Of course I read this like everyone else these days; having heard about it and all that. I'd also already read plenty of Jackouac and Chuckybucky so I was ready for whatever blunt-ness of vulgarity may come.

If I may make a silly aside,....the book pissed me off. All my musings and blunt tones that I thought were so original in my own journals, well, there they were!, staring me in the face, and I realised I wasn't so original as I'd thought. But that is another story for another day...

Tropic of Cancer, as far as I can tell, is a story of Henry Miller's time in France, before World War Two. He seems to be a fairly even-keeled character for a flopper, squatter, drunky, and whore-monger. He never has any Steinbeckian puking episodes, but he certainly toes the line of the questionable.

It is hard to give a review and reveal the "story" because there is no real "story" in Tropic of Cancer. My friends have pooh-poohed the work, saying that he gets to rambling, and I can see where they're coming from. No doubt there are passages, usually regarding the setting, where he does get to stringing words along, pretty words and all, but if you are a sucker for a plot he might lose you.

To me, Tropic of Cancer is a humble (yes, humble!) and eloquent account of life on the rough in Paris, amidst artistic friends. Gads, as I read it I wished aloud a multitude of times, "Why don't I have friends like these?!" His friends are variably poets, writers, painters, lecherers, and they all have the clap. Good Henry himself writes that, as his friend was giving it to one of the girls he 'tickled him in the bum'[sic].

For a starving artist and one who loves life for the breath of it, it's a great read. For those (like my friends) searching for a linear plotline; you're outtaluck. Some passages border on the sublime, and I tend to think it is these passages that make Tropic of Cancer such a great work, notsomuch his callous references to "cunts", which may seem 'cool' at a glance, but certainly it is not the marrow of the work, his crassness.

I am no scholar, so I am not sure, but it seems to me it was written in his mid-twenties, a fine time to be full of life and vigour, and to be sure life springs forth from every page, even as he complains about being stuck in a room with a wood stove and no wood to burn in it. It helps to have visited Paris, as the entirety of the work takes place in Paris, yet if you have not it is so masterfully written that you could almost see it's Paris as your own hometown.

I must surmise, eh? I loved it. It pissed me off that it sounded like me, me who I thought was so original, yet I was even able to find that comforting. He is crass, no doubt, maybe even vulgar. He uses the word "cunt" a thousand times, but --seriously-- not in a derogatory sense. It's just how he sees them.

For some reason, women that I know have enjoyed the book more than the men that I know. That sort of confounds me. Yet, there it is. Overall, I would say it is a worthwhile endeavour, it's not particularly long, nor is it tiresome to read. At times the prose is magical. There is very little in the way of beginning, middle, or end, but overall there is a sense of something.

My rating: recommended