Trópico de Cáncer

Por Henry Miller

Publicado por primera vez en París en 1934, debido a la censura no vio la luz en Estados Unidos hasta 1961, después de más de sesenta juicios.Considerada por la parte de la crítica como la mejor de sus obras, en su primera novela se sitúa Miller en la estela de Walt Whitman y Thoreau para crea un monólogo en el que el autor hace un inolvidable repaso de sus estancia en París en los primeros años de la década de 1930, centrada tanto en sus experiencias sexuales como en sus juicios sobre el comportamiento humano.
Saludada en su momento como una atrocidad moral por los sectores conservadores -y como una obra maestra por escritores tan distintos como T.S. Eliot, George Orwell o Lawrence Durrell-, en la actualidad es considerada una de las novelas mas rupturistas, influyentes y perfectas de la literatura en lengua inglesa.

• Idioma: Español
• Editorial: EDHASA
• Fecha de lanzamiento: 9 ene 2017
• ISBN: 9788435046336

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.

Vista previa del libro

Vivo en la Villa Borghese. No hay ni pizca de suciedad en ninguna parte ni una silla fuera de su lugar. Aquí estamos todos solos y muertos.

Anoche Boris descubrió que tenía piojos. Tuve que afeitarle los sobacos y ni siquiera así se le pasó el picor. ¿Cómo puede uno coger piojos en un lugar tan bello como éste? Pero no importa. Puede que no hubiéramos llegado nunca a conocernos tan íntimamente, Boris y yo, si no hubiese sido por los piojos.

Boris acaba de ofrecerme un resumen de sus opiniones. Es un profeta del tiempo. Dice que va a continuar el mal tiempo. Va a haber más calamidades, más muerte, más desesperación. Ni el menor indicio de cambio por ningún lado. El cáncer del tiempo nos está devorando. Nuestros héroes se han matado o están matándose. Así, que el héroe no es el tiempo, sino la intemporalidad. Debemos marcar el paso, en filas cerradas, hacia la prisión de la muerte. No hay escapatoria. El tiempo no va a cambiar.

Ahora es el otoño de mi segundo año en París. Me enviaron aquí por una razón que aún no he podido descubrir.

No tengo dinero ni recursos ni esperanzas. Soy el hombre más feliz del mundo. Hace un año, hace seis meses, pensaba que era un artista. Ya no lo pienso, lo soy. Todo lo que era literatura se ha desprendido de mí. Ya no hay más libros por escribir, gracias a Dios. Entonces, ¿esto? Esto no es un libro. Es un libelo, una calumnia, una difamación. No es un libro, en el sentido ordinario de la palabra. No, es un insulto prolongado, un escupitajo a la cara del arte, una patada en el culo a Dios, al hombre, al destino, al tiempo, al amor, a la belleza... a lo que os parezca. Voy a cantar para vosotros, desentonando un poco tal vez, pero voy a cantar. Cantaré mientras la diñáis, bailaré sobre vuestro inmundo cadáver...

Para cantar, primero hay que abrir la boca. Hay que tener dos pulmones y saber un poco de música. No es necesario tener acordeón ni guitarra. Lo esencial es querer cantar. Así, pues, esto es una canción. Estoy cantando.

Para ti, Tania, canto. Quisiera cantar mejor, más melodioso, pero entonces quizá no hubieses accedido nunca a escucharme. Has oído cantar a los otros y te han dejado fría. Su canto era demasiado bello o no lo suficiente.

Estamos a veintitantos de octubre. Ya no llevo la cuenta de los días. ¿Diríais acaso: mi sueño del pasado 14 de noviembre? Hay intervalos, pero intercalados entre sueños, y no queda conciencia de ellos. El mundo que me rodea está desintegrándose y deja aquí y allá motas de tiempo. El mundo es un cáncer que se devora a sí mismo... Estoy pensando en que, cuando el gran silencio descienda sobre todo y por doquier, la música triunfará por fin. Cuando todo vuelva a retirarse a la matriz del tiempo, reinará el caos de nuevo y el caos es la partitura en que se escribe la realidad. Tú, tania, eres mi caos. Por eso canto. Ni siquiera soy yo, es el mundo agonizante que muda la piel del tiempo. Todavía estoy vivo, dando patadas dentro de tu matriz, realidad sobre la que escribir.

Duermevela. La fisiología del amor. La ballena con su pene de dos metros en reposo. El murciélago: penis libre. Animales con un hueso en el pene. De ahí viene lo de tener un hueso...¹ «Por fortuna», dice Gourmont, «la estructura ósea se ha perdido en el hombre». ¿Por fortuna? Sí, por fortuna. Imaginaos a la raza humana caminando por ahí con un hueso en semejante parte. El canguro tiene un pene doble: uno para los días laborables y otro para las fiestas. Duermevela. Carta de una mujer que me pregunta si he encontrado un título para mi libro. ¿Un título? Claro que sí: Adorables lesbianas.

¡Tu vida anecdótica! Frase de M. Borowski. Los miércoles voy a comer con Borowski. Su mujer, que es una vaca seca, oficia. Ahora está estudiando inglés: su palabra favorita es «asqueroso». Ya veis qué coñazo son los Borowski. Pero esperad...

Borowski lleva trajes de pana y toca el acordeón. Combinación insuperable, sobre todo si tenemos en cuenta que no es mal artista. Finge ser polaco, pero no lo es, desde luego. Es judío, Borowski, y su padre era filatélico. De hecho, casi todo Montparnasse es judío, o medio judío, lo que es peor. Carl y Paula, Cronstadt y Boris, tania y Sylvester, Moldorf y Lucille. Todos, excepto Fillmore. Henry Jordan Oswald ha resultado ser también judío. Louis Nicholas es judío. Hasta Van Norden y Chérie son judíos. Frances Blake es judío, o judía. Titus es judío. Así, que los judíos son como una avalancha para mí. Escribo esto para mi amigo Carl, cuyo padre es judío. Es importante entender todo esto.

De todos esos judíos, la más encantadora es Tania y por ella también yo me volvería judío. ¿Por qué no?

Ya hablo como un judío. Y soy feo como un judío. Además, ¿quién odia a los judíos más que un judío? La hora del crepúsculo. Azul añil, agua cristalina, árboles brillantes y delicuescentes. Los raíles se pierden en el canal por Jaures. La larga oruga de costados laqueados baja como una montaña rusa. No es París. No es Coney Island. Es una mezcla crepuscular de todas las ciudades de Europa y América Central. Las explanadas del ferrocarril ahí abajo, los raíles negros, enmarañados, no ordenados por el ingeniero, sino de trazado cataclismático, como esas finas fisuras del hielo polar que la cámara registra en diferentes tonos de negro.

