Henry Miller The Tropic Of Cancer and Capricorn

henry miller was seriously shit.

LOL ENVY

one guy that quit seriously OTM

"the air-conditioned nightmare" is OK, some funny bits. never made it very far with anything else.

anyway, does anyone even rate him anymore? i never hear people talk about him.

oh, ILX.

*shakes head*

You're all a bunch of boobs sometimes.

(by which I mean, I love Henry Miller.)

skip to Nexus Plexus Sexus

you would

xpost

better than that, I do.

OK, only 80 pages into Tropic of Cancer, but damn, this kinda sucks. Miller seems way more impressed with himself and his writing than I am. His personality and sense of self-importance and cartoonish machismo is too uncomfortably similar to many a young, privileged, dick-waving, pseudo-intellectual artistes that I've known. I think I could tolerate that if the writing was strong, but this is just dull and narcissistic in the worst way.

The only semi-sensible justification for The Tropic of Cancer I ever read was the George Orwell essay on it, which points out with good 1930s logic that it was the only recent book he'd seen, read, or heard of where the author seemed to be happy, and given the state of the world at the time, this was a sort of freaking miracle, and that made him like the book.

The 1930s have ended. The book is more obviously shite now than it was then.

I don't think that it was that he was happy. If I remember correctly it was that he felt that the English speaking authors of the day were too concerned with politics and history. They would not write subjectively but had to attempt to indict things or comment. They were too didactic. Actually I'll get it out the bookshelf now. He praises Miller for being "innocent of public-spiritidness" welcomes the "quietism" of his work, which he feels brings it to express what man feels rather than what he ought to feel.

spiritedness even

I love Henry Miller, though I can completely understand why so many people don't.

Defnitely preferred Sexus way more than Tropic of Cancer, which is a bit too disjointed and depressed.

My wife and I have Black Spring next on our list of books to read together.

I liked both Tropics, especially when Miller just lapses into a page of cosmic poetry before snapping back into the story itself. I should re-read these. It's been years.

I have others of his that I haven't taken off the shelf yet...

http://www.blogcdn.com/www.tvsquad.com/media/2006/06/seinfeld-thelibrary250.jpg

"Look. If you think this is about overdue fines and missing books, you'd better think again. This is about that kid's right to read a book without getting his mind warped! Or maybe that turns you on, Seinfeld; maybe that's how y'get your kicks. You and your good-time buddies. Well I got a flash for ya, joy-boy: Party time is over."

Ha, I think that Seinfeld episode was my introduction to Tropic of Cancer. That ^ scene is the greatest ever.

The only semi-sensible justification for The Tropic of Cancer I ever read was the George Orwell essay on it

Which is here: http://www.ourcivilisation.com/smartboard/shop/orwellg/whale.htm

"A friendly American voice, with no humbug in it, no moral purpose, merely an implicit assumption that we are all alike. For the moment you have got away from the lies and simplifications, the stylized, marionette-like quality of ordinary fiction, even quite good fiction, and are dealing with the recognizable experiences of human beings."

Looks like lol done review.

Brigid Brophy on Henry Miller, London Magazine, June 1963 @BrophyLevey ‘Henry Miller holds himself up to us to be admired on the grounds that he is forever fucking...’ pic.twitter.com/qQhTnXaZ2E

— Nicholas Royle (@nicholasroyle) August 20, 2020