Rating: 
Summary: I liked it.
Review: This is a good book. The magic of language is aroused, and contrary to popular myth, it is not really all that shocking. I wish perverts would read Tropic of Cancer, then at least they might glean a little redemption from Miller's thoughts and ideas. As for the rest of us, enjoy enjoy enjoy.
Rating: 
Summary: It's life and life only...A breathtaking work.
Review: I know of no other writer who makes words truly live like Henry Miller does. "Cancer" is his best (although the neglected "Colossus of Maroussi" runs a close second), full of enthusiasm, rampant lust-driven adventures, a man living though it rain crocodiles, a visionary portrait of a person determined to live in this cracked and dying earth that will drag you down and suffocate you if you let it. Living has nothing to do with money. It has nothing to do with prestige, nothing to do with a career, with laws or codes or good sense. It has everything to do with sex, with art and inspiration, with creativity and the fire at our heels, the hunger that gnaws us from the inside out. My friends and I had a joke: "What happened in the bidet?" "Read the book!" Unfortunately I think they only knew because I told them. I carried this book around, and his others, for months, enraptured, exhuasted, tormented, joyous, breathless, during a very bleak period of my life. He kept my imagination alive. The first time I tried to read it, just after the 1990 film "Henry & June" I didn't get it. About a year or so later I tried again, and ate it up. It was like I had a tropic of cancer-sized hole in my head and I'd finally found the missing piece. No other book, except maybe "Naked Lunch," has made me realize that literature IS life, that my heart could be enlarged by one, that reading and writing weren't just hobbies or exercises--they were raw and painful necessities, as vital as breath, as flesh, as rousing and invigorating as sex at 3am that lasts til dawn. I love all kinds of writers, but I have to admit, I'm kind of a snob. To me, the real writer is one like Henry Miller, like Rimbaud, like Poe, the ones who live at the fringes of madness, who in poverty and tatters show us that it's life, and life only.
Rating:
Summary: transforming biography into art
Review: Miller's greatest, culminative statement about art is that one may live with nothing, be the barest of possible beings, and be the greatest artist that ever lived. This book is a self-examination of the processes Miller underwent during the '30's and 40's in Paris that allowed him to reach such an understanding. It uses language as never before used, except by only those writers deemed true "masters" (such as St. Augustine, Anais nin, DH Lawrence), and does away with the notion that obscenity has no place in art or literature. Noted for his courage and willingness to write about an unlimited ammount of experiences and subjects, this book is a rare gift to the human race. It will be remembered alongside the greatest works of art.. The first of his "autobiographical" novels that include Tropic of Capricorn and The Rosy Crucifixion
Rating:
Summary: transcendance through degradation
Review: I have read many reveiws on amazon.com of books that I consider essential reading,but until now I have never been inclined to post my opinion. Miller has received tremendous amounts of publicity regarding the supposedly pornographic nature of much of his work.Critics have concentrated on his alleged misogyny,his occasional lapse into racial epithets etc..What they all miss is that he was a visionary,the worlds only transcendentalist,surrealist,anarchist. A man who showed the possibility of beauty in the darkness of the air conditioned nightmare.Tropic of cancer,while only a moment in his vast out put,is surely the purest and most savage of his works. Surreal,confessional,hilarious,obscene, elegaic.Not simply a book,but a way of life.
Rating:
Summary: The Frank Classic
Review: I first read this as a freshman in high school because someone gave it to me and my english teacher suggested that I dont read it. But I did, and I was shocked and sorta disguised with it until I read it agin some odd years later. True it is a perverts book, but it is also the bible of the lovers of life. If you hate life READ IT, if you are intimidated by sex READ IT, if you are disguised with Burroughs etc READ IT, if like Whitman READ IT, and if you are a parent and concerned with your child GIVE IT TO THEM AND HAVE THEM READ IT
Rating:
Summary: An outstanding book slighted for years
Review: Henry Miller's "Tropic of Cancer" is easily one of the best books written by any American author in this century. Written with a refreshing honesty and a realistic outlook, "Tropic of Cancer" is a fine example of the autobiographical-novel form (so autobiographical that Miller says its not really a book at all and that he is referred to as Henry Miller in the book). It is sad to realize that this book was banned from 1934, when it was published, to 1961, when it finally got published in America (although the legal battles did not end unitl 1963). For nearly thirty years Americans were denied this fabulous book, and it makes me wonder why this was allowed to happen. But perhaps all the hoopla got more people interested in the book and therefore helped the exposure of it. What more is there to say? "Tropic of Cancer" is an outstanding work and I personally will be reading more of Miller's books very soon.
Rating: 
Summary: Classic? Yes. One of the best? Well...
Review: I would rather give this a 6 1/2, but I can't. Anyway, I have to admit that I wasn't too impressed with his musings on artists and their place in the world. Instead I was more impressed when he showed what an artist could do. His descriptions were brilliant, true, but his arguments just made me roll my eyes.
Rating:
Summary: The sheer beauty of langauge.
Review: I was cleaning out my library at home (aka "The Nasty Room") and came across "Tropic of Cancer". I
picked up a copy about 20 years ago and never finished it. I sat down on the floor and started to read and finished about half the book before being called to supper. Miller is the complete artist: he has vision, he has talent and he knows his craft. "Tropic of Cancer" is a great book on the greatest of all subjects: love and life and sex. It is often (usually) hilariously funny. It is always breathtaking in scope. One of the greatest books I ever read. Check out the Henry Miller web site for more information.
Rating:
Summary: The impossible classis
Review: When the reader first encounters Miller's rambling, one that seems to make no sense at all, he thinks, how could this be a classic? But when he is done with the book and he sees the incredibly original prose, the innovative subjects and the number of rules, cliches and taboos Miller broke, he knows it can be nothing but a classic
Rating:
Summary: one of the best of this century
Review: There are few books that I would say anything about in a public forum such as this, but you might have guessed that Tropic of Cancer is one of them. When I am in such a state as I am now, being that it is after midnight and I am on the internet browsing, Tropic of Cancer seems more revelent than ever. You open a door, leave behind the daylight, ride into another man's mind, and it is an extrodianary mind at that. The only thing I can remember after first reading the two Tropic books (the first, Cancer, is considered his
classic)is that I had to go on living with a feeling that a great man, a patriot of himself, had crossed my path, shook my hand with a smile, insulted me and patted me on the
back, telling me that this was what it was all about. Just being. I don't know what the title means, but sometimes after
a book has been read and set aside for several months, or even years, the title becomes its own meaning. One that will never leave you.
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