La comida es una de las cosas que disfruto con locura. Y en esta hermosa Villa Borghese apenas hay rastros de ella nunca. A veces ya es que es espantoso. He pedido mil veces a Boris que encargue pan para el desayuno, pero siempre se le olvida. Al parecer, sale a desayunar fuera. Vuelve limpiándose los dientes con un palillo y le cuelga un poco de huevo de la perilla. Come en el restaurante por consideración para conmigo. Dice que le resulta penoso darse una comilona conmigo ahí, mirando.

Van Norden me gusta, pero no comparto la opinión que tiene de sí mismo. No estoy de acuerdo, por ejemplo, en que sea filósofo ni pensador. Es un putero y nada más. Y nunca será escritor. Tampoco lo será nunca Sylvester, aunque su nombre resplandezca en luces rojas de cincuenta mil bujías. Los únicos escritores a mi alrededor por los que siento algún respeto, ahora, son Carl y Boris. Están poseídos. Arden por dentro con llama blanca. Están locos y no tienen buen oído. Son víctimas.

En cambio, Moldorf, que también sufre a su manera, no está loco. Moldorf se embriaga con las palabras. No tiene venas ni arterias ni corazón ni riñones. Es un baúl portátil lleno de innumerables cajones con rótulos escritos en tinta blanca, tinta marrón, tinta roja, tinta azul, bermellón, azafrán, malva, siena, albaricoque, turquesa, ónix, Anjou, arenque, Corona, verdín, gorgonzola...

He trasladado la máquina de escribir a la habitación contigua, donde puedo verme en el espejo mientras escribo.

Tania es como Irene. Espera cartas voluminosas. Pero hay otra Tania, una Tania semejante a una enorme semilla, que disemina polen por doquier... o, digámoslo un poquito al modo de Tolstoi, una escena de establo en la que entierran al feto. Tania es una fiebre también: les voies urinaires, Café de la Liberté, Place des Vosges, corbatas brillantes en el Boulevard Montparnasse, cuartos de baño oscuros, oporto seco, cigarrillos Abdullah, el adagio de la sonata Pathétique, amplificadores auditivos, sesiones anecdóticas, pechos de siena rojiza, ligas gruesas, qué hora es, faisanes dorados rellenos de castañas, dedos de tafetán, crepúsculos vaporosos que se vuelven acebo, acromegalia, cáncer y delirio, velos cálidos, fichas de póquer, alfombras de sangre y muslos suaves. Tania dice para que todo el mundo pueda oírla: «¡Lo amo!». Y, mientras Boris se calienta con whisky, ella dice: «¡Siéntate aquí! Oh,Boris... Rusia... ¿Qué voy a hacer? ¡Estoy a punto de reventar!».

Por la noche, cuando contemplo la perilla de Boris reposando sobre la almohada, me pongo histérico. ¡Oh, tania! ¿Dónde estarán ahora tu cálido coño, tus gruesas y pesadas ligas, tus muslos suaves y turgentes? Tengo una picha empalmada de quince centímetros. Voy a alisarte todos los pliegues del coño, Tania, colmado de semen. Te voy a enviar a casa junto a tu Sylvester con dolor en el vientre y la matriz del revés. ¡Tu Sylvester! Sí, él sabe encender un fuego, pero yo sé inflamar un coño. Te disparo dardos encendidos dentro, tania, te pongo los ovarios incandescentes. ¿Está un poco celoso tu Sylvester ahora? Siente algo, ¿verdad? Siente los rastros de mi enorme picha. He ensanchado un poco las orillas, he planchado los pliegues. Después de mí, puedes recibir garañones, toros, carneros, ánades, san bernardos. Puedes embutirte el recto con sapos, murciélagos, lagartos. Puedes cagar arpegios, si te apetece, o templar una cítara en tu ombligo. Te estoy jodiendo, tania, para que permanezcas jodida. Y, si tienes miedo a que te jodan en público, te joderé en privado. Te arrancaré unos pelos del coño y se los pegaré en la barbilla a Boris. Te morderé el clítoris y escupiré dos monedas de un franco...

Cielo azul y despejado de nubes lanudas, árboles macilentos hasta el infinito, con sus oscuras ramas gesticulando como un sonámbulo. Árboles sombríos, espectrales, de troncos pálidos como la ceniza de un habano. Silencio sepulcral, tan europeo. Postigos echados, tiendas cerradas. Aquí y allá una luz roja para señalar una cita. Fachadas adustas, casi repulsivas: inmaculadas, excepto en los manchones de sombra proyectados por los árboles. Al pasar por la Orangerie, recuerdo otro París, el París de Maugham, de Gauguin, el París de George Moore. Pienso en aquel terrible español que sobrecogía al mundo entonces con sus acrobáticos saltos de estilo en estilo. Pienso en Spengler y sus terribles pronunciamientos y me pregunto si no se habrá perdido el estilo, el estilo grandioso. Digo que esos pensamientos ocupan mi mente, pero no es cierto; hasta después, hasta haber cruzado el Sena, hasta haber dejado atrás el carnaval de luces, no dejo a mi mente jugar con esas ideas. Por el momento no puedo pensar en nada... excepto en que soy un ser sensible apuñalado por el milagro de esas aguas que reflejan un mundo olvidado. A lo largo de las orillas, los árboles se inclinan hasta casi tocar el espejo empañado; cuando se levante el viento y los colme de un murmullo rumoroso, derramarán unas lágrimas y se estremecerán al paso del agua en torbellinos. Me corta el aliento. Nadie a quien comunicar ni siquiera parte de mis pensamientos...

Lo malo de Irene es que en lugar de coño tiene una maleta. Quiere cartas voluminosas para embutirlas en su maleta. Inmensas, avec des choses inouies. En cambio, Llona sí que tenía coño. Lo sé porque nos envió unos cuantos pelos de ahí abajo. Llona: un asno salvaje que olfateaba el placer en el aire. Hacía la carrera en todas las colinas... y a veces en las cabinas telefónicas y en los retretes. Compró una cama para su rey Carol y un cubilete de afeitarse con sus iniciales. Se tumbó en Tottenham Court Road con las faldas levantadas y se acarició con el dedo. Usaba velas, candelas romanas y pomos de puerta. En todo el país no había una picha bastante grande para ella... ni una. Los hombres la penetraban y encogían. Necesitaba pichas extensibles, cohetes de los que explotan automáticamente, aceite hirviendo compuesto de cera y creosota. Si se lo hubieras permitido, te habría cortado la picha y se la habría guardado dentro para siempre. ¡Una ja única de entre un millón, Llona! Una ja de laboratorio y no había papel de tornasol que pudiese tomar su color. Además, era una mentirosa, aquella Llona. Nunca compró una cama a su rey Carol. Lo coronó con una botella de whisky y tenía la lengua cargada de piojos y mañanas. Pobre Carol, lo único que podía hacer era acurrucarse dentro de ella y morir. Respiraba ella y él caía afuera. Como una almeja muerta.

