Miller could call every woman he met a c**t, but it couldn't stop him from growing old.Now hailed as an American classic, Tropic of Cancer, Henry Miller’s masterpiece, was banned as obscene in this country for twenty-seven years after its first publication in Paris in 1934. As Miller contemplates pocketing the money meant for the girlfriend, he looks on the Seine and admires how it looks as if it's not flowing at all, but simply standing still. The conclusion of Tropic of Cancer depicts Miller facilitating a colleague's escape from Paris to America to avoid settling down and marrying his pregnant girlfriend.

In this, and in its self-aggrandizing bombast, Tropic of Cancer is reminiscent of Kerouac's 1957 'On the Road,' which also featured men who treated their women badly. Miller and his colleagues suffer from Peter Pan syndrome. Not surprisingly, there's plenty of self-loathing, and these passages actually contain honesty and insight. He obliquely refers to his wife still in New York and the money she inexplicably sends him. Miller, in semi-autobiographical form, bombastically recounts his life in Paris, his frequent trysts with sex workers and his life of poverty. But in Tropic of Cancer, the c-word is a weapon to objectify and degrade women. C**t is a firecracker of a word used judiciously, it has a legitimate place in fiction. I was surprised by my visceral reaction against this when I listened to the audiobook, deftly read by Campbell Scott. It's not a matter of, 'oh I hate that woman, she's such a c**t.' It's a matter of 'there were three c**ts sitting at the table.' The c-word is used as a synonym for woman - ALL THE TIME. The problem lies in its habitual, jaw-dropping use of the word c**t. But my God, I can't remember reading a book that is so misogynistic. And there is something to be said for learning that the phrase 'are you shitting me' was current at the time.

Written in 1934, the book is far ahead of its time in its use of profanity and treatment of sex. Several years ago, I went to a friend's wedding in Mexico and saw a sign on the road marking the Tropic of Cancer, which Wikipedia explains as 'the most northernly circle of latitude on Earth at which the Sun can be directly overhead.' Later, at the reception, the topic came up and someone (I believe the bride's father) mentioned Henry Miller's 'Tropic of Cancer.' The book was banned in the US for decades until the Supreme Court in 1964 declared it 'non-obscene.' It's a Trivial Pursuit/Jeopardy kind of book, famous but never read. The rating really should be 1 star, but I grudgingly add an additional star because of its historical significance.

Tropic of cancer book cover