Banned in America for almost thirty years because of its explicit sexual content, this companion volume to Miller's Tropic of Cancer chronicles his life in 1920s New York City. Famous for its frank portrayal of life in Brooklyn's ethnic neighborhoods and Miller's outrageous sexual exploits, The Tropic of Capricorn is now considered a cornerstone of modern literature.

CUSTOMER REVIEWS (Average Customer Rating: 4.0 based on 30 reviews)

Henry Miller: the most interesting failure I've read

I was looking forward to reading this book, but unfortunately most of it was self indulgent filler with absolutely no payoff. Sure, blinding light would occasionally cut through the floating gray clouds of endless paragraphs, but for the most part this book seemed more like a literary endurance test. The beginning piqued my curiosity, but reading the rest of the book made me feel like I just wanted to get my money's worth. I think the most depressing thing about the book was toward the end when Miller was quoting the surrealists, ha ha, and I loved those quotes and it made me want to explore Breton and such, but they stood in harsh contrast to Miller's own writing. Miller seems like an interesting name dropper, a coach of literature that isn't so hot on his own two feet; but then again, I haven't read all of his work, but I'm wondering if it's worth the effort. Henry Miller seems to touch upon things that have already been done better by other writers: Dostoevski was a better rambling, ranting madman writing in a common vernacular; Rimbaud executed the dynamic between bitter nihilistic despair to innocence and hope better; and Lautreamont was much more obscene and capable of creating perfect, surreal, jarring imagery.
September 12, 2008

Miller's Tour De Force

I may have a soft spot for this book because it's the first of his I read, but this comes off as no less than his finest hour. The first fifty or so pages are almost unbeatable. Miller nails the very essence of the American character down with an unflinching vitriol that hasn't really been matched in anything else I've read. Given how banal much of the literature that comprises the curriculum in public schools is, I was somewhat shocked and completely mesmerized by someone exposing the degradation and absence of ethics in the the modern workplace so openly. Reading it well after the year 2000, it still was spot on in spite of taking place in 1920s New York.

Sure, much has changed since then. Racism and sexism have become more veiled and subtle, but are still present in oblique and diluted forms. On closer inspection, I have come to think that the book tacitly makes the point that racism always was partially a red herring. The real enemy was a system that treated people as mere statistics and robbed us all of our humanity.

A lot of people like Cancer better, but I have to disagree. This book is everything he was trying to do in Cancer and then some. Whatever style he was trying to formulate in Cancer, which while still very good basically only described a sort of expatriate hipster aesthetic. That isn't without its merits, but Capricorn was the book that looked not only looked America right in its hideous face, but saw Miller making "the only true journey which is to the self" (paraphrased). The sexual aspect of the book gets overplayed again and again, but it was only part of a larger transparency in Miller's writing. He wrote graphically and directly about sex in a time when it was utterly unacceptable to do so in popular discourse. His ability with the English language is largely unmatched in American prose. It was in this book, where he wanted to lay out his thoughts in the most naked manner possible, that he hit full stride stylistically.

Unsentimental, deliriously descriptive, and brilliant.
May 28, 2008

Men, machines, death, and sex, better than Tropic of Cancer

Like Tropic of Cancer, Tropic of Capricorn is part autobiography, part memoir, part polemic, part fiction, part fantasy, and part poetry, written in near stream of consciousness as Miller experiences one epiphany after another.

As with the prior book, Miller's ramblings are the source and the result of his efforts to define himself as an artist. Other contemporary American writers, for example, F. Scott Fitzgerald, seem fascinated by their significance as artists and by the future importance of their art. In the Tropic books, Miller makes his consciousness of himself as an artist the subject of his art. In some ways, reading the Tropic books is like watching someone obsessively paint his self-portrait over and over, all with the title, Self-Portrait of the Artist.

According to Miller, "Life becomes a spectacle and, if you happen to be an artist, you record the passing show . . . The surface of your being is constantly crumbling; within, however, you grow hard as a diamond." He says he "was perhaps the first Dadaist in America, and I didn't know it. Nobody understood what I was writing about or why I wrote that way. I was so lucid that they said I was daffy." The focus is not on the art (what he is writing about) but on himself as the artist, with an anonymous readership ("nobody," "they") who doesn't understand him. As if his own belief in himself as an artist were not enough to convince us, he quotes a series of friends who insist that he should become a writer.

While Miller lacks objectivity and security, he has moments of insight into the current human condition. "Now we are eating of the same bread, but without benefit of communion, without grace. We are eating to fill our bellies and our hearts are cold and empty. We are separate but not individual," following an anecdote about sour rye, is a brilliantly simple description of a world he sees as cold and mechanical, when progress and war have robbed men of their humanity. "The smell of a dead horse . . . is still a thousand times better than the smell of burning chemicals . . . the sight of a dead horse with a bullet hole in the temple . . . is still a better sight than that of a group of men in blue aprons coming out of the arched doorway of the tin factory . . ." Honest death and decay, "after life," are better than "death from the roots, isolating men, making them bitter and fearful and lonely, giving them fruitless energy . . ."

Superior to Tropic of Cancer, Tropic of Capricorn still shows a lack of discipline, or a contempt for it. Separating the poetic gems are long, rambling passages that are sometimes pointless and sometimes nonsensical. He continues the use of incoherent metaphors such as, "Inwardly they are filled with worms. A tiny spark and they blow up." Sometimes his attempts to play with words and prose are more childish than literary or artistic, for example, " . . . deeper and deeper in sleep sleeping, the sleep of the deep in deepest sleep, at the nethermost depth full slept, the deepest and sleepest sleep of sleep's sweet sleep," and so on.

Tropic of Capricorn is uneven, ranging from the lively and the lovely to the self-conscious and tedious. It's unfortunate that Miller expended so much effort trying to convince the reader (and himself) of his status as an evil monster and artist (perhaps with the idea that they are synonymous) and so little culling the irrelevant and refining the rest. Miller's perspective and vision are interesting, even compelling, when not muddied by his fascination with himself and by his need to stand out.
October 13, 2007

a bit too much at times

An entertaining book! Miller is probably the most cynical person in the universe. Only problem I had with the book is that this author rants on in a mystical sort of way every now and then, and then it spans a few pages at a time. I found these "rants" incomprehensible, I did not care for them.
October 24, 2006

Among Other Things

Out of idle curiosity and a desire to reread (third time) Miller's Tropic novels, I checked the consumer reviews of Tropic of CANCER first. I am interested in new generations discovering the stuff that I read going back to the early 60s. I found the reviews surprisingly dense, repeating the old cliches and personal prejudices.
Those of TROPIC OF CAPRICORN, on the other hand, are pointed and intelligent. Moreover, they recognize one of Miller's great traits--- humor. One reviewer pointed out the book's "hilarity", an apt characterization. Another emphasized Miller's description of the Cosmodemonic messenger service at which he worked. This is one of the most memorable sections of any book I have read: hilarious, biting satire, and (before Miller departs) a great New York book.
I have always thought Miller was, among other things, a parodist, and thus those who take him too literally (from Norman Mailer to the guy who showered after reading CANCER)are missing one of our outstanding writers, or certainly mistaking the author for the narrator.
July 18, 2006

SIMILAR PRODUCTS

Tropic of Cancer
by Henry Miller

Black Spring
by Henry Miller

Sexus: The Rosy Crucifixion I
by Henry Miller

Henry and June: From "A Journal of Love" -The Unexpurgated Diary of Anais Nin (1931-1932)
by Anais Nin

Delta of Venus
by Anais Nin