Cartas enormes, voluminosas, avec des choses inouies. Una maleta sin correas. Un agujero sin llave. Tenía boca alemana, orejas francesas, culo ruso. Una gachí internacional. Cuando ondeaba la bandera, era roja hasta la garganta. Entrabas por el Boulevard Jules Ferry y salías por la Porte de la Villette. Echabas el bofe en las carretas: carretas rojas de dos ruedas, por supuesto. En la confluencia del Ourcq y el Marne, donde el agua mana de los diques y se extiende como cristal bajo los puentes. Llona yace allí ahora y el canal está lleno de vidrio y astillas, las mimosas lloran y la húmeda bruma de un pedo empaña los cristales de las ventanas. ¡Una ja única de entre un millón, Llona! Toda coño y un culo de cristal en que se puede leer la historia de la Edad Media.

Lo primero que presenta Moldorf es la caricatura de un hombre. Ojos de tiroides. Labios de Michelin. Voz como puré de guisantes. Bajo el chaleco lleva una perita. Lo mires como lo mires, siempre el mismo panorama: caja de rapé netsuke, puño de marfil, ficha de ajedrez, abanico, motivo de templo. Lleva tanto tiempo fermentando, que ahora es amorfo. Levadura desprovista de sus vitaminas. Jarrón sin planta de caucho.

Las mujeres fueron fecundadas dos veces en el siglo ix y de nuevo en el Renacimiento. Lo llevaron durante las grandes dispersiones bajo vientres amarillos y blancos. Mucho antes del Éxodo, un tártaro escupió en su sangre.

Su dilema es el del enano. Con su ojo pineal, ve su silueta proyectada en una pantalla de tamaño inconmensurable. Su voz, sincronizada con la sombra de una cabeza de alfiler, lo embriaga. Oye un rugido, cuando los demás sólo oyen un chirrido.

Hablemos de su mente. Es un anfiteatro en que el actor ofrece una representación proteica. Moldorf, multiforme e infalible, representa sus papeles: payaso, juglar, contorsionista, sacerdote, libertino, saltimbanqui. El anfiteatro es demasiado pequeño. Él le mete dinamita. El público está drogado. Él lo hiere.

Estoy intentando en vano abordar a Moldorf. Es como intentar abordar a Dios, pues Moldorf es Dios: nunca ha sido otra cosa. Lo único que hago es consignar palabras...

He tenido opiniones de él que he desechado; he tenido otras opiniones que estoy revisando. Lo he acosado para acabar descubriendo que lo que tenía en las manos no era un escarabajo pelotero, sino una libélula. Me ha ofendido con su grosería y después me ha colmado de delicadezas. Ha sido locuaz hasta la asfixia y después silencioso como el Jordán.

Cuando lo veo venir brincando a saludarme, con las zarpitas tendidas y los ojos sudorosos, siento que voy a encontrar a... ¡No, no es éste el modo de expresarlo!

Comme un oeuf dansant sur un jet d'eau

Sólo tiene un bastón: un bastón mediocre. En los bolsillos, papelitos con recetas para el Weltschmerz. Ahora ya está curado y a la muchachita alemana que le lavaba los pies se le está partiendo el corazón. Es como el señor Nonentity, que lleva su diccionario gujarati a todas partes. Inevitable para todo el mundo, con lo que quiere decir, sin duda, indispensable. Borowski tiene un bastón diferente para cada día de la semana y otro para Pascua.

Tenemos tantos puntos en común, que es como mirarme en un espejo agrietado.

He estado examinando mis manuscritos, páginas garabateadas con correcciones. Páginas de literatura. Me asusta un poco. ¡Se parece tanto a Moldorf! Sólo que yo no soy judío y quienes no son judíos tienen una forma distinta de sufrir. Sufren sin neurosis y, como dice Sylvester, un hombre que nunca ha padecido una neurosis no sabe lo que es sufrir.

Recuerdo muy bien cómo disfrutaba con mi sufrimiento. Era como llevarte un cachorro a la cama. De vez en cuando te arañaba... y entonces sentías auténtico espanto. Por lo general, no sentías miedo: siempre podías soltarlo o cortarle la cabeza.

Hay personas que no pueden resistir el deseo de meterse en una jaula con fieras y dejarse despedazar. Hasta sin revólver ni látigo se meten. El temor las vuelve temerarias... Para el judío, el mundo es una jaula llena de fieras. La puerta está cerrada y él está dentro sin látigo ni revólver. Su valor es tan grande, que ni siquiera huele los excrementos en el rincón. Los espectadores aplauden, pero él no oye. Cree que el drama está ocurriendo dentro de la jaula, que la jaula es el mundo. Al encontrarse ahí, solo e indefenso, y con la puerta cerrada, descubre que los leones no entienden su lengua. Ningún león ha oído hablar nunca de Spinoza. ¿Spinoza? Pero si ni siquiera pueden hincarle el diente. «¡Queremos carne!», rugen, mientras él permanece petrificado ahí, con sus ideas congeladas, su Weltanschauung mero trapecio inalcanzable. Un solo zarpazo del león y su cosmogonía queda destrozada.

También los leones se sienten defraudados. Esperaban sangre, huesos, cartílagos, tendones. Mastican y mastican, pero las palabras son chicle y el chicle es indigesto. El chicle es una base sobre la que se espolvorea azúcar, pepsina, tomillo, regaliz. El chicle, cuando lo recogen los chicleros, está bien. Los chicleros llegaron por la costa de un continente hundido. Trajeron consigo un lenguaje algebraico. En el desierto de Arizona se encontraron con los mongoles del norte, lustrosos como berenjenas. Poco después de que la tierra hubiera adquirido su inclinación giroscópica: cuando la corriente del Golfo estaba separándose de la corriente japonesa. En el fondo de la tierra encontraron piedra de toba. Bordaron las propias entrañas de la tierra con su lenguaje. Se comieron las entrañas unos a otros y la selva se cerró sobre ellos, sobre sus huesos y cráneos, sobre su encaje de toba. Su lengua se perdió. Aún se encuentran aquí y allá los restos de una casa de fieras, una placa craneana cubierta de figuras.

¿Qué tiene que ver todo esto contigo, Moldorf? La palabra que tienes en la lengua es anarquía. Pronúnciala, Moldorf; lo estoy esperando. Nadie conoce los ríos que manan por nuestro sudor, cuando nos damos la mano. Mientras tú estás pronunciando tus palabras, con labios entreabiertos y saliva gorgoteándote en las mejillas, yo he atravesado media Asia de un salto. Si cogiera tu bastón, aun mediocre como es, y te abriese un agujerito en el costado, podría recoger material suficiente para llenar el Museo Británico. Nos detenemos cinco minutos y devoramos siglos. Tú eres el tamiz por el que se filtra mi anarquía y se transforma en palabras. Tras la palabra está el caos. Cada palabra es una raya, un barrote, pero no hay ni habrá nunca suficientes barrotes para hacer la reja.

