From the Lists: #50 Tropic of Capricorn

Tropic of Capricorn by Henry Miller copyright 1938 (Paris) - banned in the US until 1961 due to sexual content. Subsequent publication resulted in numerous court cases over censorship resulting in the general availability of the novel in the mid 1960s. The court cases themselves are widely credited with expanding freedoms of expression and restricting the power of censors in the United States.

I have been prone to a bit of navel gazing in this blog (see here and here and here), but this semi-autobiographical novel consists of 100 pages of satire about Miller's lack of direction and motivation during his youth, followed by 200 pages of intense, smutty soul searching. In trying to describe the novel to a friend, I boiled it down to the following:

"Imagine Holden Caulfield from the Catcher in the Rye grew up, got a job, and was surrounded by loose women desperate for company. Then he read Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man and rhapsodically composed 200 pages about the creative process. Mix into that 30 or so pages describing the wide variety of vaginas available to Miller in the 1930's (happy, laughing, sad, mad, angry, stupid, smart, moist, big, tiny, hairy, etc.) and you sort of have an idea about what this book is about."

Henry Miller 1932

My life was not greatly affected one way or another by reading this book that is often credited for ushering in the American sexual revolution of the 1960s. For the most part, I found it quite unlikely that in the 1930's women were so loose. It seems that Miller spent most of his youth fighting off the females and his early adulthood taking advantage of them. He must have been quite a witty fellow, as even in the 1930s he was already looking as if life had been a little rough - but, beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

Summary: Not much to say here - first third is a sarcastic, satiric portrayal of Miller's childhood, first marriage, hard times, and job at Western Union in 1930's New York City. The remainder of the book consists of soaring rapturous prose about both sex and the creative process. There is really no linear plot, but at times the prose is quite impressive.

Recommendation: Unless you are plowing through the list of 100 best novels of the 20th century like I am, skip it. If you are searching for new adjectives to describe vagina - perhaps give it a shot.