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Summary: The mind of a derelict, the heart of a poet
Review: This book was way ahead of it's time. Written in the 1930's and banned for almost 30 years, it sounds like something written only yesterday. Miller is an amazing writer with real vision, insight and madness. The James Joyce of America. The book grabs you and holds you from page one. It's a true masterpiece.
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Summary: Prophetic, erotic, brilliant!
Review: This semiautobiographical Miller novel is Walt Whitman meets Isaiah with lots of eroticism added to boot. The "Cosmodemonic Telegraph Company" scenes are pure poetry, as are Miller's musings on money. In my opinion, it's better than Tropic of Cancer.
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Summary: A Bible To those With Ears To Hear
Review: Tropic Of Capricorn is certainly not for everyone. The first time I read it I was quite put off by it. But years later I was drawn to read it again and suddenly found it full of meaning.
Most people speak of it as a book about sex, but really it's a book about spiritual awakening. It is not an easy read. It holds your face in the mud and asks you to see God. It's a book that makes you feel experiences, it wears you down, and then takes you into moments of satori.
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Summary: Capricorn: Beyond Cancer
Review: Tropic of Capricorn is the gretest book I have ever read. I read Tropic of Cancer first, and was interested and intrigued by it, but not until I read Capricorn would I truly call Miller one of the greatest American writers. Also banned from the U.S for 30 years, Capricorn goes beyong the sexuality and bitterness of one who has "given up" and lived for themselves as Cancer outlines autobiographically of Millers days in Paris. In Capricorn Miller looks to the roots of his childhood and life in New York and examines what made him the man he is and brought on his great change to "a new way of life". It has elements similar to Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg Ohio, which may be its greatest moments, as it tells small "grotesque" character studies of the people that shaped his life. Miller combines ideas of Eastern mysticism with the chaos of an ever industrializing world. Capricorn goes beyond linear writing to pursue a dreamlike atmosphere: one of admitted Surrealist and Dadsist influence, whose influence in turn can be seen in the later beat writing of Kerouac and Burroughs among others.
Rating:
Summary: Capricorn: Beyond Cancer
Review: Tropic of Capricorn is the gretest book I have ever read. I read Tropic of Cancer first, and was interested and intrigued by it, but not until I read Capricorn would I truly call Miller one of the greatest American writers. Also banned from the U.S for 30 years, Capricorn goes beyong the sexuality and bitterness of one who has "given up" and lived for themselves as Cancer outlines autobiographically of Millers days in Paris. In Capricorn Miller looks to the roots of his childhood and life in New York and examines what made him the man he is and brought on his great change to "a new way of life". It has elements similar to Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg Ohio, which may be its greatest moments, as it tells small "grotesque" character studies of the people that shaped his life. Miller combines ideas of Eastern mysticism with the chaos of an ever industrializing world. Capricorn goes beyond linear writing to pursue a dreamlike atmosphere: one of admitted Surrealist and Dadsist influence, whose influence in turn can be seen in the later beat writing of Kerouac and Burroughs among others.