En mi ausencia han colgado visillos. Parecen manteles tiroleses remojados en desinfectante. La habitación centellea. Me siento en la cama aturdido, pensando en el hombre antes de su nacimiento. De pronto, empiezan a doblar campanas, una música extraña, sobrenatural, como si me hubieran transportado a las estepas del Asia central. Unas resuenan con redoble largo, persistente, otras irrumpen con acentos embriagados y llorosos. Y ahora ha vuelto el silencio, excepto una última nota que apenas roza el silencio de la noche: un simple tantán tenue y agudo que se extingue como una llama.

He hecho un pacto tácito conmigo mismo: no cambiar ni una línea de lo que escribo. No me interesa perfeccionar mis pensamientos ni mis acciones. Junto a la perfección de Turgueniev coloco la perfección de Dostoyevski. (¿Hay algo más perfecto que El eterno marido?) Ahí tenemos, pues, dos tipos de perfección en un mismo medio. Pero en las cartas de Van Gogh hay una perfección que supera a una y a otra. Es el triunfo del individuo sobre el arte.

Ahora sólo hay una cosa que me interesa vitalmente y es consignar todo lo que se omite en los libros. Que yo sepa, nadie está usando los elementos del aire que dan dirección y motivación a nuestras vidas. Sólo los asesinos parecen extraer de la vida una parte satisfactoria de lo que le aportan. La época exige violencia, pero sólo obtenemos explosiones abortivas. Las revoluciones quedan segadas en flor o bien triunfan demasiado aprisa. La pasión se consume a escape. Los hombres recurren a las ideas, comme d'habitude. No se propone nada que pueda durar más de veinticuatro horas. Estamos viviendo un millón de vidas en el espacio de una generación. Obtenemos más del estudio de la entomología o de la vida en las profundidades marinas o de la actividad celular...

El teléfono interrumpe esta reflexión, que nunca habría podido llevar a término. Alguien viene a alquilar el piso...

Parece que se va a acabar, mi vida en Villa Borghese. Bien, cogeré estas páginas y me largaré. En otro sitio ocurrirán cosas también. Siempre ocurren cosas. Parece que dondequiera que voy hay un drama. Las personas son como los piojos: se te meten bajo la piel y se entierran en ella. Te rascas y te rascas hasta hacerte sangre, pero no puedes despiojarte de una vez. Dondequiera que voy las personas están echando a perder sus vidas. Cada cual tiene su tragedia particular. La lleva ya en la sangre: infortunio, hastío, aflicción, suicidio. La atmósfera está saturada de desastres, frustración, futilidad. Rascarse y rascarse... hasta que no quede piel. Sin embargo su efecto en mí es estimulante. En lugar de desanimarme, o deprimirme, disfruto. Pido a gritos cada vez más desastres, calamidades mayores, fracasos más rotundos. Quiero ver el mundo escacharrado, quiero que todo el mundo se rasque hasta morir.

Ahora me veo obligado a vivir con tal vértigo y frenesí, que apenas me queda tiempo para consignar estas notas fragmentarias. Después de la llamada de teléfono, han llegado un caballero y su esposa. He subido a tumbarme arriba durante la transacción. He estado ahí echado preguntándome qué voy a hacer ahora. Desde luego, volver a la cama del marica y pasar la noche dando vueltas y sacudiendo migas con los dedos de los pies, no. ¡Mequetrefe asqueroso! Si hay algo peor que ser marica, es ser tacaño. Un sarasa tímido y tembloroso que vivía con el constante temor de quedarse sin blanca un día: el 18 de mayo tal vez o el 25 de mayo exactamente. Café sin leche ni azúcar. Pan sin mantequilla. Carne sin salsa o nada de carne. ¡Sin esto y sin lo otro! ¡Rácano asqueroso! Un día abrí el cajón del escritorio y encontré dinero escondido dentro de un calcetín. Más de dos mil francos... y cheques que ni siquiera había cobrado. Aun eso no me habría importado tanto, si no me hubiese encontrado siempre posos de café en la gorra y basura en el suelo, por no citar los tarros de crema para el cutis, ni las toallas grasientas, ni la pila siempre atascada. Os digo que aquel mequetrefe olía mal... salvo cuando se empapaba de colonia. Llevaba las orejas sucias, los ojos sucios, el culo sucio. Tenía articulaciones de goma, era asmático, piojoso, mezquino, enfermizo. Podría haberle perdonado todo, ¡si al menos me hubiera servido un desayuno decente! Pero un hombre que tiene dos mil francos escondidos en un calcetín sucio y se niega a ponerse una camisa limpia o untarse un poco de mantequilla en el pan no es un simple marica ni un simple tacaño siquiera; ¡es un imbécil!

Pero no viene al caso hablar del marica. Aguzo el oído para enterarme de lo que está pasando abajo. Es un tal señor Wren y su esposa, que han venido a ver el piso. Hablan de cogerlo. Gracias a Dios, sólo hablan. La señora Wren tiene risa de loca: complicaciones a la vista. Ahora es el señor Wren quien habla. Tiene voz de trueno, áspera, estridente, resonante, un arma pesada y contundente que se abre paso por la carne, el hueso y el cartílago.

Boris me pide que baje para presentarme. Se frota las manos, como un prestamista. Están hablando de un cuento que ha escrito el señor Wren: sobre un caballo con esparaván.

«Pero yo pensaba que el señor Wren era pintor.»

«Claro que lo es», dice Boris, guiñando un ojo, «pero en invierno escribe. Y escribe bien... pero que muy bien».

Intento hacer hablar al señor Wren, que diga algo, cualquier cosa, que hable del caballo con esparaván, si es necesario. Pero el señor Wren casi no puede expresarse. Cuando intenta hablar de esos meses monótonos pasados con la pluma en la mano, se vuelve ininteligible. Pasa meses y meses antes de poner una palabra en el papel. (¡Y sólo hay tres meses de invierno!) ¿En qué piensa todos esos meses y meses de invierno? La verdad es que no me imagino a ese tipo como escritor. Y, sin embargo, la señora Wren dice que, cuando se sienta, las ideas le salen pero a borbotones.

La conversación deriva. Es difícil seguir el hilo del señor Wren, porque no dice nada. Como dice la señora Wren, piensa sobre la marcha. La señora Wren expresa todo lo relativo al señor Wren con los colores más bellos.

«Piensa sobre la marcha»: encantador, de veras encantador, como diría Borowski, pero muy doloroso en realidad, sobre todo cuando el pensador no es sino un caballo con esparaván.

Boris me da dinero para comprar licor. Al ir por él, ya me siento borracho. Sé cómo voy a empezar, cuando vuelva a la casa. Mientras bajo por la calle, se inicia dentro de mí el grandioso discurso que gorgotea como la risa floja de la señora Wren. Me parece que ya estaba un poco piripi. Al salir de la bodega, oigo el gorgoteo del urinario. Todo está suelto y salpica. Quiero que la señora Wren escuche...

