Tropic of Cancer

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Summary: Do not place this book out of its time
Review: If this book had been written at any time in the last twenty years, it would be mostly unremarkable. To me, its importance comes from _when_ it was written, in the early 30s, and published in 1934. Utterly frank and anarchic and unrelenting in celebrating everything about being human, it remains shocking to read and in the severely constrained and repressed years of the 30s, 40s, and 50s, must have been nearly impossible to understand. I'm not very well read, but this seems like a seminal work that eventually helped bring forth the beat generation of literature and now the post punk work of high-tech isolation and alienation. Miller saw and embraced both of these trends. Remarkable. Was he prescient? Or just a complete original far ahead of his time?

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Summary: I treat Henry Miller the best writer of the 20-th century
Review: Nice book written by Henry Miller in his the most "hard to survive" period of life causes me to actualize the modernity of it. I guess it is the best book ever written because of cruel reality here merges with the beautiful poetical line. I treat Henry Miller the best writer of the 20-th who had depicted human sexuality as a whole world and as a point of viewing life in all

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Summary: Alla kazam!
Review: Honest, brutal, to the point and extremely difficult to read in spots, this paen is nevertheless once of the greatest rants I have ever read. Certain scences are so funny, pathetic and disgusting that you have to laugh out loud. Even if you find some passages un-navigable (i.e. wordy), some scenes hard to digest, Miller will come up with one beautiful sentence that makes it all worthwhile. This book should be put on a spaceship and rocketed off to the far reaches of the cosmos, where it can serve as an ambassador of artistic achievement for alien races.

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Summary: most mesmerizing tripe I've ever read...I loved it-it's real
Review: A journey through the heart of a real american rebel, a real american dreamer, and a real american poet. It's very self-propelled, but it spoke to me on an eerie, original level

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Summary: funny book full of "poetic" passages but devoid of pretense
Review: Opponents and supporters of this book often get carried away when talking about it. In an attempt to buck this trend, the only thing I can think to say is that I completely enjoyed it, more so than most books. I laughed out loud while reading it. Miller's flights of fancy, or prose poems, or whatever one calls the chapter-ending rocket rides found in the book, were a complete delight and won me over despite my distaste for abstractedness and poetry, silly pursuits championed by the weak-kneed and the namby-pamby. Miller suffers from no such sissified pretense. At no point in the nonlinear narrative do we ever lose sight of this book's remarkable voice, that of a perfectly happy poor man who found peace by bouncing around like a beggar and sponge, a feat made more remarkable by the fact that Miller actually did this. Today, writers go to Iowa, take a couple classes, and drip snot all over computer keyboards while typing simpering suburban opuseseseses (opi?). I also liked the sex scenes. A book can never have too many of those. Bravo, Henry! I hope you live to be a hundred and ten! Oh wait, he's dead. OK forget that last remark. Does anyone know where I can obtain a poster-size print of Miller playing ping pong with the naked coed? That's a great photo.

Rating:
Summary: ingenius
Review: A string of conscienceness that molds a confetti of thought into a masterful novel. Humanity at it's "only." Miller doesn't ween you into it; the pace starts fierce, and never detours. A graphic and somewhat shocking work, yet it portends to the world in a way no other has dared ever comment. A human book, written by an "inhuman."

Rating:
Summary: Yes. Oh yes! A book that produces ecstacy not dry farts.
Review: Reading this book was amazing. Henry Miller was not a pornographer. Even though he often related sex-capades in a detailed and sometimes sexist fashion. All he did was pull out all the stops. He gave us his breath , his Paris (his reality). The sex in it is too real to be trashy. He not only tells you about his life, he gives it to you with a half cocked grin and wink, tells you to "Do anything but let it produce joy, Do anything but let it yield ecstacy!", and then goes on to show you how. That is what you want in a writer isn't it? Someone who wasn't afraid to give up corporate america (how could he not?). Someone who wants You to live the good life too. Yeah, a visionary he was, and this book is telling us all to lighten up.

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Summary: Many things...
Review: Many things have been said about this book. Cheap, dirty, etc... People who say that doesn't know nothing about it. Miller is one of the most remarkable and revolutionary writers in the XX century and Cancer and Capricorn are the best books of him (in my point of view) and to finish i will quote O. Wilde: "There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. That is all." Tropic of Cancer is well written and that's all...

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Summary: An omen to our post-sturctural time.
Review: Henry Miller is the first Schizo of the 20th Century; if anyone's read Deleuze and Guatarri's "Anti-Oedipus", then Miller's First Major book is the right footnote that is actually cited in Anti-Oedipus. I read Miller before any post-structual theory, and I immediately noticed how he has affected many intellectual post-structural minds of our times (Deleuze and Guatarri specifically). His decentered approach to writing, and stream of consciousness prose makes his book a delight to pick up and read at random. It does not matter where you start or end. It is all one big mess for Miller. The mess of his life defines the basics of human need: to eat and to create (who cares where you sleep?) Miller is able to break down the romantic notion of the artist who suffers in order to create work. He explores the development of the creative mind, showing how it is only through the choice of process (which some may decide to call suffering ) that any work can be developed. Excellent reading, for anyone who is willing to face him/herself in the mirror.

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Summary: The Book after St.John's "Relevation"
Review: This book is an adrenline shot to the heart for those who have overdosed on consciousness. This book FACES everything. This is a bible for those who cannot retreat back into innocence; this book is a second innocence.Henry Miller is the Blake's bravest son. He unscrews the doors of perception from their jambs and the world appears as it is, infinite and holy. This book is for the down and out, the underground man. This book is a trumpet call to the surface. If you want miller, start here with his dynamite.