Rating: 
Summary: Thrown Off the Ovarian Trolley
Review: Tropic of Capricorn was first published in openminded pre-war Paris in 1939, but it took a Supreme Court decision for the book to be declared "safe" for JFK's America twenty-two years later, in 1961. In the intervening decades Miller's reputation had taken on legendary proportions among the literati, culminating in bestseller status for this and Tropic of Cancer, making Miller a wealthy and renowned Author of Importance overnight at age 70. Without fail, the critics of the day singled out Capricorn for its humor and sexual episodes in reviews that even the present edition still quotes from. "The greatest passages are the scenes of lovemaking," declared 'The Nation.' 'Newsweek' added that it was "incomparably the finest comic fantasy by any writer now among the living...the most enthralling and hilarious explosions are the sexual ones, which are many." The New York Times Book Review also praised "the fantasies of fornicating, full of comic bombast." Which goes to prove, once again, that you should never listen to critics. "Comic fantasy"? In Capricorn, Miller is sometimes darkly sardonic and leeringly sarcastic, but never "hilarious" by any means. With a desperate misanthropy and fornication as its main recurring themes, this is not exactly side-splitting material. If Miller laughs, he reminds us, it is to keep from killing -- himself but more likely everyone around him. As for the sexual passages, what must have seemed quite shocking and daring by 1961 standards comes across as buffoonish porno-mag fare today, the major impediment preventing Capricorn from earning "classic" status. Exactly what did the critics of '61 think was so great about these passages? More importantly, why did Henry think they were so necessary for this otherwise memorable book? That Miller is a gifted writer is beyond question. He can be strikingly original, wielding an immense vocabulary with extreme precision, constructing intensely imaginative, page-long paragraphs of visceral power. I've read but few authors utilize the English language as masterfully as Miller sometimes does in these pages. Seemingly ordinary, mundane events of everyday life often give way to full-blown surrealistic excesses in his vivid descriptions, full of chaos and disarray. Autobiography merges with fantasy and vice-versa until it becomes impossible to distinguish the two, and Miller eventually convinces us that such distinctions are irrelevant anyway. His rampant cynicism comes across as imminently contemporary and suited for our times. Readers sometimes have to pause to remind themselves that the events described in this book occured in the 1910s and early '20s, and that the book itself was written in 1938. Those conditioned to believe that our world is substantially different from the one that existed 70-80 years ago will get their heads handed to them on a platter here by Miller. Much of what he was writing, observing, and feeling in the '20s and '30s is still relevant today. But Miller is hardly above criticism. If his perspectives on society seem reflective of postwar sensibilities, his views on women remain hopelessly shackled to his own time. This is Tropic of Capricorn's most serious flaw, so serious that it cannot be overcome by the rest of the book's brilliance. Women -- or, rather, their sex organs -- never leave his mind (or this book) for very long. The problem is that, to Henry, women are little more than two-dimensional objects who exist solely for his sexual satisfaction, nothing more. Far from being the sexually liberating pioneer critics said he was, Miller expresses his obsession with sex in the crudest, most adolescent way (presumably for the sake of "realism" and 1938-style shock value), explicitly relating encounters with an array of interchangable female characters with a crude, locker-room type enthusiasm. None of the poetic imagination he displays on other topics is wasted on his sexual partners. When he finally meets one intellectually stimulating to him (his second wife, June), she is, with equal emotional immaturity, elevated to "goddess" status. Thus, a large portion of the book is mired in brainless sexual posturings with all the literary merit of "Letters to Penthouse." Why, Henry, why? It pains me to think how good this book could have been. Had Miller curtailed his sexual excesses, Capricorn would have been infinitely better, and Miller's stock as a writer of importance might have far more value than it does. As it currently stands, Capricorn is largely remembered, if at all, for its "banned book" status, a quaint artifact of an earlier time -- rather than the literary classic it should have been.
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Summary: Henry Tries Hard, But Just "Barely" Handles It!
Review: When this book came out about 70 years ago, it probably was totally outrageous and unique in its own anti-social and slightly sado-masochist way. It does have its funny moments, almost cartoonish. like the Three Stooges with wild and crazy sex, and scatology for some good laughs! And as a story of a man completely free in the modern world (1930's) with not a care in the world, it may even deserve some of its semi-classic stature! But it is not showing Henry'y best writing by any stretch! For that look into his travelogues, and pieces on mid-century America (eg "Air Conditioned NightMare" and Greek Guides)! but as far as being completely outrageous, with no holds barred, Henry does reign supreme!...... d
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Summary: wow!
Review: wow. reading henry miller is like taking an amazing roller coaster rider while on ecstasy. his writing is intoxicating, it would make a truck driver blush. miller transports you back to a world that we've only seen colored be history. his style is abrupt his sentences infinite and his poetry beyond compare. this is a work of literature in the true sense. constantly testing the limits of imagination and self examination. highly recommended. read this book and pass it onto others!!
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