Boris se frota las manos otra vez. El señor Wren sigue tartamudeando y farfullando. Tengo una botella entre las piernas y estoy metiendo el sacacorchos. La señora Wren espera con la boca abierta. El vino me salpica entre las piernas, el sol salpica por el mirador y dentro de las venas siento burbujear y chapotear mil locuras que ahora empiezan a salir de mí como un torrente. Les estoy diciendo todo lo que se me ocurre, todo lo que estaba embotellado dentro de mí y que la risa floja de la señora Wren ha soltado en cierto modo. Con esa botella entre las piernas y el sol salpicando por la ventana, vuelvo a experimentar el esplendor de la época aciaga en que llegué a París por primera vez, cuando vagaba por las calles, perplejo y hambriento, como un espectro en un banquete. Me viene a la memoria todo de una vez: los retretes que no funcionaban; el príncipe que me lustraba los zapatos; el Cinema Splendide, donde dormía sobre el abrigo del patrón; los barrotes de la ventana; la sensación de asfixia; las enormes cucarachas; las juergas y borracheras en los intervalos; Rose Cannaque y Nápoles agonizando a la luz del sol. Andar danzando por las calles con el estómago vacío y de vez en cuando visitar a gente extraña: Madame Delorme, por ejemplo. Ya no puedo imaginar cómo llegué a casa de Madame Delorme. Pero llegué, logré entrar, pasé ante el mayordomo, ante la doncella con su delantalito blanco, me metí en el palacio con mi pantalón de pana y mi cazadora... y sin un botón en la bragueta. Aun ahora puedo saborear de nuevo el ambiente dorado de aquella habitación en que Madame Delorme estaba sentada en un trono con su traje de hombre, los peces de colores en las peceras, los mapas del mundo antiguo, los libros con encuademación de lujo; vuelvo a sentir su manaza en mi hombro, que me asustaba un poco con sus marcados ademanes de lesbiana. Era más cómodo abajo, en aquel maremágnum abigarrado que desembocaba en la Gare Saint–Lazare, las putas en los portales, botellas de agua de seltz en todas las mesas; una espesa corriente de semen que inundaba los arroyos de la calle. Entre las cinco y las siete, nada mejor que verse empujado entre aquella multitud, seguir una pierna o un busto hermosos, avanzar con la corriente y todo dándote vueltas en la cabeza. Una extraña satisfacción en aquella época. Ni citas, ni invitaciones a comer, ni programa, ni pasta. La época de oro, cuando no tenía ni un amigo. Todas las mañanas, la triste caminata hasta el American Express y la inevitable respuesta del empleado. Correr de acá para allá como una chinche, recoger colillas de vez en cuando, unas veces a hurtadillas, otras con descaro; sentarme en un banco y apretarme las tripas para calmar la comezón o pasear por el Jardin des Tuileries y tener una erección al contemplar las estatuas desnudas. O vagabundear a la orilla del Sena de noche, camina que te camina, enloquecer con su belleza, los árboles inclinados, las imágenes rotas en el agua, el ímpetu de la corriente bajo las luces sanguinolentas de los puentes, las mujeres durmiendo en los portales, sobre periódicos, bajo la lluvia; por todas partes los atrios mohosos de las catedrales, mendigos, piojos y viejas mujerucas presa del baile de San Vito; carretillas apiladas como barriles de vino en las calles laterales, olor a fresas en el mercado y la antigua iglesia rodeada de verduras y lámparas de arco azules, los arroyos de la calle resbaladizos por las basuras y mujeres con escarpines de raso haciendo eses entre la inmundicia y las sabandijas tras toda una noche de parranda. La Place St. Sulpice, tan tranquila y desierta, donde hacia las doce llegaba todas las noches la mujer del paraguas reventado y el velo extravagante; allí dormía todas las noches en un banco bajo su paraguas desgarrado, con las varillas colgando, su vestido que se iba volviendo verde, los dedos huesudos y el olor a podredumbre que exhalaba su cuerpo; y por la mañana me sentaba yo también a descabezar un sueño tranquilo bajo el sol, maldiciendo las condenadas palomas que recogían migas por doquier. ¡St. Sulpice! Los rechonchos campanarios, los llamativos carteles sobre la puerta, las velas ardiendo dentro. La plaza tan querida de Anatole France, con los monótonos susurros y cuchicheos procedentes del altar, el chapoteo de la fuente, el arrullo de las palomas, las migas que desaparecían como por arte de magia y sólo un sordo gorgoteo en las tripas vacías. Allí me sentaba día tras día pensando en Germaine y en aquella callejuela sucia, cerca de la Bastilla, donde vivía, y aquel continuo runrún detrás del altar, los autobuses que pasaban zumbando, el sol que caía a plomo sobre el asfalto y el asfalto que nos penetraba a mí y a Germaine, sobre el asfalto y todo

Comentarios para Trópico de Cáncer

[leslie398 · Calificación: 2 de 5 estrellas]

While I am glad that I finally read this classic, it really wasn't my sort of book. Miller seems to be fixated on sex and the decay of death (and by that I mean all the physical grossness of it - all the disgusting details of putrefaction).

[michael_lilly-1 · Calificación: 2 de 5 estrellas]

Pretentious and boring. No plot. Rambling stream of narrative. Relies on shock value for impact, but language that was shocking in the 30's is now common.

[mmfalcone · Calificación: 1 de 5 estrellas]

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.

[paeonia_1 · Calificación: 3 de 5 estrellas]

I am happy to be able say I have read this American classic. Did I like it? No. Was I impressed by some of the writing. Yes.

[jphamilton-1 · Calificación: 4 de 5 estrellas]

