gob of spit in the face of art. A kick in the pants to God, man, destiny, time, love, beauty. What you will. I am going to sing for you, a little off key perhaps, but I will sing. I will sing while you croak. I will dance over your dirty corpse.*There were times when I found Miller's conceit absolutely hilarious. There were times when I couldn't wait for him to move on to the next thing, or maybe do so myself. But I must say that what got me through it all was Campbell Scott's excellent narration in the audiobook version. He is impassive, neutral, with a gentle voice that helps smooth over some of the harshness. This was a most welcome quality in the parts where the filth of the places, people, faces, language, seemed to latch onto me too. I couldn't say I exactly loved this book, but I certainly see why it's considered such an important work of literature. Recommended? Yes. But you've been given fair warning. * This excerpt transcribed from the audiobook version and likely contains many inaccuracies, especially in the punctuation.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Basically an expatriate, living in Paris, louses around while often dirt poor, mooching off his friends, visiting brothels, getting drunk, and so on. Despite the poetic and rather beautiful language, there was not much to endear me to this book. The narrator is cynical and scummy and degrading to women -- in other words, not very sympathetic (all of which is made worse by the fact that this novel is semi-autobiographical). His entire outlook is pessimistic about the world and the human race, and while he has moments of supposed enlightenment and peace, they tend to come at the great expense of someone else. I read horror stories all time, full of guts and gore and darkness and violence, but none of them has left me as mildly disgusted and feeling dirtied as reading this literary classic.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    "Trainspotting" in Paris with Pernod instead of heroin. Unlikeable characters that don't -do- anything but the writing and antics are enough to keep you reading. Enjoyed it more upon the second reading.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Confusing and grotesque. Perhaps too dense or immoral for some.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    I read this in high school because it was supposed to be obscene and controversial, but didn't get much out of it at the time. Re-reading now to see where it stands in light of everything since. Relevant: "This is not a book. This is libel, slander, defamation of character. This is not a book, in the ordinary sense of the word. No, this is a prolonged insult, a gob of spit in the face of Art, a kick in the pants of God, Man, Destiny, Time, Love, Beauty... what you will." The first punk novel? Has many of the problems that dog me about the early punk years too, eg, rampant sexism and solipsism and Peter-Pan-ism and so on.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    This was very much the typical Miller book. It was set in Paris and his mood was a little different than when he is in America. There seemed to be a little more of a story line, but his usual rants are present through out the book. He is not one of my favorite authors by far, but something about his work makes me come back to him time and again.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    When I first read this book many years ago, I loved Miller's unabashed words, his hedonistic embracement, his utter lack of shame. I thought it was pretty cool--the whores, the lack of commitment to anything, as well as the obscenties that abounded throughout the book. He hooked me, and I went on to read his other works.But now? Now, Miller sounds so selfish, depraved, and grossly immature. I guess I should be more tolerant and accept Tropic of Cancer as a great work because of its profanities and its egocentric theme.On a upside: I think the last line of the novel is a real gem.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    A foul-mouthed exploration of 1930s literary hipsterism in Paris. Miller rails against everything and nothing in particular in a cowardly-rebel-without-a-cause romp through whorehouses and hotels in Montparnasse. MIller describes it best himself. "A man... must stand up on the high place with gibberish in his mouth and rip out his entrails. And anything less shuddering, less terrifying, less mad. less intoxicated, less contaminating, is not art." Well, the gibberish part is dead on. Tropic of Cancer is 300 pages of an aesthetic-snob mad with existential forlornness howling at the moon. It's like reading The Scream. Dostoyevsky said it the most cleverly, Sartre said it the most clearly, and Miller said it the loudest and most coarsely. The only thing interesting about this book is the depth and breadth of Miller's egoism.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Another book on living in Paris.Miller's life there was rather tough, the most money coming from the wife in US, and that meant lots of trouble for him - definitely not a man of a single woman (he had about 5 wives, numbered 1..5 in his books).The Tropics are probably the best works about the time Miller spent in Paris, very well written, even though using rather obscene language.What I clearly recall:- the way women are ALWAYS objects to be used by Miller (and yes.... he's been using them A LOT!)- the 'collection of failures', the museum Miller built during his entire life, few bookshelves where he gathered small things to remind him of every single failure he's been through (and there were MANY of those!)Very realistic, 100% authentic - hard to tell where's the fiction in Miller's books (all autobiographical). A tough guy. Sometimes difficult to pick the subject of a book between the long list of obsessions described and the colorful language...What impressed me most and got me really curious was his lifetime friendship with Lawrence Durell (who I personally couldn't read), and the intensive correspondence they kept the entire life. It's now all published... and parts of it, some of the letters, are very descriptive and full of details on the books they both wrote. Makes it a lot easier to get what Miller intended to say through his novels.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    No use rehashing the story as there are plenty of reviews on this site. My take is that the prose is wonderful but at times in the books it borders on ramblings. I knew I was reading something extraoridinary but yet I had trouble finishing it. The profanity is excessive but after you finish the book it's not really as bad as you expected. Miller's gift is a must read for anyone.
  • Rating: 1 out of 5 stars
    1/5
    I rarely give up on a book before finishing it, but it got to the point where I was avoiding reading because this book was going nowhere, and had been going nowhere for the last few hundred pages. The writing was great, but I can only take so many pages of tangents and rambling before I lose interest. Perhaps I'll give it another shot in ten years or so.