I came to Henry Miller’s Tropic of Cancer many decades after its 1934 release in France, and its subsequent banning in this country. After its ground-breaking obscenity trial, it was finally published here in 1961. So, add sixty years, and you get to when I finally got around to reading it. My late wife, Vicky, loved his writing. Now, because I have waited so long to read it, I will never be able to talk to her about why she liked him so much. He who hesitates is truly lost in this case. If I had to guess why she found the book so interesting, it wasn’t because of the vocabulary of cunt, pussy, twat, prick, and others—though Vicky liked the sometimes shocking and unusual—my guess is that she liked the freeform style, the very loosely-told story of people doing whatever they wanted to do, as well as the candid descriptions of sex. Another part of the book that had to attract her was the attitude of people thinking the hell with people’s opinions and society’s norms. This rebellion had everything to do with Miller’s life in Paris, as much of the book is a reporting on and a reflection of that time in his life. When I drop back and look at the book from my viewpoint as a well-read old duffer in 2021, it doesn’t seem as rebellious and shocking, as I’ve seen and read that kind of a story so many times already. It’s harder to experience a groundbreaking piece of art as still fresh after it’s been repeated and played off of so many times. This reminds me of a time that Vicky and I watched Citizen Kane all the way through for the first time, and when the credits played at the end, we looked at each other and said, “So?” All the shots and effects that were truly groundbreaking when the film was released in 1941, we’d both seen countless times in countless movies. Later, someone was talking about what all the “first time ever” shots were in that film, and you had to be impressed, but perception is sometimes all about perspective.Yet, it was interesting finding the life of Henry Miller in Tropic of Cancer. “What need I for money? I am a writing machine.” Reflecting on his life and art. “It is not difficult to be alone if you are poor and a failure. An artist is always alone—if he is an artist. No, what the artist needs is loneliness.”There was a hard side that kept coming out in the novel. “The world is a cancer eating itself.” “People are like lice—they get under your skin and bury themselves there.” He also wrote about the whores that were answering a constant need for the book’s characters. “Who wants a delicate whore?” The following section probably caught the attention of the censors. “She used candles, Roman candles, and door knobs. Not a prick in the land big enough for her … not one. Men went inside her and curled up. She wanted extension pricks, self-exploding rockets, hot boiling oil made of wax and creosote. She would cut off your prick and keep it inside her forever, if you gave her permission. One cunt out of a million.”I am left respecting Tropic for how Miller broke new ground, but I wasn’t sold on it as a book. Cunt, pussy, and prick got old and I was left with how people were being treated. Hard drinking, carousing, and whoring are exciting at first, yet tiring after a while, and poor as a spectator sport. The style was interesting in how it was so vague and loose, but whores, bedbugs, and always searching for sex and a bed for the night, wasn’t a story for my head at this time. But I will leave you with this fine line and summary of the book’s lifestyle. “All I ask of life, is a bunch of books, a bunch of dreams, and a bunch of cunt.”

[foof2you · Calificación: 3 de 5 estrellas]

I don't get it, this book is so-so at best. Like "On the Road" this book is about a down and out guy who mooches his way through life. Ground breaking because he wrote this in the 30's ok. I can see why it was banned then, yet the story itself is not that great. Other than that it is unimpressive garbage. I didn't like the way Miller use French without interpreting it for us. So if you read it do it on a device that allows you to highlight and translate those sentences for you.

[drbrand-271246 · Calificación: 4 de 5 estrellas]

Though I only "liked it," I think four stars is a more appropriate rating because I can imagine that I might have "really liked it" had I read it earlier in my life. It certainly has its powerful moments, but it has largely lost its ability to shock with so much imitation in contemporary literature. Honestly, in my estimation, Miller is a better writer than Burroughs, Bukowski, and all of the Beat writers (especially Kerouac), but his strange obsession with Jews and woefully clichéd misogyny are glaring examples of how his worldview hasn't aged well. I'm sure Paris in the early 1930s was a great place to observe the "wound which is man," but his diatribes grew tiresome and the writing wasn't enough to bolster over 300 pages. On the whole, I'm thankful for this novel, if only for its role as a forebear for Cormac McCarthy's Suttree, a novel with similar themes more artfully delivered.

[cuchulainn-798372 · Calificación: 5 de 5 estrellas]

What a fantastic book! It's sad, comic, coarse, subtle, and brilliant, written in blood; and the language is vibrant, hyperbolic and colourful! Looking forward to reading his other books.
"Side by side with the human race there runs another race of beings, the inhuman ones, the race of artists who, goaded by unknown impulses, take the lifeless mass of humanity and by the fever and ferment with which they imbue it turn this soggy dough into bread and the bread into wine and the wine into song."

[theelliemo · Calificación: 4 de 5 estrellas]

I'm not going to say I liked this book. The protagonist is, by today's moral standards, quite vile. I certainly did not like him.

I admit, it took me longer than normal to 'get into' the book; initially I was reading it because I had set myself the task of reading it.

And at times, there were several pages of stream-of-consciousness rants that, to be quite frank, bored me.

But I can not deny that this is a brilliant piece of writing. At its best, in my opinion, when recounting tales of events, I found myself actually caring about what happened to the characters, even though I never liked any of them.

Though not a pleasant story, this is a superb depiction of a life lived in the seedier end of Paris society.

[emed0s · Calificación: 2 de 5 estrellas]

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.

[elka.gimpel · Calificación: 1 de 5 estrellas]

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.

[elsyd_19 · Calificación: 1 de 5 estrellas]

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.

[fergus_cooper-1 · Calificación: 1 de 5 estrellas]

Complete Shite. End of!!

[joeydag · Calificación: 5 de 5 estrellas]

Miller blew my mind when I was in college. I wonder what I would think now.

[jillrhudy · Calificación: 4 de 5 estrellas]

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.

[neftzger · Calificación: 4 de 5 estrellas]

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.

[aliceanna-1 · Calificación: 3 de 5 estrellas]

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.

[dinoreader · Calificación: 4 de 5 estrellas]

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.

[akissner-1 · Calificación: 3 de 5 estrellas]

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).

[blanderson-1 · Calificación: 2 de 5 estrellas]

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.

[sageness · Calificación: 3 de 5 estrellas]

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.

[bontley · Calificación: 3 de 5 estrellas]

Not my cup of tea. Not as offensive and obscene as I'd hoped. Too philosophical.

[drewsof · Calificación: 1 de 5 estrellas]

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.

[smetchie · Calificación: 2 de 5 estrellas]

Expatriates. Yaaawwwwwwwwwwwwwwn.

[meditationesmartini · Calificación: 4 de 5 estrellas]

It's clear pretty much from the start that Henry Miller is a contested and contentious character. Always worse than scholarly introductions are those "this book is a big deal!" popular-edition freeform essay introductions, and here we get one from somebody Shapiro that makes Miller a prophet of joy--blurgh, followed up for lagniappe by the foreword by Anaïs Nin, who does her love a solid in her rickety prose by--ricketily--making him sound like one hell of a party (which is better.)Is this a song of joy? Shapiro, writing in the sixties, seems willfully blind a bit in a hippie way—Miller’s joy is barely sublimated rage, as his curses are Biblical—“I will spit upon your corpse.” All that is, is good, and hey shove it up your ass for good measure. I get that. And sure he had plenty of sexy times, but it strikes me that this is less a song of the uncoiling snake or whatever than the reverse—it’s the sex that’s the pretext—for the stories, for having something to talk about, for the up your face to bourgeois Amerika on some level obviously but much more about the homosociality for which the “cunt” is pretext. Moldorf may be word drunk, lost in the w-hole, but Miller himself is word-tipsy and feeling gregarious. Less libidinist than raconteur.He also uses words to subjugate, of course, and I’m not talking about “cunt,” though it is indexical. It’s when he gets all “Stick a lizard up your ass! Shitza blitza!” and frothing at the mouth like something out of The Exorcist that it’s a downer. He’s taking an aggressive pose, and I won’t dwell on the misogyny because, again, the women are by the by and the point is to talk tough and turn hard livin’ heartily embraced into a literary regalia—to peacock. He would have lasted long in the torture chambers if he’d looked good and gotten ladies and had other aspiring poets say things like “Ol’ Hank Miller, hooo boy” within earshot. I wish I’d been younger when I got to this book and it would have hit me all different like in interesting ways, but then I also wish he’d been younger when he wrote it, and it would seem less belligerent in its self-conscious solipsism.But the self is still previous, and the story of the self and the world is still one of survival against the odds, for the transient and for the suburbanest accountant with his RRSP—thus is Rimbaud the flip side of Goethe. And sorry, Henry Miller of “Brooklyn, Paris, and Big Sur,” you will not get away with pretending you’re not another arm of the capitalist millipus, the one whose whoring and anti-Semitism and weird rage about the gays show the most exquisite concern with propriety, the one who launched a thousand gap years. Some parts of this are just so “I am a massive penis other men are faggot jew betas” and he might as well be trolling on the internet and we are supposed to kiss his dick just because he writes with swears.And even when there’s a crash in his careful balance and he ends up stealing the baby’s food or whatever, this should be hangover catharsis, but not so because he’s trading in glamour and the mood of self-aggrandizement has already been set. Shapiro quotes Orwell’s essay on Miller semi-approvingly except that he doesn’t like that Orwell doesn’t like that Miller doesn’t like to talk about “the social,” because it’s all about the centre of the mind, man! Wavy gravy! And I guess I don’t blame Miller for that, but it’s nevertheless true that a little excursion into the third person or so would have done him well.BUT NEVERTHELESS. Miller is very, very, very good for paragraphs at a time. And the level of visious blaggery mellows throughout. And then sometimes he cuts through it completely and produces something sensitive like his vignette of Van Norden and the woman who won’t sleep with him—and then it’s back to autonomy through this needy-ass, diffident, never entirely convincing misanthropy.Tho you know it’s not just Van N., his people are quite good often—the Irish painter and his wife who is more talented who he hates, a whole heartbreaker of an I-remember-this-guy where the only thing that goes wrong is that all the characters regardless of idiom say the word “cunt” in exactly the same way. This is Miller’s way of being undone by cunt, I guess.He is worse on places than people; has something to prove. Blasé on China one minute, exoticizing it the next, in the way of so many people from our big continent who take their one trip to Rome or Hawaii and present it like a sailor’s logbook. His Paris is jolly and reeking and cruel and all that, but it’s limited both by the persona and by the fact that he’s writing what he knows, which is whoring and apes-together male shit leavened with moments of joy … and, let me say, this postlapsarian wist that goes with the Paris trip too, for Proust and Matisse—and of course Miller’s followers had their attenuated experience too, it’s in the nature of this stuff, like vampires weakening by the number of their generations from Cain—but still, Miller came in the thirties and not the twenties and he could have easily been a balding John Glassco and you should thank him for putting his balls into it.Like, that magnificent scene two thirds in with the two women, the one he meets outside the café and the one he goes home with—short, spare, self-loathing without exploiting or apologizing for it. Cunt only used once.And cunt drops precipitously from then on in fact and the last part of this book is so special—a paean, a soulsong. Starting with the bit on Goether and Whitman, through the loving and magnificent description of one particular cunt (his wife’s), and then into a description of Dijon that’s architectural and painterly, laying down roads like bones like rock and splattering them with sickish greys. The book should have started with Goethe, we should have seen a young Hank Miller go over to France to teach English and then go off the rails—instead it’s not till he’s proved whatever it is he had to prove and stopped with the Tourette’s that he can show us what a writer he is.And after we’ve grown eyes all over and fallen to bits in a mystic apotheosis, it’s back to cunt, but this time with a wink and a barrel of previously withheld charm, instead of coming on like a … fuck, dog track crack addict or something. Miller at his best woos with smiles and box wine invincibility. You can see why cunts go for him.

[jwhenderson_1 · Calificación: 5 de 5 estrellas]

This is a Rabelaisian novel first and foremost. While rough around the edges, it is full of life. Henry Miller's once-banned memoir-like novel is better than any reality TV show (pardon me, that standard is too low to be meaningful). Using a picaresque style he tells of journeying through and around France while sharing experiences that seem as real as any dream, or nightmare, can be. Combining autobiography and fiction, some chapters follow a narrative of some kind and refer to Miller's actual friends, colleagues, and workplaces; others are written as stream-of-consciousness reflections that are occasionally epiphanic. The novel is written in the first person, as are many of Miller's other novels, and does not have a linear organization, but rather fluctuates frequently between the past and present.Even better for me were the observations of the narrator on life and art, for example: describing an artist he wrote: "An artist is always alone - if he is an artist. No, what an artist needs is loneliness." There are other comments like this -- perhaps somewhat arrogant, but almost always funny, ironic, interesting or some combination of these.Describing his perception of Paris during this time, Miller wrote:"One can live in Paris—I discovered that!—on just grief and anguish. A bitter nourishment—perhaps the best there is for certain people. At any rate, I had not yet come to the end of my rope. I was only flirting with disaster. ... I understood then why it is that Paris attracts the tortured, the hallucinated, the great maniacs of love. I understood why it is that here, at the very hub of the wheel, one can embrace the most fantastic, the most impossible theories, without finding them in the least strange; it is here that one reads again the books of his youth and the enigmas take on new meanings, one for every white hair. One walks the streets knowing that he is mad, possessed, because it is only too obvious that these cold, indifferent faces are the visages of one's keepers. Here all boundaries fade away and the world reveals itself for the mad slaughterhouse that it is. The treadmill stretches away to infinitude, the hatches are closed down tight, logic runs rampant, with bloody cleaver flashing."(pp 180-182)Miller's style makes you think about what is happening and what is being said, whether you like it or not. Often viewing life from the under the under side it is a crazy wonderful book. Not for prudes - if there are any left in the twenty-first century.

[denmoir · Calificación: 4 de 5 estrellas]

Prose writing at its best; a repulsive character who is, perhaps, the id of every male.

[gbill_7 · Calificación: 4 de 5 estrellas]

I decided to read Henry Miller’s “Tropic of Cancer” after watching “Henry and June” again after many years; the movie is excellent, and based on the Anais Nin book of the same name which describes Nin’s frolics in Paris with the bohemian Miller and his wife June. “Tropic of Cancer” is written as a log of Miller’s experiences and thoughts while living as a bachelor in Paris in the early 1930’s; he had left his wife back in America. I found the vagabond lifestyle he led and the style of his prose to be an interesting preview of Beat authors like Kerouac who would come twenty years later. It’s shocking to me that it was published in 1934, and with its graphic descriptions of sex it’s easy to see why it was banned until 1964 in America, and then only after a ruling by the Supreme Court. I coincidentally saw a reprint of highlighted news from the week of Dec. 12-17, 1961 in the San Francisco Chronicle, and included was the controversy surrounding this novel. “Garbage is garbage and dirt is dirt. .. A beast is a beast – this is bestial. It appeals to the bestial”, grumbled James W. Kirchanski. “An impressionable young man or woman who reads it probably would lose all ideals of the man-woman relationship.”, worried Albert E. Bagshaw, “It might even drive young men to shun women forever.” Miller eschews all things conventional: getting a “normal” job, the morality of the day, and appreciating history or past artists, with some exceptions to the latter: Whitman, who he admired for his joy and ecstasy, and Dostoevsky, who he admired for the rawness of his life and his emotions. Indeed, Miller eschews being what we call “human”. He wants to not only live in the now, but to be so true to his desires that he is living more like an animal, or perhaps better put, like a “natural” human, untainted by the artifices society has erected over thousands of years. Unfortunately a lot of the vagabond lifestyle degenerates to Miller and his cohorts getting drunk, having sex with whores, and trying to avoid contracting “the clap”. He is pretty blunt in objectifying women and calling them “cunts”, and in general is the absolute opposite of politically correct. Don’t read it if you’re easily offended, or if reading about this type of lifestyle is not interesting to you.Also, and perhaps naturally, in seeking autonomy from “the man” and complete freedom in his life, Miller’s issue is oftentimes finding friends who will provide him a place to live or an occasional meal. Don’t read it if you’re likely to judge him for being a “bum” and not getting a job like the rest of us poor shlubs. Do read it if you want to see life from a very different perspective. Miller lets it go, lets it rip, lets it fly. He’s not interested in editing, perfect prose, or trying to please people. What he wants to describe are honest, real, true feelings and experiences from a life lived off the beaten track, things that at the time were not spoken of. As he puts it, “There is only one thing which interests me vitally now, and that is the recording of all that which is omitted in books.” I admire his courage for leading the life in the way he did, fiercely and in the way he wanted to; after all, we only have one life to live and this is the time each of us owns. The book certainly held my attention. On the other hand, it’s hard to admire a lot of his actions so I’m a little conflicted, and his writing, while interesting, is not great, and I’m sure Miller himself would be the first to agree. Followed by telling me to go fuck myself. Quotes:On living:“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.”“I’ve lived out my melancholy youth. I don’t give a fuck any more what’s behind me, or what’s ahead of me. I’m healthy. Incurably healthy. No sorrows, no regrets. No past, no future. The present is enough for me. Day by day. Today! Le bel aujourd’hui!”“I made up my mind that I would hold on to nothing, that I would expect nothing, that henceforth I would live as an animal, a beast of prey, a rover, a plunderer. Even if war were declared, and it were my lot to go, I would grab the bayonet and plunge it, and plunge it up to the hilt. And if rape were the order of the day then rape I would, and with a vengeance.”“I’m not an American any more, nor a New Yorker, and even less a European, or a Parisian. I haven’t any allegiance, any responsibilities, any hatreds, any worries, any prejudices, any passion. I’m neither for nor against. I’m a neutral.”“Do anything, but let it produce joy. Do anything, but let it yield ecstasy. So much crowds into my head when I say this to myself: images, gay ones, terrible ones, maddening ones…”“Once I thought that to be human was the highest aim a man could have, but I see now that it was meant to destroy me. Today I am proud to say that I am inhuman, that I belong not to men and governments, that I have nothing to do with creeds and principles. I have nothing to do with the creaking machinery of humanity – I belong to the earth! I say that lying on my pillow and I can feel the horns sprouting from my temples.”“It may be that we are doomed, that there is no hope for us, any of us, but if that is so then let us set up a last agonizing, bloodcurling howl, a screech of defiance, a war whoop! Away with lamentation! Away with elegies and dirges! Away with biographies and histories, and libraries and museums! Let the dead eat the dead. Let us living ones dance about the rim of the crater, a last expiring dance. But a dance! ‘I love everything that flows,’ said the great blind Milton of our times. … Yes, I said to myself, I too love everything that flows: rivers, sewers, lava, semen, blood, bile, words, sentences. …”On art:“A man who belongs to this race must stand up on the high place with gibberish in his mouth and rip out his entrails. It is right and just, because he must! And anything that falls short of this frightening spectacle, anything less shuddering, less terrifying, less mad, less intoxicated, less contaminating, is not art. The rest is counterfeit. The rest is human. The rest belongs to life and lifelessness.”On sadness:“When I realize that she is gone, perhaps gone forever, a great void opens up and I feel that I am falling, falling, falling into a deep, black space. And this is worse than tears, deeper than regret or pain or sorrow; it is the abyss into which Satan was plunged. There is no climbing back, no ray of light, no sound of human voice or human touch of hand.How many thousand times, in walking through the streets at night, have I wondered if the day would ever come again when she would be at my side…”On the difference between Americans and Europeans:“How could I have foreseen, in America, with all those firecrackers they put up your ass to give you pep and courage, that the ideal position for a man of my temperament was to look for orthographic mistakes? Over there you think of nothing but becoming President of the United States some day. Potentially every man is Presidential timber. Here it’s different. Here every man is potentially a zero. If you become something or somebody it is an accident, a miracle. The chances are thousand to one that you will never leave your native village.”On the machine of society, compare it to Kerouac twenty years later:“The same story everywhere. If you want bread you’ve got to get in harness, get in lock step. Over all the earth a gray desert, a carpet of steel and cement. Production! More nuts and bolts, more barbed wire, more dog biscuits, more lawn mowers, more ball bearings, more high explosives, more tanks, more poison gas, more soap, more toothpaste, more newspapers, more education, more churches, more libraries, more museums. Forward!”On religion, describing a church he and his buddies wander into:“A huge, dismal tomb it was with mourners shuffling in and out. A sort of antechamber to the world below. Temperature about 55 or 60 Fahrenheit. No music except this undefinable dirge manufactured in the subcellar – like a million heads of cauliflower wailing in the dark. People in shrouds were chewing away with that hopeless dejected look of beggars who hold out their hands in a trance and mumble an unintelligible appeal. This sort of thing existed I knew, but then one also knows that there are slaughterhouses and morgues and dissecting rooms. One instinctively avoids such places. In the street I had often passed a priest with a little prayer book in his hands laboriously memorizing his lines. Idiot, I would say to myself, and let it go at that.”Lastly this one on sleeping in, which made my smile:“I was always hungry myself, since it was impossible for me to go to breakfast which was handed out at some ungodly hour of the morning, just when the bed was getting toasty.”

[whitewavedarling · Calificación: 3 de 5 estrellas]

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.

[smiler69 · Calificación: 4 de 5 estrellas]

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.